The present paper investigates the methodology involved in Jaspers' psychopathology and compares it with Husserl's phenomenology and with Dilthey's cultural science. Allgemeine Psychopathologie and other methodological works by Jaspers, the works of Husserl and Dilthey that Jaspers cited, and previous research papers on Jaspers are reviewed. Jaspers had conflicting views on understanding, which...

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) was born into an upper-middle-class family. He was a sickly child but it was only in April 1901 that bronchiectasis was diagnosed. This was a lifelong condition that influenced his choice of career but also his outlook as he was not expected to live long. Jaspers studied medicine in Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg. At Heidelberg, he came into contact with many of the l...

INTRODUCTION In his classic essay "The phenomenological approach to psychopathology", Karl Jaspers defended the irreducible reality of the "subjective" mental symptoms and stressed the pivotal role of empathy in their diagnostic assessment. However, Jaspers' account of the epistemological role of empathy in psychopathological diagnosis was far from clear: whereas at several places Jaspers claim...

Jaspers' thinking is motivated by transcending reason, radical time-consciousness, and the phenomenon of spiritual creativity and value-directedness. The fundamental question of truth for time-bound man is at the core of Jaspers' thinking, which he takes up with respect to mankind's age-old experience with the tradition of philosophical, religious, and literary thought. His works attain signifi...

The thesis is explicated, that we can finally distinguish three conceptions of the meaning of life in Jaspers' philosophy. This thesis is grounded on the distinction of two different periods of Jaspers' philosophizing: an early period of his existential philosophy, and a later period, when Jaspers rejected the terms "Existentialism" or "existential philosophy" for his philosophizing and preferr...

In his General Psychopathology, Karl Jaspers identifies two stages in the genesis of delusions in schizophrenia. The first is a set of primary subjective experiences, which he encompasses under the rubric of “delusional atmosphere,”1 building upon F.W. Hagen’s construct of “delusional mood.”2 The second is the patient’s “working through” those experiences, sometimes “calling for the full streng...

With his early publications (1910-1913), Karl Jaspers created a comprehensive methodological arsenal for psychiatry, thus laying the foundation for descriptive psychopathology. Following Edmund Husserl, the founder of philosophical phenomenology, Jaspers introduced phenomenology into psychopathology as "static understanding," ie, the unprejudiced intuitive reproduction (Vergegenwärtigung) and d...

Following the publication of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology (1913), delusions have been characterized as being nonunderstandable in terms of the person's biography, motivations, and historical-cultural context. According to Jaspers, this loss of understandability is due to an underlying neurobiological process, which has interrupted the normal development of the individual's personality....

In his General Psychopathology, Karl Jaspers identifies two stages in the genesis of delusions in schizophrenia. The first is a set of primary subjective experiences, which he encompasses under the rubric of “delusional atmosphere,”1 building upon F.W. Hagen’s construct of “delusional mood.”2 The second is the patient’s “working through” those experiences, sometimes “calling for the full streng...