On the Psyche, Mental Disorders, Psychiatry, Comte, Foucault, and the Film Dark NunsIs modern psychiatry a singular, unrivaled grand narrative, or — as Lyotard argues in The Postmodern Condition — should it be regarded merely as one petit récit among many parallel narratives?
Kabul 24: The human psyche has been the subject of reflection, experience, and interpretation for at least two thousand years, and each era has bestowed meaning upon it through its own language and framework.
From Auguste Comte’s positivist perspective, the history of human thought follows a linear, progressive trajectory: from mythological narratives, through metaphysical ones, to the final stage of empirical and scientific knowledge.
If we apply this model to the understanding of the psyche, in the first stage mental disorders were explained through concepts such as possession by jinn or demonic forces, and treatment took predominantly ritual forms — exorcisms, incantations, talismans, and the like.
The very term majnun (“mad” or “insane” in Persian and Arabic) literally means “possessed by jinn,” denoting someone in whom an external force has taken residence.
The second stage in this linear story is psychoanalysis — a form of knowledge that, by the criteria of modern philosophy of science, is not scientific but pseudo-scientific.
Freud, Jung, Lacan, and others explain psychological suffering through concepts such as the unconscious, internal conflicts, childhood experiences, and symbolic structures, basing treatment on dialogue and interpretation.
Then comes the third stage: modern psychiatry, grounded in empirical observation, which systematizes diagnoses and largely relies on testable methods and medications whose efficacy has been demonstrated in clinical trials.
According to Comte’s logic, we can say that we have now approached a “fundamental knowledge” of the psyche, and from this point onward only details and new data will be added to this established foundation.
Yet Michel Foucault — himself trained in psychology and the author of History of Madness — proposes a different archaeology of knowledge in The Order of Things.
By introducing the concept of episteme and systems of knowledge/power, he reminds us that what counts as “science,” “reason,” “normality,” or “disorder” in any given era is shaped within historical and cultural horizons that are neither fixed nor eternal.
From Foucault’s viewpoint, modern psychiatry may not be the end of the road; rather, it is a powerful historical configuration that could, in the future, give way to an entirely different system of knowledge — one in which the very definitions of the psyche, the understanding of disorder, and even therapeutic practices might be radically transformed into forms we cannot yet clearly imagine.
Today I watched the Korean film Dark Nuns (2025). In many Hollywood psychological horror films, when a person exhibits severe behavioral disturbances, two competing and parallel narratives typically emerge: the modern psychiatric narrative, which explains symptoms in scientific language and seeks treatment through medication and evidence-based psychotherapy (such as CBT), and the ecclesiastical narrative, which interprets the same condition as demonic possession and pursues salvation through exorcism.
In Dark Nuns, however, this dichotomy is reconfigured in a novel way: both narratives converge within a single character. Father Paolo is simultaneously a representative of psychiatric knowledge and of spiritual authority.
The story revolves around a young boy who develops a severe mental disorder — a condition that receives two different interpretations depending on the lens applied. At first, Father Paolo, acting as a psychiatrist, attempts to explain everything within the framework of clinical diagnosis and modern treatment, diagnosing the boy with dissociative identity disorder.
But as the crisis deepens and the symptoms grow more complex, his spiritual dimension is activated, and the narrative shifts toward a supernatural explanation and the possibility of exorcism.
Thus, instead of a simple opposition between two camps, the film confronts us with an internal conflict: Is what we are witnessing a mental disorder, or something that transcends it?
In the end, the film leaves us once again with the open question: What exactly is the psyche? Which form of knowledge is truly foundational for understanding it? Or perhaps there is no final, definitive foundational knowledge for comprehending the psyche at all.
I remember once, during job interviews with mental health counselors, I would ask them a seemingly simple question that none of them could answer.
I asked them to define the psyche. Although they held degrees in psychology-related fields, they were surprisingly unable to provide a precise definition of what the psyche actually is.
Many were shaken by the realization that after four years of study, they still could not clearly define the very object of their discipline. Of course, it was not their fault; how can one define something that is, in essence, indefinable?
Jamshid Mehrpour — Kabul
