Càtia S. P. S. Guerra

 

 

Psychiatric practice is related to ways of constructing and defining subjectivity. Changes occurring in the psychiatric field, which include an increase in pathologies, the pluralization of psychotherapies and the development of neuroscientific approaches, have been changing how the subject relates with him or herself.

Based on a critical stance and analyzing significant psychotherapy texts, this article reflects on the subjectivation processes and ethical prescriptions present in the psychiatric field, which in a Foucauldian perspective mean how the subjects must relate with themselves.

As a result, different ethical prescriptions that have become dominant in the therapeutic ward are distinguished, namely: imposition of a subject’s truth, self-knowledge, transformation, control and improvement. Although these prescriptions are not totally opposed to one another, and sometimes are present simultaneously in the psychiatric field, this article proposes that they are related to different political rationalities and processes of resistance and domination which are

never entirely separated.

 

Psychiatry, Subjectivation processes, Technologies of the Self, Michel Foucault, Ethical prescription

 

 

Received on April 18, 2021

Accepted on June 08, 2021

Firstly published online on June 30, 2021