| Summary: | In this essay, I intend to analyze the
epistemological, ontological and sociological
complexity of the terms “normal” and
“pathological” and of psychiatry tout court as a
theoretical and institutional device. While
“mental illness” is indeed undefinable, its
definition is, nevertheless, critical to
understand some aspects of social partitioning in
bourgeois and capitalist modernity. Thus, the
parallel tracks that I will follow here pertain
on one hand to the importance of the definition
of the “history of science” and on the other to
the ambiguity inherent to the definition of
“abnormality” itself. The conflict between facts
and values is key not only in terms of scientific
definition but also as for the position of the
“stigmatized” in relation to the institution, the
social body, the self, and within the interaction
that is always determined as asymmetrical.
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