ABSTRACT
Advancing critical mental health care geared towards an ethics of the subject, based on the theory of subjectivity, implies moving beyond the control of symptoms and medicalization. Subjective development is a key notion to be discussed and performed within research and practice from the theoretical perspective of subjectivity. In the traditionally dominant perspective, the idea of development is related to a teleological understanding of human life, understood in stages, the abstract and universal logic of which follows a maturational standard in terms of competence. Subjective development represents a way to overcome unilateral and absolute criteria, which tend to standardize individuals in universal stages, without neglecting the singularity of this process, the dialectic between individual and social, and the generative character of the subject. Subjective development implies conflicts and situations of tension within which the positioning of individuals is crucial. The subjective configurations that allow a subjective development process may emerge in different and unexpected moments of life.
