Identificação e Diagnóstico na Era dos Algoritmos: O Mal-Estar Psíquico entre a Rede Social e a Clínica

Abstract

The present study investigates how hyperconnectivity and the algorithmic functioning of social media reconfigure the subject's perception of psychic suffering, promoting an accelerated search for diagnoses. The research is grounded in the psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan in dialogue with contemporary authors, utilizing Psychoanalytic Discourse Analysis (PDA) to examine the transition from clinical diagnosis to digital self-diagnosis. Historically, a rupture is observed between psychoanalytic diagnostics and the descriptive model of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which, by prioritizing statistical criteria, facilitates the fragmentation of subjectivity into labels ready for digital consumption. Through the analysis of clinical vignettes and reports extracted from social media, the study articulates Freud’s concept of "Civilization and Its Discontents" and the theory of identification. It concludes that diagnosis, mediated by algorithms, operates as a modern palliative measure and an "identity prosthesis," offering an illusion of unity that buffers the anguish of not-knowing. This phenomenon challenges the ethics of psychoanalytic listening, as the subject tends to alienate their singular history in favor of a pre-fabricated pathological identity, demanding from the analyst the sustenance of a space that restores the word to the subject in the face of the automation of contemporary diagnosis.