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This paper proposes the theoretical bases for the elaboration of a new definition for Psychopathology, conceiving it as the study of the morbid impasses disturbing, or even preventing, the realization of a singular subject within the social bond. The notion of subject at issue is the one arising from the psychoanalytic thinking of Freud and Lacan. The (psycho)pathology of the subject relies on the ideas of Viktor von Waizsaecker, for whom "pathology", unlike the biological notion of "disease", is a phenomenon that presupposes a subject as such. It is also inspired by Pierre Fédida's work, which claims that psychopathology refers fundamentally to the subjective pathos, in its multiple semantic dimensions of passivity, suffering and passion. The consequences of the redefinition of the (psycho)pathology proposed here apply to the set of clinical practices, either medical-psychiatric or others, through the ethical and technical specification of the treatment, now guided by the care with the possible and responsible realization of the subject as a language being, inside the social bond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The progress of modern psychiatry in the paths of biomedicine has led to the impression that psychopathology, as a science of human suffering in its various dimensions, would have become obsolete. A psychiatric nosology built exclusively on biological and experimental bases would take its place, definitely founding psychiatry as a medical specialty in its own right. This paper examines the dilemmas of that project to the reduction of the psychopathology into nosology and point some clues by which psychoanalytic theory of the subject and its pathos could provide the anthropological basis for the foundation of a psychopathology able to sustain psychiatric clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]