Cultural Configurators and the Formation of Mental Symptoms

The Cambridge School has proposed a new epistemology of psychiatry based on a “methodological tripod” constituted by historical, conceptual, and empirical research. Both the structure and the objects of psychiatry have a hybrid nature, that is, they are configured by form and practices borrowed from the natural and human sciences. According to the Cambridge School’s model of mental symptom formation, symptoms are psychic phenomena constituted by a rudimentary signal, of biological or semantic origin, which reaches the subject’s consciousness and which the patient must configure through cultural processes. This is not simply a matter of providing different contents to symptoms, but through a deep penetration, culture will act at a structural level. Several tasks will be necessary to assemble the process of symptom formation and configuration. The first will involve developing a methodology which allows the identification of the elements and structure of cultural configurators. The second will concern the implementing of a methodology which lends itself to empirical verification. And the third will necessitate the creation of an explanatory model of action of configurators which accounts for their ability to attenuate, distort, or abolish the biological signal. The realization of these tasks will be essential both for a better understanding of psychiatry and for the patients’ sake.