A benchmark volume for an emerging field where mental disorders serve as the springboard for philosophical insights.

The aim of this volume is to discuss recent research into self-experience and its disorders, and to contribute to a better integration of the different empirical and conceptual perspectives. Among the topics discussed are questions like 'What is a self?, ' 'What is the relation between the self-givenness of consciousness and the givenness of the conscious self?', 'How should we understand the self-disorders encountered in schizophrenia?' and 'What general insights into the nature of the self can pathological phenomena provide us with?' Most of the contributions are characterized by a distinct phenomenological approach.The chapters by Butterworth, Strawson, Zahavi, and Marbach are general in nature and address different psychological and philosophical aspects of what it means to be a self. Next Eilan, Parnas, and Sass turn to schizophrenia and ask both how we should approach and understand this disorder, and, more specifically, what we can learn about the nature of selfhood and existence from psychopathology. The chapters by Blakemore and Gallagher present a defense and a criticism of the so-called model of self-monitoring, respectively. The final three chapters by Cutting, Stanghellini, Schwartz and Wiggins represent anthropologically oriented attempts to situate pathologies of self-experience.(Series B)

This book uses rare pathologies to inform questions on topics such as consciousness and rationality. Rather than trying to answer these by inventing far-fetched scenario or 'thought experiments', it is better to utilize a rich but under-used clinical resource.

2013 sees the centenary of Jaspers' foundation of psychopathology as a science in its own right. In 1913 Karl Jaspers published his psychiatric opus magnum - the Allgemeine Psychopathologie (General Psychopathology). Jaspers was working at a time much like our own - with rapid expansion in the neurosciences, and responding to the philosophical challenges that this raised. The idea inspiring his book was very simple: to bring order into the chaos of abnormal psychic phenomena by rigorous description, definition and classification, and to empower psychiatry with a valid and reliable method to assess and make sense of abnormal human subjectivity. After almost one century, many of the concepts challenged by Jaspers are still at issue, and Jaspers' investigation is even now the ground for analyses and discussions. With a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) imminent, many of the issues concerning methodology and diagnosis are still the subject of much discussion and debate. This volume brings together leading psychiatrists and philosophers to discuss and evaluate the impact of this volume, its relevance today, and the legacy it left. "Jaspers' General Psychopathology is not an easy text to read. Especially nowadays, in the Internet era, it may appear in several parts obscure, convoluted, or repetitive. This is why the present volume has the potential to be not only attractive to scholars, but also extremely useful for young psychiatrists and busy clinicians. It may represent for them a 'guide' to the reading of that ponderous text, helping them to extract the key messages that are likely to resonate with, and at the same time enrich, their clinical practice and theoretical reflection." - From the Introduction by Mario Maj

Both the phenomeno-structural psychopathology and the peripatetic therapy, also known as therapeutic accompaniment, still are barely known by health professionals and students. This present work offers not only a highly accessible theoretical discussion to beginners in phenomenology, but also proposes a new perspective in phenomeno-structural psychopathology to the most experienced readers.

This book explores how the human mind works through the lens of psychological disorders, challenging many existing theoretical constructs, especially in the fields of psychology, psychiatry and philosophy of mind. Drawing on the expertise of leading academics, the book discusses how psychopathology can be used to inform our understanding of the human mind. The book argues that studying mental disorders can deepen the understanding of psychological mechanisms such as reasoning, emotions, and beliefs alongside fundamental philosophical questions, including the nature of the self, the universal aspects of morality, and the role of rationality and normativity in human nature. By crossing different domains, this book offers a fresh perspective on the human mind based on the dialogue between philosophy, cognitive science and clinical psychology. Mental disorders discussed include schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and paranoia. This book caters to the increasing interest in interdisciplinary approach to solving some of the problems in psychopathology. Since this book treats psychological engagement with empirically informed philosophy of mind, this book is essential reading for students and researchers of cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, and philosophy, as well as being of interest to clinicians and psychiatrists.

Experts discuss topics associated with 'philosophy of psychiatry and psychology'

An exploration of what it means to think about psychiatric disorders as “real,” “true,” and “objective” and the implications for classification and diagnosis. In psychiatry, few question the legitimacy of asking whether a given psychiatric disorder is real; similarly, in psychology, scholars debate the reality of such theoretical entities as general intelligence, superegos, and personality traits. And yet in both disciplines, little thought is given to what is meant by the rather abstract philosophical concept of “real.” Indeed, certain psychiatric disorders have passed from real to imaginary (as in the case of multiple personality disorder) and from imaginary to real (as in the case of post-traumatic stress disorder). In this book, Peter Zachar considers such terms as “real” and “reality”—invoked in psychiatry but often obscure and remote from their instances—as abstract philosophical concepts. He then examines the implications of his approach for psychiatric classification and psychopathology. Proposing what he calls a scientifically inspired pragmatism, Zachar considers such topics as the essentialist bias, diagnostic literalism, and the concepts of natural kind and social construct. Turning explicitly to psychiatric topics, he proposes a new model for the domain of psychiatric disorders, the imperfect community model, which avoids both relativism and essentialism. He uses this model to understand such recent controversies as the attempt to eliminate narcissistic personality disorder from the DSM-5. Returning to such concepts as real, true, and objective, Zachar argues that not only should we use these metaphysical concepts to think philosophically about other concepts, we should think philosophically about them.

This book presents an original approach to the study of psychiatry that is based on a justified epistemological position, which demands that both the natural and the human/social sciences are necessary in developing our understanding. Psychiatry as a medical specialism was constructed in the nineteenth century through the interplay of both the natural sciences and the human/social sciences. This interplay has created a hybrid discipline that spans biological and socio-cultural-historical domains, which has raised challenges for its understanding and research. This book focuses on one of the principal challenges – how can we explore mental symptoms and mental disorders as complexes of neurobiology on the one hand and meaning on the other? The chapters in this book, dedicated to Germán E Berrios, founder of the Cambridge school of psychopathology, tackles distinctive aspects of psychopathology or related areas. By means of a combination of approaches, chapters seek to unfold another element in our understanding of this field as well as raise new directions for its further study. Rethinking Psychopathology is a valuable resource for clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, psychological researchers, historians of psychology, cultural psychologists, critical psychologists, social scientists, philosophers of psychology, and philosophers of science.