Abstract

Phenomenological psychopathology is a research field that aims to investigate and describe the subjective experience of mental disorders. By suspending the assumptions about etiology and causality as much as possible, and by focusing on the subjective experiences of the patient, it is supposed to offer a profound understanding of the patient’s suffering, and of the disorder in general. Clarity in the description of these experiences is, therefore, a necessity. Traditionally, phenomenological psychopathology was studied mostly by European, and particularly by German and French psychiatrists, such as Karl Jaspers, Wolfgang Blankenburg, and Eugène Minkowski. Today, psychopathologists like Josef Parnas, Giovanni...