ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a theoretical and epistemological fragility is sustained within some critical mental health models that are formally alternative to dominant psychiatry. It highlights and discusses individual and social subjective processes as the basis of different deadlocks and possible alternatives to dominant mental health care. Subjectivity is a self-generative system that is always beyond the processes engaged in its genesis. Subjectivity may be understood as a critical theoretical tool as it allows the representation of singular individual and social human creations as inseparable from broader social dynamics. Subjectivity overcomes universalized, individual and standardized concepts that have been historically used to classify human behaviours. Practices focused on subjective development and based on an ethics of the subject, imply dialogical relations oriented to the favouring of the others’ protagonism. The work with the professional staff was an expression of the unity between research and practice based on an ethics of the subject.
