The problem of psychopathology and phenomenology. What is viable and not viable in phenomenological psychiatry

Abstract

The epistemological underpinnings of psychiatric theory and practice have always been unstable. This reflects the essential contradiction existing between the task (the description and individuation of speech and behavior as psychopathological symptoms) and tools (semiotics). As a result of this contradiction, the history of psychiatry is one of permanent crisis in which there are moments of temporary stability as approaches that aim at organizing this mismatch between tasks and tools gain prevalence. However, these approaches can only offer a false sense of unity, consistency and progress. In this sense, a narrow perspective on a particular period may lead us to believe that psychiatry is just another medical specialty with its own specific theoretical framework like others. However, any such perspective overlooks the coexistence of different schools, disagreements, contradictions, global alternatives, etc. For a certain period of time, phenomenology was assumed to be as the solution for psychiatry’s internal contradiction. As we see it, phenomenology was only partially understood. Despite the great influence it exerted upon psychiatry worldwide, it finally fell into disuse as a mere empiricism. Husserl’s phenomenology was more thoroughly understood and better assimilated by other psychiatrists, and its influence has persisted to the present day. If we view phenomenology in its proper (Husserlian) sense, it is possible to understand psychopathology as a means of creating intelligibility and clarifying the uniqueness of psychiatry. On the other hand, if phenomenology is understood as a representational theory, it will eventually lead to an unavoidable relapse into psychologism, which has been the main path of psychiatry until now.