The Uncertain Subject of Depression, or End-of-the-Century Individuality

• Published in: Weariness of the Self pp. 190 - 229
• Main Author: Ehrenberg, Alain
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Montreal MQUP 20.12.2009; McGill-Queen's University Press
• Subjects: Antidepressants; Behavioral sciences; Central nervous system agents; Clinical psychology; Depressive disorders; Diseases; Dysthymic disorder; Health sciences; Medical conditions; Medical sciences; Medical specialties; Medications; Mental illness; Microphysics; Molecular physics; Molecules; Mood disorders; Neuroses; Pathology; Personality; Personality psychology; Pharmaceutical preparations; Pharmaceutics; Physical sciences; Physics; Psychology; Psychotropics; Self
• ISBN: 9780773536258; 0773536256
• DOI: 10.1515/9780773577152-011

The ability to act by oneself is at the heart of socialization, and the breakdown of action is the fundamental disorder of depression. There are two ways of understanding the situation: one is concerned only with the subject of conflict, the other has nothing to do with conflict. The controversy between Janet and Freud was played out a century later in a completely different normative and psychiatric context. If depression really is the double pathological manifestation of psychic liberation and individual initiative, then, necessarily, internal splits other than those of conflict will be played out. At the psychiatric level, today