Features a critical evaluation of the contemporary DSM-diagnostic that shows that the lack of reference to an updated governing metapsychology impinges on the therapeutic value of the DSM categories. This book sketches out the foundations of such a metapsychology by combining a Freudo-Lacanian approach with contemporary empirical research.
The central argument of On Being Normal and Other Disorders is that psychic identity is acquired through one's primary intersubjective relationships. Thus, the diagnosis of potential pathologies must also be founded on this relation. Given that the efficacy of all forms of treatment depends upon the therapeutic relation, a diagnostic of
Preface -- Diagnostics and Discourse -- Introduction: Clinical
Psychodiagnostics versus Medical Diagnostics -- Categorical Diagnostics
versus Clinical Praxis: A Matter of Impossibility -- The Impotence of
Epistemology -- Know-how in Clinical Practice: Doxa as the Result of
Impotence and Impossibility -- Conclusion: The Need for a Metapsychology --
Metapsychology -- Identity as a Relational Structure -- Defense in Double
Time: A Linear Model -- From a Linear to a Circular Model: On Becoming a
Subject -- Etiology and Evolution: Nature, Nurture, and the Theory of the
Drive -- Conclusion: The Subjects Position in Relation to Anxiety, Guilt,
and Depression -- Positions and Structures of the Subject -- The
Actualpathological Position: Panic Disorder and Somatization -- Between
Actualpathology and Psychopathology: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and
Borderline -- The Psychopathological Position of the Subject: Hysteria and
Obsessional Neurosis -- Perverse Structure versus Perverse Traits -- The
Psychotic Structure of the Subject -- Conclusion: Diagnosis and Treatment
Verhaeghe, Paul
