La psychiatrie est-elle prédisposée au scientisme ?

Abstract

Objective

The author explores the risk of essentializing pathological entities, over time and in particular nowadays, and reflects on psychiatry's potential predisposition to scientism.

Method

The author revisits the foundations of psychiatry through the study of several major authors who have had an epistemological reflection on the order of psychiatric discourse (Foucault, Lacan, Swain, Lantéri-Laura, Dowbiggin, etc.).

Results

Psychiatric logic is characterized by the emergence of a subjective position of exteriority to insanity on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the postulate of an organicity of the morbid process inherent to medical logic, even before any psychiatric knowledge is constituted.

Discussion

The author emphasizes the uniqueness of psychiatry within the medical field, in that it has undergone considerable institutional and social development, even though the promise of future knowledge that would fully establish its legitimacy did not materialize during that time.

Conclusion

The author sees a predisposition to scientism in this assumption of taking a medical approach to mental suffering, combined with a quest for legitimacy within that same field. He concludes that the psychiatric entities that are developing deserve to be questioned in light of the specificities of psychiatric discourse.