Weariness of the Self by Ehrenberg Alain;

Author:Ehrenberg, Alain; [Ehrenberg, Alain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2010-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

THE INADEQUATE INDIVIDUAL

The physiology of automatism is easier to describe than that of autonomy.

Georges Canguilhem, La formation du concept de réflexe

auxxviie etxviiie siècles,1955 (7)

Depression is not a subjective state, it is a style of action.

Daniel Widlöcher, “L’échelle de ralentissement dépressif:

Fondements théoriques et premiers résultats,” 1981 (56)

PATHOLOGICAL ACTION: THE SECOND SHIFT IN THE REPRESENTATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL

The first shift in direction for the system of norms defining the individual in the first half of the twentieth century involved “being oneself.” This is what characterized the “general spirit” of the new normality. At the pathological level, clinical practice, especially that of psychoanalysis, altered its focus from a domain where conflict, guilt, and anxiety prevailed to a domain where inadequacy, the void, compulsion, and impulse delineated the portrait of pathological humanity. The new normative approach and the new pathology were concerned less with identification (with well-defined parental images or social roles) than with identity. Identity was the first instrument leading to the redefinition of today’s individual. During the 1980s, self-affirmation worked its way into everyday life to the point where a housewife under the age of fifty did not hesitate to bare the most intimate details of her private life on television.

This decade was innovative in another way. It was not simply a matter of being oneself, of setting out blissfully in search of one’s “authenticity”; one also had to act on one’s own, to rely on one’s own internal resources.1 The second instrument of turn-of-the-century individuality was that of individual action.

The gospel of personal fulfilment was backed up by the commandments of individual initiative. The questions of identity and of action came together in the following way: on the normative side, individual initiative joined forces with psychic liberation; on the pathological side, a difficulty in initiating action was associated with identity insecurity. The eclipse of regulation through discipline led to the individual agent’s being responsible for his own actions. At the same time, psychiatric thinking was more and more convinced that the fundamental problem in depression was psychomotor: what had been a mood disorder was now a dysfunction in mental activity. To violate the norm was less a matter of disobedience than of being unable to act. This was a new concept of individuality.

Chapter 6 puts forward the hypothesis that depression would from now on be characterized by two main attributes, one of which is entangled with the other. First, the very idea of a depressive syndrome collapsed. Second, the psychiatric gaze shifted to the pathological act: inhibition and “psychomotor slowing” took precedence over mental pain and sadness. At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry launched a new generation of molecules unprecedented in their promises of a cure. This shift in the psychiatric approach to depression was related to the context in which it occurred: a demand for action that weighed increasingly on each individual. There was a demand for medicinal assistance. Psychiatric literature spread the news, the media became concerned, public authorities set up commissions or commissioned reports that had no impact on public behaviour.

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