Clinical Diagnosis as a Multiplicity of Self-Positions: Challenging Social Representations Theory

Abstract

This contribution is written as a challenge to Schmitz, Filippone and Edelman’s (2003) analysis of the clinical diagnosis ADHD from the perspective of social representations theory. The focus of the present article is on the implications of a clinical diagnosis for the organization and reorganization of the self. As an illustrative example, a client is presented who seemed to be ‘enslaved’ to the diagnosis depression, incorporating it as a central element in the construction of his identity. Two observations were discussed: (a) a precious memory of the contact with a former teacher who served as ‘protected area’ in the client’s self; (b) an increasing opposition between ‘I as depressed’ as a dominant I position and ‘I as a fighter’, an emergent I position in the self. These observations led to the question whether social representations theory takes sufficiently into account the self as a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous parts of a system that is capable of organizing and reorganizing itself.