Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Prejudices in the psychopathologist: Karl Jaspers’ heritage

  • Invited Review
  • Published:
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Contributions of Karl Jaspers to the discipline of psychopathology are numerous. One of his most important insights deals with the method of interviewing in psychopathology. Specifically, how an interviewer (i.e. psychopathologist) approaches and explores mental phenomena that present themselves in the person being interviewed. By cultivating a phenomenological attitude, clinicians also acquire and renew self-criticism (Selbskritik), an essential aspect of a true psychopathologist. A fundamental part of the critical attitude in descriptive psychopathology is the re-examination of prejudices present in psychopathological interviewing. This review outlines and discusses six types of prejudices, as abstracted by Karl Jaspers, and illustrates them with clinical examples. (i) Philosophical prejudice deals with deductive and inductive reasoning; (ii) theoretical prejudice addresses the modeling of understanding of mental phenomena by analogy with natural sciences; (iii) somatic prejudice addresses biological reductionism in psychopathology; (iv) psychological prejudice focuses on approaches that consist of psychological interpretations that transgress the boundaries of psychological intelligibility; (v) pictorial prejudice deals with conceptualizations of psychic life as an analogy with certain visual depictions; (vi) medical prejudice is connected with strivings towards quantity, objectivity and diagnostic precision in psychopathology. To have the ability to represent the inner life of a person, we must dispense with prejudices in the clinical encounter with our patients. With the demands of modern-day life, and requests for quick clinical assessments, the idea of examining our prejudices and performing phenomenological interviews is more important than ever.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Berrios GE (1992) Phenomenology, psychopathology and Jaspers: a conceptual history. Hist Psychiatry 3(11):303–327

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Kumazaki T (2013) The theoretical root of Karl Jaspers’ general psychopathology. Part 2: the influence of Max Weber. Hist Psychiatry 24(3):259–273

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Jaspers K (1968) The phenomenological approach in psychopathology. Br J Psychiatry 114(516):1313–1323

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Doerr-Zegers O, Pelegrina-Cetrán H (2013) Karl Jaspers’ General Psychopatholgy in the framework of clinical practice. In: Stanghellini G, Fuchs T (eds) One century of Karl Jaspers’ general psychopathology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 57–75

    Google Scholar 

  5. Ghaemi SN (2007) Existence and pluralism: the rediscovery of Karl Jaspers. Psychopathology 40(2):75–82

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Jaspers K (1978) Opšta psihopatologija. Prosveta, Savremena administracija, Beglrade

    Google Scholar 

  7. Copi IM, Cohen C, Rodych V (2016) Introduction to logic. Routledge, Abingdon

    Book  Google Scholar 

  8. Fohr SD (1979) The deductive-inductive distinction. Informal Log 2(2)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Hayes BK, Heit E, Swendsen H (2010) Inductive reasoning. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci 1(2):278–292

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Passos IC, Mwangi B, Kapczinski F (2016) Big data analytics and machine learning: 2015 and beyond. Lancet Psychiatry 3(1):13–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Hidalgo-Mazzei D, Murru A, Reinares M, Vieta E, Colom F (2016) Big data in mental health: a challenging fragmented future. World Psychiatry 15(2):186–187

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Škodlar B, Henriksen G (2019) Toward a phenomenological psychotherapy for schizophrenia. Psychopathology 52:117–125

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Kendler KS, Campbell J (2014) Expanding the domain of the understandable in psychiatric illness: an updating of the Jasperian framework of explanation and understanding. Psychol Med 44(01):1–7

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Aragona M, Di Fabio F, Rosini E (2013) 1913–2013: one hundred years of general psychopathology. Dialogues Philos Ment Neuro Sci 6:57–66

    Google Scholar 

  15. Broome M (2013) Jaspers and neuroscience. In: Stanghellini G, Fuchs T (eds) One century of Karl Jaspers’ general psychopathology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 121–132

    Google Scholar 

  16. Hoerl C (2013) Jaspers on explaining and understanding in psychiatry. In: Stanghellini G, Fuchs T (eds) One century of Karl Jaspers’ general psychopathology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 107–120

    Google Scholar 

  17. Bormuth M (2013) Freedom and mystery: an intellectual history of Jaspers’ general psychopathology. Psychopathology 46(5):281–288

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Fuchs T, Herpertz S (2013) The centennial of Karl Jaspers’. Psychopathology 46(5):279

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. van Riel R, van Gulick R (2014) “Scientific reduction,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer 2014 Edn. In: Zalta, EN (ed). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/scientificreduction/

  20. Sass L (2017) Madness and Modernism: insanity in the light of modern art, literature, and thought (revised). John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

    Google Scholar 

  21. Thome J (2014) Centenary of Karl Jaspers’s general psychopathology: implications for molecular psychiatry. J Mol Psychiatry 2(1):3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Jaspers K (1959) Allgemeine psychopathologie, 7th edn. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  23. Wiggins O, Schwartz M (2013) Phenomenology and psychopathology: in search of a method. In: Stanghellini G, Fuchs T (eds) One century of Karl Jaspers’ general psychopathology. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  24. Jaspers K (1950) Zur Kritik der Psychoanalyse. Nervenarzt 21:465–468

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Rossi MM (2013) Jaspers’ ‘Critique of Psychoanalysis’: between past and future. In: Stanghellini G, Fuchs T (eds) One century of Karl Jaspers’ general psychopathology. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  26. Pope C, Mays N (1995) Qualitative research: reaching the parts other methods cannot reach: an introduction to qualitative methods in health and health services research. BMJ 311(6996):42–45

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Bormuth M (2019) Karl Jaspers. In: Stanghellini G, Broome M, Fernandez AV, Fusar-Poli P, Raballo A, Rosfort R (eds) The Oxford handbook of phenomenological psychopathology. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  28. Gadamer H-G, Weinsheimer J, Marshall DG (2004) Truth and Method. Bloomsbury Publishing, USA

    Google Scholar 

  29. Regan P (2012) Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics: concepts of reading, understanding and interpretation. Meta Res Hermeneut Phenomenol Pract Philos 4(2):286–303

    Google Scholar 

  30. Fiorillo A, Sampogna G, Del Vecchio V, Luciano M, Ambrosini A, Stanghellini G (2016) Education in psychopathology in Europe: results from a survey in 32 Countries. Acad Psychiatry 40(2):242–248

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Stanghellini G, Fiorillo A (2015) Five reasons for teaching psychopathology. World Psychiatry 14(1):107

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to Louis Sass (NJ, USA) for the useful comments and suggestions that improved the final version of the paper. I am thankful to Benjamin Alderson-Day (Durham, UK) for his support during the writing of the manuscript. I am thankful to Nikola Stevanovic (Belgrade, Serbia) for critical reading of the manuscript, and suggestions that improved the final version of the paper.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinic for Psychiatry, University Clinical Centre of Serbia, Pasterova 2, 11000, Belgrade, Serbia

    Stefan Jerotic

Authors
  1. Stefan Jerotic
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Stefan Jerotic conceived of the conceptual idea for the article and wrote all parts of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefan Jerotic.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The author declares that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

This work is devoted to the memory of Prof. Dr Vladeta Jerotic.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Jerotic, S. Prejudices in the psychopathologist: Karl Jaspers’ heritage. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 271, 1193–1200 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-020-01230-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-020-01230-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation