A meaning of diagnosis to the patient’s identity : part 2: construction or recognition?

Abstract

In the second part of the article we direct our attention consecutively to biological, humanistic/existential and critical psychiatry/post-psychiatry. We show both chances and, more often, dangers of traditional model of psychiatric diagnostics when it is performed with insufficient dose of reflexivity. In our opinion, the most common dangers in question are: reification and self-fulfilling prophecy. We recall the World Psychiatric Association’s proposition of complementing criteriological diagnostics with idiographic aspects. Finally, we introduce current critics of traditional psychiatry, more mature and creative than anti-psychiatric ones, that is recommendations of critical psychiatrists, postpsychiatrists, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists who are inspired by postmodernism and social constructivism. Referring to these ideas, we discuss both theoretical background (approaching philosophy of psychiatry when the opportunity arises) and practical implications with continuous focus on the main subject of our investigations. We attach difficult questions (e.g. about the limits of constructing) to our final conclusions, the questions we are putting now without trying to answer them in an explicit manner.Druga część artykułu o znaczeniu diagnozy dla tożsamości pacjenta skoncentrowana jest na porównaniu tradycyjnych nurtów psychiatrii z psychiatrią krytyczną oraz postpsychiatrią. Autorzy zawierają w nim zarówno tło teoretyczne, filozofię psychiatrii, jak i praktyczne implikacje nowych podejść dla procesu diagnozowania. Stawiają również otwarte pytania o granice konstruowania czy faktyczność psychiczną pacjentów