THE METAPHORICAL USE OF DIAGNOSIS AS A RELATIONAL RESOURCE: BETWEEN LISTENING, CARE AND BELONGING POLICIES

Resumo

This article proposes a critical reflection on the use of diagnosis in clinical and institutional practice, understanding it not as an objective truth, but as a relational language and symbolic construction that can open or close possibilities for listening, care and belonging. Far from being just a technical tool, diagnosis operates as a discourse that communicates norms, regulates access and shapes identities. Based on a theoretical-reflexive approach, the text articulates contributions from the Person-Centered Approach, the anthropology of health and critical perspectives on normativity, stigma and institutional culture, such as those of Carl Rogers, Eugene Gendlin, Mary Jane Spink, Georges Canguilhem and François Laplantine. The actualizing tendency, a central concept of the Person-Centered Approach, is mobilized as a key to rethinking the role of diagnosis as a language of recognition — and not as a means of capturing identity. It also discusses how certain forms of selective listening, permeated by cultural and institutional norms, can transform diagnosis into a tool of exclusion, reinforcing historical inequalities and illnesses. On the other hand, when co constructed with sensitivity, ethical listening and relational implication, the diagnosis can become a resource for recognition, bonding, guaranteeing rights and social belonging.