Approach to the Aesthetic Ways of the Pathos

Are there paths of the aesthetic that, just as they lead to subjectivization, lead to psychic pathology? This chapter is structured with this question. Through a tour of the various connections between the aesthetic and mental pathologies in Western culture and “Psy” scientific thought, the subject is reviewed to discuss the mental pathologies that appear today about the aesthetic. It could be enunciated that the aesthetic leads to psychic pathology through the subject’s clash with his existence and the contrasted evaluation between his body, his representation of himself, and the representations others give him. On the other hand, the aesthetic leads to psychic pathology due to the relationship between these routes and the cultural representations of the aesthetic. In particular, these ways are combined when the subject has to contrast his representations about himself, about his body and the representations of his body emanating from the other with the cultural representations about the aesthetics of the body. In the same way, there are cultic representations of psychic pathology, psychic pathology as a culture of the aesthetic. For the Romans, the human was the nascitorum, and this had, as a primary condition, to be so in terms of human figuration, which among other implications, was primarily aesthetic. Thus, there are connecting bridges between the ways of pathos to subjectivization as a process and the cultural construction of psychic pathos. There are connecting bridges and new ways of evaluating psychic pathology. These, as have been indirectly illustrated at various times in this book, acquire a concrete cultural-historical expression in each place and time for each subject. The growing relationship with cosmetic surgery in its various variants; anorexia and bulimia; the dependencies to the visual representations and their acceptance in the networks—“like dependence”—bullying are contemporary manifestations of these paths open from the aesthetic to pathos, which question the role of the psi sciences and their denominations on mental health. The chapter will also show some evidence of empirical research by the authors on these issues in the clinic and various social contexts.