Phenomenology in Psychiatry: History, Contributions and Perspectives

Phenomenology and the phenomenological movement were founded by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl at the beginning of the 20th century. Husserl’s command “to the things themselves” does not simply mean withdrawing from prejudices and from all traditional dogmas; rather, it is an invitation to become fully immersed in things. The phenomenological attitude tries to be as open as possible to the different ways of being of the object and insofar, adequate to complex realities, as the psychopathological phenomena. This method was introduced in psychiatry by Karl Jaspers in his General Psychopathology. Jaspers combined an appeal to empathy with immediate understanding of the other person without exploiting, nevertheless, the most important phenomenological techniques, such as reduction, free variation and intuition. The second author who applied this method was Ludwig Binswanger. After a strong phenomenological beginning in Husserl’s sense, he let himself be influenced by Heidegger philosophy and wrote significant analyses about the life history of schizophrenic patients. Among his contemporaries, von Gebsattel, Straus, Zutt and Minkowski have to be mentioned. The work of Zutt has a great significance in clinical practice and some of his contributions are here outlined. Tellenbach and Blankenburg were the most outstanding authors in the second half of 20th century. An overview of their essential contributions to psychiatry is given. The French phenomenologists are also mentioned, as well as current representatives of this orientation, such as Giovanni Stanghellini and Michael Schwartz. Finally, future developments of phenomenology in psychiatry are discussed, among others, the phenomenological-dialectic perspective, to which this author has made some contributions. _________________________________________________ FACTS AND VALUES, HISTORIES AND NARRATIVES: HEMENEUTICA PERSPECTIVE