Psychology and psychiatry are often criticized for reducing people to labels. That is, for try to explain what makes us unique, the mind and our own personality, through numbers, statistical trends and categories relatively rigid.
Of course, if we look back it is easy to see the consequences of what the lack of empathy and humane treatment can do to psychiatry and the scientific study of behavior: forced lobotomies, overcrowding in psychiatric centers that could barely be called like that…
However, neither in psychology nor in medicine is it necessary to confuse the person with their mental illnesses or problems in order to work in these areas. Not even mental disorders are adjectives Nor is the function of psychology or medicine to translate our essence through a diagnosis.
Something needs to be clarified: the use of well-defined categories (or as defined as possible) in psychology, such as psychopathy or intelligence, It is not something that is bad in itself.
Psychology tries to scientifically explain a part of reality and, to do so, must use concrete conceptsthat can be understood by the entire community of scientists in that area of knowledge regardless of their cultural context.
In other words, in science it is necessary to avoid ambiguous definitions as much as possible; You have to speak properly. Depression cannot be defined as “a state of mental negativity in which vital pessimism is transmitted”, but to understand what it consists of it is necessary to learn a series of very specific symptoms and established by scientific consensus.
That is, psychology works from concepts that tell us about characteristics of how we think, feel and act from the point of view of an external observer who compares different cases with each other and reaches conclusions about how a person thinks, feels and acts. group of individuals. The task of psychology is not to define what exists only in a person.but rather to discover the logic that allows us to explain the mental and behavioral mechanisms of a multitude.
This means that a psychologist does not treat a person as if he or she were totally and absolutely unique, but rather works from the principles and generalities about the mind and human behavior that he or she knows. In fact, if not, his work could be done by anyone who attributes a special sensitivity to being “a human soul touching another human soul.”
Psychology is not metaphysics
The problem arises when either the patients or the psychologists and psychiatrists themselves believe that the scientific categories used in psychology and psychiatry They are direct reflections of people’s identity. That is, when the names of mental disorders, personality traits or symptoms become synonymous with the essence of people (whatever the latter may be).
It is one thing to agree that out of pragmatism we will work based on well-defined and well-defined concepts, and another is to assume that someone’s entire mental life is summarized in a diagnostic table or in the result of a personality test. This last option is not only not part of the normal functioning of psychology, but also represents an overreach.
The error is that, sometimes, the belief is held that the task of psychology is capture the identity and essence of people, tell us who we are.
However, as much as the etymology of the term “psychology” is what it is, the purpose of this scientific field and intervention is much more modest than that of revealing the essence of each one; that task is reserved for metaphysicians.
Psychology is content with being useful when it comes to providing concrete solutions to material needs: improving people’s objective living conditions, providing models capable of better predicting how groups act, etc.
That is why the idea of mental disorders and mental disorders, unlike adjectives, They only exist because they are useful within the framework of coordinated efforts that is mental health and behavioral science, and for nothing else. They are concepts that make sense in the clinical setting and in certain branches of science to respond to specific problems.
In mental health there are no essences
Furthermore, it is worth remembering that in psychology almost all mental processes are understood as part of a cycle that unites the person with their environment: we act according to what is happening within our own organism, but What happens inside our body also depends on what happens around us.
Not even from a scientific perspective can a mental disorder be understood as something that begins and ends with oneself, as if it were part of something intrinsic to one’s own being. Each person maintains a real-time connection with their environment and could not exist (either alive or dead) apart from it.
This idea, by the way, would not only be good to take into account when thinking about diagnostic concepts, but also when thinking about terms that are used as adjectives beyond mental health.
Disorders as labels
Asking a mental health specialist to capture the essence of a patient through a diagnosis is like asking a gardener to express the pinkness of the rose through pruning.
Scientific categories such as those used to explain what mental disorders are They only make sense as part of an effort to provide solutions to very specific needs.defined and based on the material, and do not have it as labels that can be used to summarize all the complexity of the personality of a single individual. That is not its function.
