Treatment as (re-)Habituation: From Psychopathology to (re-)Actualised Subjectivity

Abstract

Chapter eight outlines how Hegel’s analysis seeks to overcome the problem of nature entailed by his conception of mental illness. It offers, therefore, a reconstruction of Hegel’s analysis of the category of habit. The chapter outlines the duplicitous signification of habit. First, habit expresses spirit’s liberating activity. It binds, unifies, the body’s manifold of instincts and drives as a singular whole. Second, spirit’s reconstructive activity takes the shape of a natural effect. The chapter argues that Hegel’s concept of habit shows itself as crucial to the problem of psychopathology and therefore nature: it combines the multitude of natural drives etc. within the unified simplicity of a subjective totality. Habit, therefore, is the grounding process that allows for the stabilized (re-)emergence of the subject out of its over-immersion in natural determinations. A close reading of habit, however, reveals that there is nothing that guarantees the problem of nature has been permanently ‘sublated.’ To the contrary, the chapter contends that what Hegel’s analysis shows is how closely bound the problem of nature is to his conception of finite subjectivity and freedom. Taking this to be the case allows for this question: how does nature factor in objective spirit, i.e. the political register?