From Affection to Disorder: The Anguish Pathologization

Abstract

In this work, we discuss the anguish treatment in psychoanalytical and psychiatric practices. On the one hand, anguish is a subjective expression, which Freud called affection; on the other hand, it’s a symptom to be eliminated. We investigate the pathologization movement that transformed anguish into anxiety disorder, analyzing the history of this phenomenon in the classification manuals of diseases and disorders – DSM and CID. In psychoanalytic theory, we consider the contributions on anguish in Freud and Lacan, mainly in Inhibition, symptom and anxiety and in the seminar The Anguish, respectively. We compare psychoanalytical and psychiatric views related to anguish, as we consider the notions of the lacanian theory of anguish as an affection and its relation with symptom: not the symptom to be eliminated, but deciphered. We seek to follow Jacques Lacan indication on not taking neither anguish and symptom as synonymous, nor anguish and anxiety disorder. We point out, however, that symptom can be one possible way to anguish treatment. In conclusion, we consider the lacanian proposition regarding anguish symptomatization as a way of this affect treatment, such as the conversion into phobia in the Hans case published by Freud.