Presentation Philosophy and Psychopathology : Phenomenological Perspectives

Abstract

Over the last twenty years, we have been witnessing in the international context the emergence of what is presented as a “new research domain” within the philosophical field, the so-called “philosophy of psychiatry”. In order to define this new domain, the Anglo-American authors, in particular, go back to Karl Jaspers’ Allgemeine Psychopathologie and his attempt, at the beginning of the 20th century, to re-found psychopathology on the basis of the phenomenological method. Indeed, according to this view, “philosophy of psychiatry” would come to exist together with an appeal to phenomenology, in order to provide psychiatry with a systematic method for investigating the psychopathological phenomena. Now, in fact, the perspectives labelling themselves as “phenomenological” in psychopathology are quite heterogeneous, and it is necessary to study them thoroughly, from both an epistemological and historical point of view, if we actually want to understand and benefit from them at present.