Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Psychiatry Might Help
But it is also possible that a mental health intervention would be as harmful as it is helpful. As a consequence, a question must be posed directly:
Must not the mental health expert comply with the ancient ethical code of the medical profession “to do no harm” ?
Clausewitz’s famous dictum that “war is the continuation of a political intercourse carried out by other means” responds to this question. In war, the adherence to the law does not have a basis in the good, whether of the patient or the doctor, but the good has its basis on the law as a pragmatic or practical accomplishment. Thus, in times of war, civil and criminal law, not to mention ethical codes, may not only be stretched, but completely falter with regard to the ‘good’ and ‘true’. As a consequence, neither the doctor nor the patient need embrace any knowledge of what is truly good, what is truly mental illness, or even what is truly a cure. All that is required is that mental illness be operationally defined and that in the last resort treatment would only be therapeutic in the sense that it would only have possible consequences. Said otherwise, left at this level, a mental health intervention never has a foundation, there is no necessity, but only a possible management of symptoms. In the end, and in the urgency ‘to do something’, a ‘good’ treatment amounts to the “promise of hope” by “fighting those evil demons and bad neurons” in order to “feel better”, “be less anxious”, “become more functional”, “freer”, and “calm”. Left to the realm of the operational, mental health treatment is always Machiavellian since one need only adhere to the law, truth, science, and ethics as a strategy of war:
where the worst can always appear as the best, or even harm can appear to be care, as long as in the end peace on earth is possible.
In 1791, in front of the National Assembly of France, Napoleon was preparing to attack Austria and proclaimed¹:
War is necessary to tranquilize the interior!
The question remains on how to construct a less violent and more necessary intervention; one whose basis is not simply the possible and the attempt “to calm” or “make functional” in the name of a silent war on mental illness.
Part V: Beyond the Clinic of Possibilities
[1] Henri Guillemin, Napoleon: legende et verité, Editions Utovie, p.106; 1986.
Why write here on Medium? It is an experiment. It is an attempt to communicate with a different audience and in a different way than those I habitually address in the field of logic, mathematics, and Lacanian analysis in the U.S. and France. It is also the admission of a sigh: that I am dissatisfied with the work that has been published under the epitaph of Lacanian analysis, especially in the English language, for quite sometime now. Needless to say, I have no illusions as to what I am publishing here will change things in those contexts. But this change of territory does make room for hearing and saying something new in public about important subjects. Since I have just started writing here, I will use the pseudonym Simplicus until I become familiar with the site. You can, however, find here the clinic-school that I work at: www.topoi.net
