The monster identikit: the subjective meaning of the diagnosis

From the point of view of psychoanalysis, the diagnosis of the mental disorder is, in principle, an ambiguous and paradoxical task. In fact, from this point of view of observation, the essence of every form of psychopathology already consists in itself in having borrowed an external and reifying perspective on one's own interiority. Psychoanalytic therapy must overturn this diagnostic inclination that the patient has already developed about himself, in order to rediscover the "subjective meaning" of the diagnosis. When this operation is successful, the patient heals not because he is able to correct his symptoms, but because, failing the premises on the basis of which they arose, he deconcretises them and rediscovers himself more fully.