a cultural repertoire of symptoms

Music: Manhole Vortex: Agents of Goldstein (1999)

Shaunnessy pointed me to an essay in the New York Times by Ethan Watters titled, "The Americanization of Mental Illness." Extracted from a book to be released next month, the essay suggests there is overwhelming and compelling evidence to support the idea that the expression (symptoms) of psychopathology are social constructions. This is not to say there is not a problem---biological or otherwise---with someone suffering from anorexia nervosa; it is to say, however, that anorexia nervosa is a culturally crafted symptom that is triggered. Suffering is real, unquestionably; how suffering is expressed and experienced seems culturally dependent.

I am anxious to get the book and read more. If I get a closer look at the empirical data he is suggesting exists, we may have a good answer for why hysteria symptoms disappeared and have been replace by other (body dismorphic disorder seems all the rage). Watters reports that the United States disease and drug machine is so powerful that our cultural repertoire of symptoms of mental illness are globalizing (as are, of course, our treatments).

There's much more to think about and say here, but I have to say it points in the direction of Lacan's understanding of the symptom and psychical structures. (And, to you Deleuzian's out there, read the essay first; it also would seem to confirm some of Deleuze's thinking about the psyche too).