The symptom in semiotics: A communicology of the discourse on childhood Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

This dissertation discusses the discourse on childhood Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD is investigated through the works of leading theorists in popular and academic literature. Using semiotic phenomenology and the work of C. S. Peirce, the medical syntactics, semantics and pragmatics of ADHD symptoms and the ADHD diagnostic evaluation are examined. The symptom is understood to be a message and code which reflexively constructs wellness, illness and disease. Through an investigation of the logics which construct the ADHD diagnosis, the political codification of abnormal behavior as a psychological disorder is revealed. Current literature from the opponents of the ADHD diagnosis is focused on eliciting behavioral changes from parents. However, the medicalization of non-normative behavior diminishes the capacity for resistance and change. As the demands for production from children increase, the space for resistance to capitalist structures decreases. Parents are "empowered" through pro-ADHD discourse to accept a medically constructed label. Medicalization is not only the tool of pharmaceutical companies; it is a political tool designed to mask the everyday failures that disable children's lives. Parents are equally subjugated by the ADHD diagnosis and a rhetoric of fear that positions their child as either sick or deviant. The dissertation calls for solutions to the ADHD diagnosis that focus on finding ways to empower children and adults to engage themselves critically within their world of lived experience.