Abstract

The concepts of ‘disintegration’ and ‘deconstruction’ are analyzed in the writings of Kazimierz Dąbrowski and Michel Foucault. Dąbrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration lays out the deteriorating and constructive processes in man’s personality, which allows him to get to know himself and the world around him in contrast to his inner world. Foucault’s ‘discourse’ theory shows the variety of deconstructions man is subjected to due to cultural and psychological processes. Both concepts are entangled in the descriptions and usages of the concepts of ‘health’ and ‘illness’. Both health and illness show man’s drama of life, but are at the same time means of objectifying his subjectivity, which can dehumanize him or become his horizon of cognition and reevaluation. Dąbrowski underlines man’s multilevel and multidimensional development, while Foucault pays attention to man’s concealed objectification by society which takes place by means of his unification and exclusion.