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Revista Subjetividades

Print version ISSN 2359-0769On-line version ISSN 2359-0777

Abstract

PINHEIRO, Clara Virginia de Queiroz  and  ALBUQUERQUE, Kelly Moreira de. Psychopathology and mental health: questions on the standards which guide clinical perception. Rev. Subj. [online]. 2014, vol.14, n.1, pp. 9-16. ISSN 2359-0769.

This paper relies on the assumption that the formation of the mental health field led to mutations in the criteria for apprehension of mental problems in relation to psychopathology. There is a fundamental shift, that is, madness as a mental pathology is no longer the central object of psychiatric and psychological disciplines, since a new scientific domain that approaches psychic suffering as an issue related to satisfaction and personal achievement is established. Therefore it is proposed on this paper a study on the epistemic foundations of knowledge and practice in psychopathology according to Canguilhem (1946/1995) thesis that the specificity of medical rationale is the normative basis through which vital phenomena are apprehended. Accordingly the normative parameters of psychopathology field, more specifically, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, as they determine the methods of therapeutic interventions in mental illness, are reassessed. It is noteworthy that the perception of what is psychopathological is governed by the criteria for the differentiation between what is normal and what is pathological, which implies the pathological irreducibility of certain psychic phenomena. Hence the endeavors to point out that the epistemic implications constitutive of mental health field demand modifications on the medical statute of mental illness, as it loses its specificity regarding organic sickness. They also require changes in the strategies of intervention, technologies and social policies as well as in the criteria for defining the clinical object, namely the normal-pathological polarity.

Keywords : mental health; psychopathology; clinical; normal; madness.

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