Abstract:
This paper problematizes how the discourse on depression upheld by the first, second and third editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders appropriated the distress-pathology contradiction. Based on the principles of Michel Pêcheux’s French Discourse Analysis, developed, in Brazil by Eni Orlandi, the study emphasizes that: 1) the manual’s first and second editions understood depression as an effect, whereas the third depicted it as a cause; 2) in the first and second editions distress and pathology were one and the same, but the third edition splits them into two different spheres; 3) anticipation, as a discursive mechanism, can help to comprehend the process by which the subject of enunciation is suppressed by the subject of the statement in the diagnostic manuals.
Keywords:
depression; diagnosis; distress; pathology; discourse analysis