Prevention: a psychoanalytic viewpoint.
Psychoanalysis teaches that a symptom should not be regarded as an accident occurring during the development of one individual or another, but basically the effect of his or her "predisposition" to a disorder before any interaction with the environment takes place. Prevention seems to assume the form of a scientific and technical expedient aimed at the optimisation of life and the repression of pain. If it is not possible to prevent dreams, slips of the tongue and other parapraxes, in the same way we cannot prevent the other inventions of the unconscious from which a psychic illness, such as anorexia, bulimia, distortion of or obsession with the body image etc., emerges. The ethics of the unconscious subject does not surrender to the perverse mirages of illness, nor, however, to the normalising appearances of health. It simply claims the right not to be distorted, to be understood, but not made uniform. What could be the form of prevention that those who have chosen to work with the psyche are destined for?
Ripa di Meana
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Fondation Européenne pour la Psychanalyse.
D000293:Adolescent; D001828:Body Image; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D012649:Self Concept