PERSONALITY TESTING AS A CONTRIBUTION TO A NON-PATHOLOGIZING APPROACH TO LIFE

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate how personality testing can collaborate with non-pathologizing clinical practices, contributing to a differential diagnosis between conditions considered normal and truly pathological conditions. The research, of a bibliographic, exploratory and descriptive nature, identified that ethical and critical listening to subjectivity favors the overcoming of discourses and procedures that support stigmatizing diagnoses. The theoretical framework was composed of authors such as Foucault, Basaglia, Fanon, Goffman, Deleuze and Guattari, Erikson and Vygotsky, which allowed us to analyze how normalization processes affect subjects and how subjectivity is permeated by power relations and social, historical and cultural discourses. It was found that diagnosis, when used as an instrument of control and standardization, can reinforce symbolic violence against the body and mind. However, when articulated with a singular listening committed to the complexity of human experience, it can become an ethical and liberating practice. In this context, personality testing can be reinterpreted as an auxiliary tool that contributes to the deconstruction of normative patterns, enabling movements of rupture and reinvention.