Introductory seminar 2025
Diagnosis and Beyond
ICLO-NLS Introductory Seminar 2025
A series of three seminars by Linda Clarke, Joanne Conway, Caroline Heanue, Rik Loose, Raphael Montague, Alan Rowan
Dates: Wednesday 22nd January – 26th February – 26th March
Time: 7pm – 9pm Dublin time
Venue: Online by Zoom & in person at the Carmelite Centre, Aungier St., D2
Fees: 3 seminars €50 (students €30) / 1 seminar €20 (students €15)
Unlike thirty or forty years ago, we live today in an age of self-diagnosis, meaning people today are familiar with a range of psychiatric diagnoses and deploy them in their everyday life. This goes well beyond the subject naming a symptomatic distress they may suffer from, as in, “I am depressed or anxious” etc., but involves many people thinking of themselves as having a psychiatric disorder, or more positively, being neuro-atypical or neuro-diverse, something that both they themselves and others need to accept and adapt to. It is thus very common nowadays to encounter subjects who see themselves as having ADHD, or as being “on the spectrum”, meaning having some autistic traits, or indeed describing themselves as bi-polar, while terms like “narcissistic” or “borderline” are more usually used to describe close others with whom a subject has a problematic relationship. Here it is important to note, that there is nothing right or wrong about the use of such terms, more accurately described as semblances, and indeed, they may be more or less helpful, or unhelpful, for a particular subject.
However, and as we will aim to demonstrate in this short seminar series, the evidence to support such diagnostic categories as discreet and actual entities, as say biological facts, that might be established by a blood test or brain scan is extremely weak and, moreover, no such tests exist for the vast majority of such diagnoses. In response, and particularly in the first of these seminars, we will thus critically examine the origin and current usage of diagnostic systems, such as DSM V, which have a global presence in relation to how most people think about mental health disorders, including their treatment.
From there we will move on to explore and elaborate on the very different place of diagnosis within psychoanalysis, emphasising here a trajectory from Freud to Lacan. In psychoanalysis one finds a distinctly finite number of diagnostic categories, each of which, however, can take on a myriad of forms that change over time and are thus sensitive and responsive to the symbolic system one finds oneself living in, something Lacan called the “big Other”. Here the most basic distinction made is between subjects with a neurotic structure and those with a psychotic structure. This distinction is complex because it applies both to subjects who may experience suffering and distress on the basis of their structure, manifesting therefore as neurotic symptoms or disturbing psychotic experiences and subjects who do not experience such suffering and thus do not see themselves as having a clinical need or need for treatment. In terms of neurosis there are a number of sub-categories, for example, hysteria, obsessionality and phobia whereas with psychotic structure the main categories are schizophrenia, paranoia and melancholia. In addition to this, Freud introduced the category of perversion which today must be de-linked from sexual practices in an era where multiple sexual practices are socially sanctioned so long as they take place between consenting adults.
Finally, we will emphasise the importance of the symptom and Lacan’s late emphasis on the sinthome for the direction of the treatment (its start, course and end). We will also speak to the “beyond” of diagnosis by referencing the Symbolic of our times which can be described as post-patriarchal and where consumer capitalism alongside technological advances, such as the advent of social media, deeply impact on how we experience, singularly and collectively, contemporary subjectivity. For example, there is clear evidence that, especially in Western culture, more and more people are today experiencing some form of psychological suffering. Here, questions of identity, sustaining relationships within the social bond and dealing with problematic jouissance(s) are prominent and encountered daily in a psychoanalytic clinic that is no longer quite the same as the clinic Freud discovered.