ABSTRACT
Diagnosis in psychiatry and psychology has gone from the Realist diagnosis of classical psychiatry from Pinel through Kraepelin; through a phase of Modernist diagnosis, in which psychic structure and psychopathology were singularly redefined by Behaviourists; to a period of Postmodernism, in which we have the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that includes everything from the Realist diagnostic categories to a whole series of new mono-symptomatic diagnoses, all of which are fundamentally structured as addictions. These diagnoses—referred to as the New Symptoms or Contemporary Symptoms in the Lacanian literature—are often configured as addictions elsewhere. These two points—first, the loss, in a sense, or the transfiguration, of the Discourse of the Master in the formation of an Unconscious against which to work; and, second, the fragmented, disconnected character of postmodern discourse, lead themselves to the basis for an approach to the New Symptoms.
