Critical phenomenology and psychiatry

Dan Zahavi,Sophie Loidolt

doi:10.1007/s11007-021-09553-w

Abstract

Whereas classical Critical Theory has tended to view phenomenology as inherently uncritical, the recent upsurge of what has become known as critical phenomenology has attempted to show that phenomenological concepts and methods can be used in critical analyses of social and political issues. A recent landmark publication, 50 Concepts for Critical Phenomenology, contains no reference to psychiatry and psychopathology, however. This is an unfortunate omission, since the tradition of phenomenological psychiatry—as we will demonstrate in the present article by surveying and discussing the contribution of Jaspers, Minkowski, Laing, Basaglia, and Fanon—from the outset has practiced critical thinking, be it at the theoretical, interpersonal, institutional, or political level. Fanon is today a recognized figure in critical phenomenology, even if his role in psychiatry might not yet have been appreciated as thoroughly as his anticolonial and antiracist contributions. But as we show, he is part of a long history of critical approaches in psychopathology and psychiatry, which has firm roots in the phenomenological tradition, and which keeps up its critical work today.

Highlights

Whereas classical Critical Theory has tended to view phenomenology as inherently uncritical, the recent upsurge of what has become known as critical phenomenology has attempted to show that phenomenological concepts and methods can be used in critical analyses of social and political issues
A recent landmark publication, 50 Concepts for Critical Phenomenology, contains no reference to psychiatry and psychopathology,. This is an unfortunate omission, since the tradition of phenomenological psychiatry—as we will demonstrate in the present article by surveying and discussing the contribution of Jaspers, Minkowski, Laing, Basaglia, and Fanon—from the outset has practiced critical thinking, be it at the theoretical, interpersonal, institutional, or political level
By surveying and reconstructing the history of phenomenological psychiatry as a history of critique at the theoretical, interpersonal, institutional, and political levels, we aim to provide a salient example of how phenomenology from the outset has practiced critical thinking

Summary

Introduction

Recent years have shown an increasing interest in linking phenomenology and critical theory, and in exploring how one might employ phenomenological concepts and methods in critical analyses of social and political issues, say, through a focus on marginalized experiences, the racialized body, or the predetermining and excluding formation of spaces. For some, this development has at long last made phenomenology become “political” and “critical.” Such an assessment would mirror the traditional view of classical Critical Theory according to which phenomenology was from the outset “uncritical”: at best, in the sense of a “bourgeois philosophy” that cultivated a “fetishism of knowledge,” albeit with an “anti-systematic attitude”; at worst, as promoting a “jargon of authenticity” that fit in well with National Socialist ideology. One finds a related skepticism among critical theorists when it comes to the method of phenomenology, which is alleged to exhibit a “blindness to the economic-historical production and genesis of the ‘essential contents,’” and which would always remain “sublimely critically alien, that is, in agreement” with the capitalist status quo. Despite the very different development in France, where prominent figures like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed fruitful connections between Marxist critique and existentialist phenomenology, this depiction of an “uncritical phenomenology” has in many ways become entrenched as the standard narrative. Recent years have shown an increasing interest in linking phenomenology and critical theory, and in exploring how one might employ phenomenological concepts and methods in critical analyses of social and political issues, say, through a focus on marginalized experiences, the racialized body, or the predetermining and excluding formation of spaces.. The first step in this history is the criticism of reductionist psychiatry that we find in, for instance, Karl Jaspers and Eugène Minkowski This theoretical criticism of the attempt to reduce mental illness to organic disorders was motivated by a phenomenologically driven interest in and respect for the patient’s experiences and existential situation. The phenomenological psychiatrists were all refreshingly unorthodox in their approaches.

Respecting experience and criticizing objectivism

Interpersonal phenomenology and institutional critique

Elements of phenomenological critique