One of the most important aspects of psychiatric praxis concerns therapeutics.
This is so mainly because the term is not only used but also abused, becoming thus extremely important to try to establish, as accurately as possible, its content, that is, its stable and firm constitution. Etimologically, therapeutics constitutes an activity of concern and care in a context of love as well as an activity destined to maintain a certain order. Hopeful discontent, demand and acceptance make it a task to be shared. It manifests two structural moments: a constitutive moment which entails a search for significations shared by both patient and therapist, and an operative moment which entails the psalm, pharmakon and accompaniment.
The psalm evokes loving protection which does not operate on the somatic level but, on the interpersonal level affected by the harm.
The pharmakon comprises at least four different meanings: drug, tincture, script and numinous object. As drug, we could point out its ambivalent virtues: if, on the one hand, it can struggle against ailments in favor of life, on the other, it may also provoke death. As a tincture, it modifies appearance, making one thing seem another. As script it enhances remembrance, but it can also lead to forgetting. As numinous object, pharmakos plays an expiatory role.
But the psalm and the perscription of a pharmakon are not sufficient : therapeutics requires accompaniment to become effective. These are, then, the axes around which therapeutics is structured, transforming it not only in a service destined to cure but also a path accompanied by a possibility of adding more depth to existence.