A Structuralist Approach in Psychiatry

A Structuralist Approach in Psychiatry presents an alternative view of the psychiatric patient and highlights a connection with continental post-structuralist thinking to provide a new approach to psychiatry.

After outlining the problems facing psychiatry, and the historical development of the field, this book outlines a structuralist model of the subject that does greater justice to the complexity involved while avoiding physicalist reductionism. It draws heavily on French structuralism, in which language plays a central structuring role that also influences the subject. The author draws on the works of Foucault, Lacan, and Bergson, as well as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Žižek. The structuralist model proposed engages with the intricate relationships between the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic in relation to the subject, particularly in the marginality of psychosis. Three clinical examples are provided to illustrate this: the syndromes of Cotard, Capgras, and negative hallucination. These examples demonstrate how the negative within the subject manifests itself in their symptomatology. However, the negative also plays a role in the normal development of the subject when they encounter the Symbolic and enter the world of language. Time and again, the subject must reinvent themselves through speech. This model, grounded in the concept of the zero point, has implications for an alternative anthropology and for psychiatry, where speaking and listening take centre stage.

This book will be of interest to mental healthcare professionals, including psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and physician assistants, and those studying to enter these professions.