Psychology and psychiatry co-evolved with changing norms of the self

Evidence

The divorce between the conflict model and the deficit model was encouraged both by the norms concerning the multiplication of the self, which sustained the illusion that one could dispense with what one could not master, and by the insecurity vis-à-vis one’s identity, which served as a reminder that it was an illusion. The encounter between the dynamics of emancipation that freed the individual from discipline and conflict, and the transformations within psychiatry that furnished the practical answers to the problems created by this liberation, signalled a shift in the style of despair. The yielding of neurosis to depression marked not only the end of a certain psychiatry but also the decline of an individual’s collective experience as embodied both in a deference to discipline and in conflict. It was a sea change in the subjectivity of modern humanity. — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 730

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The frame that emancipation from discipline and the psychiatric answers to the resulting insecurity jointly ‘changed the style of despair’ is a dense, unifying thesis worth sitting with.
• XREF: connects to: Federal funding and medicalized psychoanalysis shaped American psychiatry’s distinct path — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 682; Psychoanalysis now deepens the self-alienation it once diagnosed — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 78; Ego psychology spread because individuals mirrored society’s objective trends. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1551 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Ego psychology spread because individuals mirrored society’s objective trends. #expands (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1551
• Psychoanalysis now deepens the self-alienation it once diagnosed #complicates (0.70) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 78