I have never lived a time with more magical labels and solutions to human suffering. Nor did I attend a stage with so much need for repairs due to the consequences that these magical solutions and pseudodiagnoses they generate.
An adult patient came to the office and told me: “I am ADHD” (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). She then explained that she was diagnosed late because, as she comments: “It’s something I always had, but it wasn’t known before.” The labels They temporarily relieve, but do not cure.
These days I heard a streamer say with enthusiasm that the day before, thanks to a “test” that a psychologist gave her, she was diagnosed autism.
The streamer, who doesn’t even use the term Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)answers her colleagues’ questions about the “symptoms” that led to her diagnosis. Their answers describe situations that could well be part of anyone’s daily experiences, ailmentswithout being configured as signs of a neurological condition or mental disorder.
The video has hundreds of thousands of views, and among the comments the voices of mothers of children and young people diagnosed with autism stand out. These women express their indignation For what they consider a worrying lightness in the way of talking about something so serious.
“It is a disrespect For those of us who live the complexities of autism every day,” writes one of them.
On the other hand, an acquaintance shares with me with joy that she finally found a psychologist who is also astrologerthat this characteristic seems much better to him because he can understand the implications of being one sign and not another.
For some time now I have been thinking about some new approaches, especially advertised on social networks, not in academic fields, based on general symbolism.
reminds me of Freud initial, that of: “The interpretation of dreams” (1899/1900), which argued in a complete section of this work and through the influence of Wilhelm Stekel, the symbology to interpret them.
However, Freud abandoned this perspective more than 100 years ago, realizing that universal symbols They do not respect the subjectivity or uniqueness of the individual, something fundamental to understanding and treating human suffering.
Days later, I hear a cardiologist on the radio talk about family constellations and mental health. I think about the damage that would be caused if I, as a psychologist, offered to treat coronary heart disease. However, the reverse path seems not only accepted, but also celebrated in certain spaces. Mental health has always been on another level, one that some believe is more permeable and that many others dare to practice without qualifying registration, even if it is mala praxis.
The current mental health landscape is loaded with labels and narratives that promise immediate answers. Diagnoses, in untrained hands or treated without the respect they deserve, become a moda. The frames of reference, which should provide tools to understand and alleviate the condition, are trivialize to the point of losing its essence. At the same time, practices emerge that appeal to magicalconfusing those seeking help and often perpetuating their suffering.
This lightness and confusion They make invisible the pain of those who really go through complex conditions. I have also seen the live broadcast on social networks of sessions with children, as if it were a show.
It is urgent to question how we got here and, even more so, what paths we can take to give mental health back the seriousness and care it deserves.
My approach to human pain It is psychoanalytic: everything begins in the childhoodand what is repressed—that is, unknown—is repeated unconsciously until it is metabolized. Although psychoanalysis is not a science in the strict sense, its methodology and approach allow us to explore the complexity of the human psychetaking into account the uniqueness of each subject.
The contribution of Lacanby stating that the unconscious is structured like a language, introduced a fundamental perspective.
The symptoms and formations of the unconscious are not mere universal codes, but are determined by the unique history of the subject and its relationship with language. This highlights that Each patient requires unique listening and interpretation that respects subjectivity, moving away from any generalization or simplistic solution.
From children We must adapt to the different situations we live in. childhood to endure difficult moments and others that we do not understand, ranging from gestures or phrases that seem innocuous and may not be, to most traumatic experiences. These adaptations accompany us throughout life and often limit us until we manage to understand and transform them. Our way of interpreting what we experienced is the key to understanding why we suffer.
These adaptations are based on defense mechanisms that help us endure those difficult moments and, in some cases, to survive. Then, in adult life, they can become sources of dysfunction, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, panic and the names with which the pain, fear and anguish.
So, when we are faced with a person who carries a label and believes that this will somehow alleviate his pain, we must think, with compassionthat it is likely that his behavior is commanded by the mechanisms he used as a child and a tangle of words that precede him and speak about him, without him knowing it.
The anxiety It is calmed with food and also with narcotics, but anxiety does not explain addiction and neither does the other way around. A person does not use because they are phobic; consumes so as not to know what his response is phobia.
A clear example is the concern about the gambling addiction in adolescents, a very serious problem. The bills are excellent, and they will surely work on prevention, awareness, and resources to help young people.
But he desire to gamble compulsively does not stop with a law. That singular thanatic desire needs space to find the root, where it started from, what unconscious signifier it responds to, what words support it. The shell is the game, as can the anorexia or panicbut it’s just the surface.
Not just anyone can provide mental health care, because in this field we work with the very roots of human pain, often invisible and deeply rooted. Nor would we allow someone who is not a surgeon to carry out an operation, in mental health it is the same.
It is in this delicate attention where lies the possibility of accompanying the other in their process of recoverysomething that no label or simplistic solution can offer.
Dice Gabor Matéthe Hungarian doctor who created the compassionate inquiry approach, at a conference in Canada: “So when you say someone ‘has ADHD,’ you’re describing true things about the person: they have trouble paying attentiontends to disconnect easily, gets bored easily, may have poor impulse control, may have difficulty staying still, needs to be hyperactive. Those are all accurate descriptions of their behaviors, but that doesn’t explain much. The person is not like this or ‘that’ because they have ADHD.”
People are more than the disorders we suffer. This, which may seem like a platitude, is nevertheless legitimized at a social level: “I am ADHD”, “I am autistic”.
This simplification also occurs in spaces of mentors, influencers and coaches who, without professional training, claim the ability to care for mental health. The lack of training It offers superficial solutions, that is, it perpetuates the pain and deepens it. In addition to wasting your time, which is key to recovery.
Addressing psychological suffering requires not only knowledge, but also rigor and responsibility. A while ago we gave up the madness of caring. Accompanying a subject to revisit the ghosts of their past, as a witness, is one of the most honest experiences that can be experienced as a patient and as an analyst. And it is not easy for either of us and it is not done in any way.
In this sense, understanding that people get sick every day, but also enjoy, allows us to reveal the complexity of the human psychewhere the symptom not only hides pain.
People get sick every day, but they also get a secondary benefit from their symptoms: not knowing the truth of their illness, because knowing it involves pain, and they imagine it will be devastating. But it is not like that.
Knowing the truth about yourself is a sharp painbut within the framework of psychoanalytic treatment, it is navigated with alacrity and protection. It is not an identical reliving, but it is similar; inside the query securitythis revisited pain is detached from the subject, who perceives it as external adherence, to integrate it as part of himself but metabolized.
This journey grants a dignity that makes life recover authenticity. And we all know that in the end, and no matter how many times we turn, everything starts in childhood: the marks, the wounds, the traumas, but also the first opportunities to heal.
