Localized Pathologization Versus Generalized Depathologization: Discernment in Lacan-Oriented Psychoanalysis in Brazil

In Brazil, as in the entire West, the edifice of civilization is no longer founded on renouncing instinctual drives. Our culture encourages enjoyment rather than barring it. The symbolic Other that lent a certain consistency to the subject since the known origin of time now proves to be flawed, fractured, exposed in its imperfections; it is no longer the holder of universal truths announced by myths, religions, and blunt ideologies with strong power of influence in the social bond. The symbolic law tends to be reduced to the dimension of a mere intersubjective contract in postmodernity. The strands of postmodern culture—both the neo-liberal ideology and the ideology of the new progressive left—will produce an individualistic and narcissistic clinical type that tends to excessive enjoyment or the open expression of the death drive. Modern subjectivity, in contrast, subjected to the Name-of-the-Father, represses the instinctual excess that is the incestuous truth of the symptom. Its core of enjoyment is hidden so that the neurotic symptom masks the perverse virulence of the death drive, preserving the subject and the social bond. The progress of science’s discourse has eroded the strength of religious ideals and created expectations of happiness, which have become paradoxically more coercive than repression. Brazil is a country both faithful to its Christian religious roots inherited from Portuguese colonization and captured by progressive ideals, both neo-liberal and socialist spread by globalized postmodern culture. The Brazilian subject today does not suffer from a lack of ideals, but from a diversity of imaginary references, competing to void the symbolic power of the law to bar the excessive drive. The paternal metaphor as a modern subjective mode of organization is in conflict with the multiplicity of postmodern imaginary references. Progressive, they permanently incite ruptures in the field of identifications and modes of enjoyment. The hypothesis of foreclosure of the Name of the Father, therefore, is the psychic mechanism that explains why a subject is structured in a psychotic way, although psychosis in the clinical sense is no longer triggered. In postmodernity it is discreet, no longer characterized by grandiose delusions and noisy hallucinations. The notion of ordinary psychosis was introduced by the psychoanalyst J.A. Miller (1998) to account for more “modest” or average psychotic manifestations, where disruption is much lower. It is much more a specific subjective mode of functioning. This presentation of psychosis allows the creation of different forms of stabilization, from the most fragile constructions to the most solid substitutes. This new modest presentation of psychosis has led many individuals to organize themselves into identity groups that refuse to be classified as psychopathological identities. American contemporary sociology advocates generalized depathologization in mental health. In France, the Lacanian orientation leads us to practice localized pathologization with discernment, distinguishing the neurotic or psychotic structure on a case-by-case basis. Most Lacanian psychoanalysts in Brazil follow this orientation.