B. “Verification” of statements in psychiatry

Abstract

(1) It remains to be seen if in the field of Psychiatry just as in that of Psychology the verbal output of a subject can be submitted to verification. Many statements of a highly emotional character being merely symptoms of certain dispositions have no direct communicative sense at all.

(2) It being one of the characteristics of the mentally ill to loose contact and exchange of ideas with other people, the question naturally suggests itself if this symptom may be at the bottom of the phenomenon of these persons taking refuge in logical and ideological terminologies, their talk being a kind of verbal autism.

(3) The expression “verbal autism” is used here for statements on a purely subjective level. This kind of statements prevailing with mental patients, the “conversation” between observer and subject tends to the monologue.

(4) Here we can find too that statements of a purely subjective nature appear as indicative ones. Even physical and logical terms applied by the subject during the sittings do not have any physical or logical reference. This characteristic of the subject often baffles the observer. So confusion of verbal levels occurs frequently.

(5) The introduction of a psychological term like “verstehen” does not solve the problem under consideration, but renders the mystery only the better camouflaged.