New Perspectives in Phenomenological Psychopathology: Its Use in Psychiatric Treatment

Abstract

Phenomenological psychopathology is a body of scientific knowledge on which the clinical practice of psychiatry is based since the first decades of the twentieth century, a method to assess the patient's abnormal experiences from their own perspective, and more importantly, a science responsible for delimiting the object of psychiatry. Recently, the frontiers of phenomenological psychopathology have expanded to the productive development of therapeutic strategies that target the whole of existence in their actions. In this article, we present an overview of the current state of this discipline, summing up some of its key concepts, and highlighting its importance to clinical psychiatry today. Phenomenological psychopathology understands mental disorders as modifications of the main dimensions of the life-world: lived time, lived space, lived body, intersubjectivity, and selfhood. Psychopathological symptoms are the expression of a dialectical modification of the proportions of certain domains of the life-world or of the lived experience. The far-reaching relevance of the concepts of proportion and dialectics for the clinical agenda is explored. The article presents two contemporary models for clinical practice based on phenomenological psychopathology: Dialectical-proportional oriented approach and Person-centered dialectic approach (P.H.D. method). The main characteristics of these approaches are considered, as well as the new perspectives they bring to the challenges of psychiatric care in the twentieth-first century.