The contributions of Kraepelin, Bleuler and Bergson to Minkowski's clinical phenomenology of schizophrenia

Abstract

This article presents the clinical phenomenology of schizophrenia constructed by the psychiatrist Eugene Minkowski through theoretical influences from the ideas of Kraepelin, Bleuler and Bergson. Minkowski's interest in discussing schizophrenia is to be able to determine this pathology. Although references are constantly made by him to Bleuler for having been his student, it is in Bergson's philosophy that he finds a solid source to further his discussion of the structural aspect of schizophrenia. With this philosophical influence, it is possible to understand schizophrenia as a loss of vital contact with reality and not as a relaxation of associations, as Bleuler pointed out. We conclude that using the clinical phenomenology of the loss of vital contact with reality and the understanding of schizophrenia as a loss of this contact with the world allows for a new direction to study this pathology as a pathology of intersubjectivity.