In 2001, a large survey sponsored by the American National Institute of Mental Health found that 46% of adults met the criteria for having at least one mental illness, as established by the American Psychiatric Association (ASA). Each publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders (DSM), now in its fifth edition created, brings into being more and more diagnostic categories of mental illnesses. Increasingly the human experience is medicalized, and then mitigated with a cocktail of psychoactive drugs. Today, 10% of Americans over the age of six take antidepressants. Human emotions are increasingly seen, by both the public and medical professionals, as something that should be fixed rather than understood. In short, it is becoming harder and harder to be classified as mentally “normal.”
So, how did we get here? In order to understand this troubling phenomenon, we must look to the 18th century experiment in individualism, which constitutes the root of psychoanalytical practice, a practice that today’s psychoanalysts are rapidly distancing themselves from.
Here, I will focus on two highly influential texts, Princess de Cleves by Madame de Lafayette and The Confessions by Jean Jacques …show more content…
He sees the purpose of philosophy as promoting personal reflection. Here, the line between philosophy, as Rousseau would define it, and psychology, as someone of today would define it, has become extremely blurred. It is difficult to see where one discipline ends and the other