ROSA, Barbara Paraiso Garcia Duarte da    WINOGRAD, Monah. On today's malaise: from the brain to death drive. []. , 13, 1-2, pp.46-80. ISSN 1518-6148.

A few years ago, the evidence raised by the neurosciences and the proliferation of psychopathological categories have contributed to the legitimacy and the multiplication of speeches filled with promises of cure for mental suffering. In this context - where psychopathology is approached from a predominantly biological understanding and the proliferation of diagnostic categories is accompanied by the predominance of a syndromic approach to mental illness - the emphasis on biological therapy operates as a promise of exclusion of the malaise of life. This is a process of naturalization of psychological distress in which the proliferation of diagnostic categories is proportional to the diversity of mental suffering that can be medicated. In this paper, we present some concepts, forged by Freud, as anxiety, helplessness and death drive, as indicators of the possibility of intervening in psychological distress through different perspectives of those who promise the exclusion of evil from life. If evil is a sign of disorder sponsored by the drive that could not enroll in the psychic apparatus, then psychoanalysis includes evil at the heart of the psychic life itself. The latter only is constituted and transformed by the possibility of creating new meanings, new forms of satisfaction for the vital impulse, insistent on excellence.

: psychopathology; psychic suffering; anguish; helplessness; death drive.

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