La phénoménologie de langue allemande et la psychiatrie française

Abstract

AimsThis work set out to search for texts in the French psychiatric literature of the 20th century referring to the phenomenological approach to psychopathology mainly developed at the time by German authors. MethodThe method used was based on the analysis of texts on this subject published in the course of the 20th century in the main French psychiatric journals, in particular Évolution Psychiatrique, from 1925. ResultsThe guiding threads for pure phenomenology set out by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl before the first World War influenced the work of several French psychiatrists in the period between the two World Wars, in particular Eugène Minkowski, as well as the work of subsequent generations. DiscussionThe work published by Minkowski was, in turn, to have an impact on the history of psychopathology and psychiatry in France after the Second World War, in particular with the work by Arthur Tatossian and his followers, and the philosopher Paul Ricoeur. ConclusionThus, from the perusal of this corpus, we will retrace the successive stages of the introduction of phenomenology in psychiatry, in particular via the relations established in the course of the century between French and German-language psychiatric writings, in order to present the state of the question internationally at the start of 2016.