Must the psychoanalyst worry about diagnosing so as to carry out a psychoanalytic treatment? Would the analyst’s interest in the diagnosis be inadvisable, for he would be “labelling” his patient and harming the future of the analytic process? These two positions may seem apparently opposite, but they’re both present in the daily practice in the psychoanalytic clinic. Can these positions influence the psychoanalysis of the new century?
In order to introduce the debate about the theme, I present briefly, Freud’s point of view about the question of diagnosis in psychoanalysis and use a clinical case to examplify the usage of psychoanalytic diagnosis linked with some authors’ contribution to the comprehension of the clinical case specified.
There is unanimity among the analysts that the word is an essential tool in the therapeutic task. It must also be considered basic for the assigning of names to human suffering, so that we can more successfully find, together with the patient, the possible solution to his uneasiness.
Psychoanalytic process; diagnosis; clinical case