The Social Construction of the Individual

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concepts upon which our approach to mental health is based. We argue that theories of individuality have often side-stepped important issues by assuming the existence of a human essence which dictates development, and which constitutes the core of the self. By this ‘essentialist’ tactic they lose the capacity to explain the complexity of subjective experience, and they separate individuals off from the social world in which they are embedded. The result is a resort to biological predisposition as the primary explanatory concept, one that ignores the need for an account of how human beings enter a world of meaning and symbolic activity. We outline a version of psychoanalysis that avoids these essentialist predicates and permits theorisation of the social construction of the individual — the way in which social factors enter into psychological development from earliest childhood.