ABSTRACT
This chapter will examine diagnosis in three forms that occur roughly as temporal phases in everyday life: as a scientific construct; a social practice; and a political product. A diagnosis that operates with social legitimacy is initially built as a scientific distillation, an idea refined through the theories and research practices of a human science such as medicine or psychology. The initiation of a construct built of theory and empirical science takes place among researchers attempting to bring explanatory order to what they view as a puzzling and troublesome area of human activity. When the scientific construct is then put into practice by one or more professions, it becomes a social process of discernment, an interactive and symbolic activity carried out under certain circumstances. The social practice of diagnosis is a cultural way that authoritative professions and institutions assign meaning to specific aspects of human bodies and behaviour that are interpreted as deviant or problematic. After the social process of diagnosis concludes and a diagnosis has been rendered, the diagnosis often lives on as an array of lingering, continuing social consequences in the life of the diagnosed person and loved ones. The political product (or label) is the medicalised designation that attaches to the diagnosed individual either within the boundaries of institutional and organisational activities or, in some cases, depending on the social valence and stigmatic imprint of the diagnosis, across many or all of the spheres of action and interaction that make up the labelled person’s life. This multi-phased combination of the scientific birth, the social process of diagnosis, and the stigmatised identity continuing in the life of the diagnosed person constitute what might be called the career of a diagnosis, the full run of differential meaning and political valuation.
