Clinic, language and subjectivity

Abstract

The present article introduces and discusses the elements that constitute the clinic, since its formation in the 18th century, in the medicine area. It proposes that semiology, diagnosis, etiology and therapeutics historically define an articulated and co-variant set of procedures, conceptions and descriptions that have been conventionally called classic clinic. It then shows that these elements contain within themselves, even though not explicitly, a conception about how language functions. After this, the article analyzes how these elements are subverted in the psychoanalytical clinic proposed by Freud, where they undergo profound transformations, maintaining, however, the necessary articulation so that the notion of clinic is preserved. Based on this conception, the article suggests that different disciplines borrow these elements and constitute clinical projects that cannot always be reduced to or dependent on medical epistemology. It argues that these projects should be able to maintain the criterion of co-variance between its elements and a relative epistemological homogeneity between them so that it is possible to legitimate their action beyond the effectiveness plan. The article suggests that, in the case of the Speech and Language Therapy clinic, there are some difficulties regarding its formalization, deriving from the presence of elements that are subject to a strong heterogeneity and invariance.