Mental health diagnoses are a contemporary way of framing distress – they capture and categorise sets of symptoms and life issues. This can be a helpful approach for some. For others, it may not quite hit the mark; corresponding treatments may not adequately lead to a lasting alleviation of one’s difficulties. For example, the root causes and function of one person’s experience of anxiety are unlikely to be the same as another’s – so a more personalised enquiry, over time, is needed. A stock-standard treatment doesn’t allow space for this.
The psychoanalytic approach, with its emphasis on the specificity of one’s distress or difficulty, is attuned to working with all of the following in this way: