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The Omnipotent Word of Medical Diagnosis and the Silence of Depression: An Argument for Kristeva’s Therapeutic Approach
- IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2016
- pp. 1-26
- Article
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In cases of depression where linguistic meaning has collapsed, there is good reason to believe that a long-term strategy for recovery must include rehabilitating the depressive person’s capacity for meaningful speech. This requires that the patient participate actively in interpreting her own pain. In this essay, I argue that medical diagnosis can tempt patients, particularly women, to circumvent this process of interpretation. To explain this danger, I draw on Julia Kristeva’s clinical analyses of depression and recent studies on the correlation between depression and self-silencing.