Abnormal Psychology Syllabus Fall 2019 (original) (raw)
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Psychopathy - A Psychoanalytic Investigation
ABSTRACT Psychopathy - A Psychoanalytic Investigation Emmet Mallon This study on the psychoanalytic conceptualisation of psychopathy reviews psychoanalytic considerations of anti-social/psychopathic disorders. The researcher questions whether psychopathy is particular to one psychoanalytic structure (neurosis, psychosis, and perversion), an undiscovered separate structure with an internal logic of its own or a universal symptom that crosses all three possible structures. The aim of the study is to gain a theoretical understanding of psychopathy so that psychoanalysts who direct treatments with psychopathic subjects may be better informed. The researcher screened a population of ex-offenders using the Self-Report Psychopathy Questionnaire - SRP-III (Paulhus, Hemphill & Hare, 2009). High-scoring participants were invited to participate in a psychoanalytically informed interview. Participants were encouraged to speak freely while the researcher listened with a free-floating attention. An adapted thematic analysis was employed for the organisation and management of data which was then subject to a psychoanalytic discourse analysis allowing for the broader assumptions and meanings of Lacanian structural theory to be considered. The study found that the participants who scored greater or equal to 3.375 on the SRP-III scale had psychotic structures evidenced by their discourse and the positions they assume in relation to others. The researcher considers the cases of psychopathy detailed in this study as non-delusional, un-triggered psychoses: ‘ordinary’ (Miller, 1998) psychoses in which subversive and violent acts serve to stabilise a psychotic structure. The findings indicate that psychoanalytic work with psychopaths is viable based on a sinthomatic solution.
[Neurodevelopment and schizophrenia]
Vertex (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
The evidence of neuroleptics' antipsychotic action due to their antagonism of dopamine receptors led to the hyperdopaminergic theory of schizophrenia. But the functional disturbance of the dopamine neurons should explain the increase and the reduction of some symptoms at the same time through the D2 receptors blockade. The prodromical manifestations of schizophrenia include abnormal movements which precede and predict the beginning of the disease. They also suggest a dopamine deficit. An injury in the mesocortical dopamine projection during the neural development could result in a functional impairment of the prefrontal cortex which causes the cognitive deficit symptoms. It would result also in an excessive compensatory subcortical dopamine activity which would cause the psychotic symptoms. The evidence in behalf of this physiopathology is complex. The mechanism of the subcortical compensation of the prefrontal dopamine deficit remains unknown. It is necessary to find out which ...
The Psychoanalytic quarterly, 2007
Starting from a contemporary critique of the DSM-IV, this paper argues that the diagnostic categories of panic disorder somatization, and undifferentiated somatoform disorders can be understood as belonging to a common type of psychopathology--i.e., the Freudian actual neuroses. In addition to their strong clinical similarity, these disorders share an etiological similarity; and the authors propose a combination of Freud's focus on this type of patient's inability to represent an endogenous drive arousal with the post-Freudian focus on separation anxiety. An etiological hypothesis is put forward based on contemporary psychoanalytic attachment theory, highlighting mentalization. Concrete implications for a psychoanalytically based treatment are proposed.
In the Western world the predominant method of mental health diagnosis is based on the medicalization of symptoms using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) currently in its fifth edition. This widely used system of diagnosis has largely informed the way in which mental illness is perceived and treated. Being diagnosed with a mental illness can have significant consequences for individuals in the way they understand themselves, their suffering and how others relate to them. This model of diagnosis offers one particular way in which mental health is understood and has consequently overshadowed how mental health is perceived within and across a variety of discourses. Using a clinical example of anorexia nervosa this paper compared the medical model’s approach to diagnosis with the Lacanian approach to diagnosis, which aims to identify the psychical structure of an individual rather than focus on a particular set of symptoms. Fundamental to this method of diagnosis is the understanding that an individual cannot be completely or wholly defined through language and as such this hole in knowledge elicits a desire within the individual to know something of his or her own subjectivity. The desire to know is the cornerstone of analytic treatment, a desire which is nullified by the medical model’s approach to diagnosis.
FROM DE CLÉRAMBAULT’S THEORY OF MENTAL AUTOMATISM TO LACAN’S THEORY OF THE PSYCHOTIC STRUCTURE
In 1966, in a paper on those who have influenced his work, Jacques Lacan suggested that his concept of ‘paranoid knowledge’ and his structural approach to psychoanalysis were closely linked to the work of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault. This article examines both of these points. Starting with an introduction to de Clérambault, focusing on his concept ‘mental automatism,’ the link between ‘mental automatism’ and ‘paranoid knowledge’ is discussed. Loyalty to Henri Claude and conflicts around theoretical and clinical issues seem to lie at the basis of Lacan’s initial neglect of his conceptual indebtedness to de Clérambault. Second, the author discusses the presumed connection between mental automatism and Lacan’s structural psychoanalytic theory, which Lacan did not elaborate. It is argued that from a structural perspective, mental automatism comes down to a rupture in the continuity of the signifying chain, which provokes the disappearance of the subject. Furthermore, Lacan’s theory implies the hypothesis that manifestations of mental automatism are determined by a foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, where questions related to existence cannot be addressed in a stable way. Lacanian theory thus retained de Clérambault’s notion of a rupture in mental life that lies at the basis of psychosis, but replaced his biological framework with the dimension of the subject as produced through speech.
German-French Dialogue in the Building of Classical Psychiatry, Berlin 2017 World Congress, Symposium Section History of Psychiatry, World Psychiatric Association, 2017
Authors: SINZELLE J, SUCH G, CRAUS Y, CHARBIT P, PETERS UH, BERRIOS GE. Pr German E BERRIOS p.3 - Introduction. Pr Dr Uwe Henrik PETERS p.5 - Foreword. Dr Gaetan SUCH p.7 - Dissociation: A “Split” Concept Between French and German Psychiatry. Dr Yann CRAUS p.13 - Following Out the Concept of Paranoia: A Paradigm for Epistemology of Psychiatry. Dr Jérémie SINZELLE p.19 - A Hundred Years of Dementia Praecox: Grandeur and Decay of a Disease of the Will. Dr Patrice CHARBIT p.25 - Political Psychiatry, or Psychiatric Policies? INTRODUCTION Professor German E. Berrios (United Kingdom) (1) (2) (1) Section Chair, History of Psychiatry, WPA. (2) Emeritus Chair of the Epistemology of Psychiatry, Life-Fellow Robinson College, University of Cambridge, UK During the 19th century the construction of Psychiatry (a term of German origin) was due to an interesting combination of French and German views. This dovetailing was made possible by the cultural ferment going on in Europe at the time. Often presented as synonyms, concepts such as discordance, dissociation, Spaltung, splitting, etc. had different conceptual provenance and each Psychiatric culture used differently to explain dissimilar phenomena. For example, there were horizontal and vertical dissociations, functional and structural forms of splitting, etc. etc. This explains their different explanatory functionality as in the case of Freud’s ego theories or Bleuler’s Schizophrenia. The concept of Schizophrenia itself was a major conceptual departure from the Kraepelinian concept of Dementia praecox whose roots can be traced back to both Morel and Pick. The concept of paranoia also underwent conceptual transformation in both German and French psychiatry and the resulting definitional dissimilarities became unresolvable by the 1920s. In the event the concept was replaced by the inane diagnosis of delusional disorder. The four speakers are young French clinicians who carefully studied French and German psychiatry by reading the ancient sources in the original texts. FOREWORD Pr Dr Uwe Henrik Peters, MD, PhD, hc (Germany) (1) (2) (1) Emeritus Chair, Klinik für Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie. Medical College. Universität zu Köln. Germany. (2) Former President. DGPPN, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Psychosomatik und Nervenheilkunde. Sektion Geschichte der Psychiatrie. This symposium is about classical psychopathology, what means about the pathology of psyche. French as well as German psychiatrists in the past had built up a doctrine how to observe illness signs and structures in a given patient, how to interpret the observations, how to give names to it and how to use it for diagnosing. In our times, when psychiatric brain researchers try to find technical, chemical and physical, possibilities for diagnosing and treating illnesses of the psyche, psychopathology seems to be unnecessary. However for philosophical reasons it is even impossible to reach such a goal of a technological psychiatry, as Thomas Fuchs in Heidelberg has evidenced. In this situation it is necessary to return to classical psychiatry and psychopathology. History in general and history of psychiatry does not repeat itself. Therefore Psychopathology in the future will have to incorporate histories, history of an illness, life history of the person, history of the time and history of the past. Neither American nor British psychiatry own the premises, the preconditions for working out the future psychopathology, but French and German psychiatries do. Since DSM III-V and ICD-10 or -11 in this respect are completely unsatisfying, it will be necessary to build up a new continental European system of mental disturbances. For this it is a good Aristotelian manner of human sciences to in the first step recapitulate the classical past. The papers of this symposium deal exactly with that. The only but important problem, which I see, concerns language. As Harald Weinrich, the only German Professor with chair at the Collège de France, has pointed out, the French-German friendship is a friendship without language. In spite of the fact that this symposium has to be in globalesic English language, it will demonstrate at the same time a new beginning, away from monolingualism but towards plurilingualism.