A few remarks on diagnostic and analytic processes in the light of the current interest for dimensional assessment

The tools meant for logical diagnosis (dimensional view), such as PDM, direct diagnostic reasoning not only to accepting the patients’ individual features. By resorting to an epistemological structure fed by the logic of Complexity and constructivism, they promote the recognition of the analyst/patient dyad as the vantage point for diagnostics. In this sense, diagnosis itself represents an opportunity for expanding and enhancing the conceptualization of the analyst’s role, and for reflecting on how to use the data emerging from assessments in the clinical setting. More specifically, the presentation of a clinical situation allows to highlight the importance of a clinical assessment that is open to being amended during treatment, in order to leverage any new possibilities being offered by the analytic field as we speak, as well as to understand and use the implicit manoeuvres patients deploy in the therapeutic relationship, in search of expanding their subjectivity.

Keywords: PDM, dimensional diagnosis, psychoanalysis, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, theory of complexity, constructivism

Paola Brizzolara, Qualche considerazione su processo diagnostico e lavoro analitico, alla luce dell’attuale interesse per la valutazione dimensionale in "RICERCA PSICOANALITICA" 3/2011, pp 33-41, DOI: 10.3280/RPR2011-003003