The social constitution of psychopathology: an historic and philosophical review about the different approaches to study the psychic suffering

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to elaborate a philosophical review about the three approaches through which the psychic suffering has been described in the West history, i.e., the concepts of madness, mental illness, and psychopathology. To achieve this aim, the paper has four parts. Firstly, through an exegesis of Michel Foucault’s philosophical propose, we will establish that the appearance of the modern notion of madness reveals the social dimension that is typical of this way to describe psychic suffering. Secondly, and from a description of the emergence of psychiatry in the 19th century, we will analyze the two great transformations the concept of madness through the appearance of the naturalistic notion of mental illness, and the irruption of mental disorder’ concept (psychopathology). Thirdly, and in the light of a reading of the constructivist approach of antipsychiatry and ethnopsychiatry, we will establish that the notions of illness and mental disorder, as heirs of the modern notion of madness, are permeated by a certain dimension of social orthopedics. Finally, and considering the phenomenological approach, we will propose a holistic understanding of psychic suffering that, taking precautions against the disciplinary dimension of the three concepts studied in the paper, allow to think about this kind of experience in all its complexity.