ABSTRACT
A comparison of medical and clinical psychological diagnostic procedures reveals a number of significant differences. Central to medical diagnostics is the gaze, whose focus is on detecting signs that point toward objective, measurable parameters. In contrast, in clinical psychological diagnostics the focus is laid primarily on listening to signifiers that remain open to interpretation. Clinical psychodiagnostics begins from the general and proceeds toward the particular, based on a system of signifiers that is part of a wider relationship between the subject and the Other. The role of segregation in the psychopathological industry now comes into sharp relief: a certain group designates itself Normal by categorizing others as Abnormal. One approach attempts to describe the difference between normality and abnormality through the lens of contemporary science, namely, through computation and quantification. The results of regarding normality in terms of the ideal can be summarized thus: first, psychopathology and criminality become so interwoven that the knife begins to cut both ways.
