On Being Normal and Other Disorders by Paul Verhaeghe

Author:Paul Verhaeghe [Verhaeghe, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2020-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

10

Conclusion: The Subject’s Position in Relation to Anxiety, Guilt, and Depression

In the previous chapter we discussed the question of etiology in terms of the bigger picture. Were we to ask the same question at the level of the subject, we would inevitably come up against the problem of guilt, as we already saw in the conclusion to Part 1. By way of concluding Part II, we here take up the question of guilt again, this time in the light of our metapsychology. As we will see, it has everything to do with two central clinical phenomena: anxiety and depression.

The importance of these phenomena in the contemporary clinic scarcely needs stating. At the end of the day, one finds no form of psychopathology without some feelings of depression and/or anxiety. Before the hype of the personality disorders, it seemed as if the DSM diagnostic would almost exclusively be based on these feelings. While anxiety has always been at the center of clinical work, depression seems to have recently increased exponentially to become a “sign of the times” (Roudinesco 1999). This ubiquity requires us to comprehend these two phenomena both from a global perspective and as differentiated within the different pathologies.

In what follows, I will show how anxiety and depression are central to subject-formation and that potential psychopathological effects have to do with the way they are—or are not—processed in relation to the Other. We have seen both of them already at work from the outset of identity formation (in Chapter 6). Following on from this, it will become clear how each is connected with another central clinical phenomenon, namely, guilt. Given its high incidence in the clinic, it is strange that guilt has not received as much attention as the other two states. Its relative absence in contemporary studies stands in stark contrast to the ubiquity of depression.

My thesis will be that anxiety, guilt, and depression present a triptych in every relation between the subject and the Other. As such, they are unavoidable existential elements of identity formation, and hence also of clinical diagnostics.

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