Subject and Science

Science's inherent focus on objectivity often excludes subjectivity as much as possible, fostering a discourse that risks becoming hermetically sealed. Psychiatry, on the other hand, targets the whole person, necessitating an engagement with the subject. This creates significant challenges for psychiatry as it seeks credibility as a scientific discipline while addressing the inherent tension between subject and object. A dialectical stance, as suggested in Chapter 5 (Nothingness and Science), offers a potential resolution, embracing opposition without succumbing to reductive synthesis. In this sense, the dialectic between word and thing and between the symbolic and the real has no final stage.