The current paradigm of mental health has fallen short in its promises to deliver better care and quality of life for those who lives with mental illness. Recent works have expressed the need for more comprehensive frameworks of research, in which phenomenology emerges as a fundamental tool for a new wave interdisciplinary studies with the humanities. In line with this project, this article hopes to explore the relation between education and phenomenologically oriented psychotherapy, through the work of Brazilian educator Paulo (...) Freire. First, we will briefly expose Freire’s biography and main ideas (such as the “banking model of education” and the creation of “culture circles”), showing how they can be useful during the clinical encounter. We will also highlight the importance of dialogical psychotherapy during situations of injustice and oppression. Finally, we will provide some insights that can help build a new paradigm of mental health that is based on a “praxis of freedom”, whether in research or clinical practice. We call this proposal a “Psychotherapy of the Oppressed”. (shrink)

There have been renewed calls to use phenomenology in psychiatry to improve knowledge about causation, diagnostics, and treatment of mental health conditions. A phenomenological approach aims to elucidate the subjective experiences of mental health, which its advocates claim have been largely neglected by current diagnostic frameworks in psychiatry (eg, DSM-5). The consequence of neglecting rich phenomenological information is a comparatively more constrained approach to theory development, empirical research, and care programmes. Although calls for more phenomenology in psychiatry have been met (...) with enthusiasm, there is still relatively little information on how to practically facilitate this integration. In this Personal View, we argue that phenomenological approaches need a shared semantic framework to drive their innovative potential, thus enabling consistent data capture, exchange, and interoperability with current mental health data and informatics approaches (eg, the Research Domain Criteria project). We show how an applied ontology of phenomenological psychopathology offers a suitable method to address these challenges. (shrink)

Confronted with the situation of profound crisis in which contemporary European culture finds itself, it is necessary, according to E. Husserl, to reflect upon the origins of this loss of meaning, a loss which is linked to a particular stance of the objective sciences that is utterly disjointed from the life-world. The article represents an attempt to ascertain the fundamental concerns that were present from the beginning of phenomenology in Husserl's thought vis-à-vis the sciences. Beginning with Husserl's initial interest in (...) the foundation of the formal sciences, the article seeks to specify the problematic kernel of Husserl's debate with the sciences, centred on the concept of experience. By means of a transformation of meaning which occurs in the sphere of the world of experience, an avenue is opened up to the life-world, which reveals itself to be the foundation of the sciences, to which the latter must constantly be related. The crisis of the sciences will only be overcome through a return to the praxis of human responsibility as this is lived in connection with, and in the horizon of, the life-world. (shrink)

The article analyses in the general realm of perception a class of sensations which Husserl designates as kinaesthetic sensations. Deriving etymologically from kinesis and aisrhesis , the kinaesthetic sensations are bodily movements issued by the subject in its relationship with the manifesting objects. It is for this reason that the identification of the original place of the kinaesthetic sensations has to be searched in the presentation of the thing itself, namely in the presenting function. In every presentation of the thing (...) there are the real contents of sensation or the presenting contents which through an intentional act of apprehension let the things appear. However the presenting sensations alone are not able to present exclusively the things and necessarily refer to the kinaesthetic sensations. The latter in fact don't present the thing but are indispensable for the presentation. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta comunicación es reflexionar sobre cómo las prácticas alimentarias de una región se transforman en un producto turístico y, más concretamente, cómo la mala alimentación del Baixo Alentejo, a menudo considerada como “no comida” aparece, a principios del siglo XXI, valorada en los restaurantes.Consideraremos el caso de Serpa, localidad conocida por las prácticas alimentarias tradicionales que aún se mantienen y la oferta de calidad en los restaurantes y como zona de atracción de turistas, principalmente portugueses y españoles, (...) que los fines de semana cruzan la frontera para probar la comida “típica” y tradicional de la región. (shrink)

The article analyses the concept of truth from the point of view of intentionality as it was developed by Edmund Husserl. The first step of the analysis consists in deploying the specific features of intentionality in the sense of directedness of the consciousness towards something, with its constitutive moments such as the intentional object, intentional sense, quality or different modes in which an object is given. The intentional living experiences conceived in this way are therefore objectifying acts charged with a (...) certain claim for truth. The justification of that claim can only be found in the original given-ness or in the intuitive fulfillment. Truth is the fulfillment of an empty signifying intention. Through the extension of the concept of intuition to the realm of the categorial, there is also an extension of the notion of truth. Truth is the noematic correlate of evidence understood as synthesis of coincidence. In this sense truth is the fulfillment of the intention of a state of affairs. Truth has a 'history' made up of different syntheses of coincidence which occur in a passive way. The passive syntheses guide or determine the way the categorial acts are performed and organized. They structure the prepredicative experiences necessary for the constitution of the predicative knowledge of truth. (shrink)