Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Ontology in Psychiatry

Abstract

Aspects of both hermeneutics and epistemology are present in psychiatry, but they lie at two fundamentally different levels. Aspects of hermeneutics are directly applicable and are operative in the dialogue between patient and psychiatrist, when psychiatry is understood to be the science of the mind. Aspects of epistemology, the study of causes, are characteristic of psychiatry conceived as a science of nature, in which factual data, independent of the totality, are examined analytically. If it is obvious that psychiatric illnesses, the organic aspects of which are universally or not so universally recognised, belong to the world of objective science, of neuroradio-logical, biological, genetic and anatomopatho-logical research, then the distinction between the areas of epistemology and hermeneutics in the psychopathological field is extremely interesting. The sphere of the emotions too, the ability to make decisions and take initiative can be the subject of appraisal of a psychologistic and deterministic kind (Andreasen’s S.A.N.S. scale in the study of chronic schizophrenia is an example of this). But over and above this sphere of objectivity, there develops an existence in the world of meanings, which, when experienced by the psychiatrist, leads to a profound understanding of the other person (Mundt’s Inska scale of chronic schizophrenia, represents this view of matters).