Hiswry of Psychiatry, iii (1992),303

303-327. Printed In England

Phenomenology, psychopathology and Jaspers:

a conceptual history

G. E. BERRIOS*

Certain assumptions are widely made about the relationship between phenomenology
and Western psychopathology: (1) ’phenomenology’ is the method of choice for
obtaining empathic, detailed and neutral descriptions of mental states; (2) the
conceptual foundations for such method are to be found in a putative ’early period’
of Husserl’s philosophy; and (3) Karl Jaspers imported phenomenology into
descriptive psychopathology. 1,2,3,4,5,6 Surprisingly, there is little historical evidence
to support this view. Historians of psychiatry, for example, have done little to
ascertain whether what Jaspers introduced into psychopathology had any connection
with Husserlian phenomenology.7 This lack of interest is understandable: as is also
the case with Kraepelin, insufficient time has yet elapsed to regard Jaspers as a
historical subject. The implications of accepting the above assumptions are,
however, important, particularly for psychiatric trainees: if phenomenology is
truly relevant, then they must be instructed in it. The task of exploring the
historical bases of the received view is not easy. Jaspers wrote desultorily on
phenomenology and successive editions of the General Psychopathology (GP)
included marked changes in emphasis and showed some ambivalence towards
Husserl. The thesis of this paper is that Jaspers’ contribution to descriptive
psychopathology (DP) is, in the main, independent of the philosophical
movement called ’phenomenology’; in other words, that there is no need to
invoke Husserlian phenomenology to explain or legitimate Jaspers’ achievement.

What is phenomenology?
The termPhenomenology names a loose set of philosophical doctrines sharing:
(a) adoctrinal core of metaphysical and epistemological assumptions, and
(b) instrumental strategies for describing mental entities. Its general objective is
the capturing of ’experiential essences’ (higher forms of knowledge coveted for
their assumed eternal value) with which to reconstruct reality on firmer basis. As

* Address for correspondence: G. E. Berrios, MD, FRCPsych, FBPsS, Department of Psychiatry,

University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke’s Hospital (Level 4), Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2QQ.

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against what is usually believed in clinical circles, phenomenology does not have
as its objective the extraction of tame and neutral descriptions.
The word ’phenomenology’ results from two Greek stems: phainomenon (to
appear), and logia (discourse, science).~It was first combined into the German
word Phdnomenologie by J. H. Lambert (1728-1777) in 1764 to refer to his own
’theory of illusion or appearance’.9 Kant, Hegel, Whewell, Hamilton and Mach
made use of the word to describe categories and views of their own. 10, &dquo;Thus,
during the nineteenth century the term became a veritable semantic palimpsest.
The earliest clinical use found by this writer was by Guislain in 1852 when, after
subdividing dementia into 5 groups based on predominant symptoms or
’phenomenes’, he wrote: ’cette division est basee essentiellement sur la
phenomenologie’ .12
The four meanings of phenomenology
Four meanings will be alluded to in this section. PI refers to its commonest
clinical usage as a mere synonym for ’signs and symptoms’ (as in ’phenomenological
psychopathology’); this is a bastardized usage, and hence conceptually uninteresting.
P2 refers to a pseudo-technical sense often used in dictionaries and which
achieves spurious unity of meaning by simply cataloguing successive usages in
chronological order; this approach is misleading in that it suggests false
evolutionary lines and begs important questions relating to the history of
phenomenology. P3 refers to the idiosyncratic usage started by Karl Jaspers who
dedicated his early clinical writings to the description of mental states in a
manner which (according to him) was empathic and theoretically neutral.
Finally, P4 refers to a complex philosophical system started by Edmund Husserl
and continued by writers collectively named the ’Phenomenological Movement’.13
Of these, only P3 and P4 will be dealt with below; the latter only in its early
Husserlian version for, according to most writers - and indeed Jaspers himself -
it is the source of what has since been called Jaspersian phenomenology.

The basic questions of phenomenology

Since the end of the nineteenth century, phenomenology has sought to answer
three questions. First, how do consciousness and its contents relate to the
external word? (This is an epistemological question; by epistemology it is meant
here the set of rules governing the validation of knowledge.) Second, how is it
possible to differentiate mental from physical phenomena? Third, how can
mental phenomena be distinguished from each other? To answer these
questions, phenomenological philosophers have tooled descriptive strategies
which make assumptions about: (a) the reality and nature of the external world,
and (b) the capacity of the individual to scrutinize his/her mental acts.
F. Brentano and W. Dilthey
During the 1880s, the three questions reappeared in a psychological garb.
Brentano and Dilthey asked whether ’analytical (or explanatory) psychology’

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managed to create, after years of toiling, adequate conceptual machinery to deal

with the mind. More specifically, Brentano wanted to know whether psychology
was able to differentiate mental from physical objects;14 Dilthey, in turn, wanted
to know whether a definition of ’personal experience’ was available that might
help to understand historical events. 15 Brentano believed that mental acts could
be differentiated from physical objects in terms of their object alone: ’Every
mental phenomenon is characterized by what ... we might call reference to a
content, direction toward an object, or immanent objectivity. Every mental
phenomenon includes something as object within itself ...’16 In other words,
’intentionality’ was the central characteristic of mental phenomena.
This new conception of mental phenomenon required new descriptive and
analytic methods. Brentano believed that, once found, these would form the
basis for a new ’descriptive’ psychology which after 1888 he called ’phenomenological’.
Dilthey, on the other hand, stated that the ’explanatory’ psychology of his time
was deeply flawed because it was based on a model borrowed from the natural
sciences, and hence was incapable of dealing with mental experiences; as a
solution, he also wanted to replace it by a new ’descriptive’ psychology.17
Dilthey’s proposal was attacked by Ebbinghaus who accused him of misunderstanding
psychology. g~19 Dilthey was later to find a similarity between his views and
those entertained by the earlier Husserl, who acknowledged this support .20 At
the turn of the century, therefore, it was believed by some that it was possible to
develop a new ’descriptive psychology’ which might include a new view of
mental act and experience, and most importantly, a new methodology for their
analysis; it was further believed that such new discipline required the
underpinning of a new metaphysics of description, and that this was provided by
phenomenology.
’Intentionality’ and the mental act
A core philosophical issue at the turn of the nineteenth century was the
relationship between the mental act, its content and the external world .2The
received model (originally proposed by John Locke) stated that the external
world was the only source of knowledge, and that this information, conveyed to
the subject by the windows of his senses, was to be found in his mental
experience. Later on, Berkeley, Hume, Kant and Reid made use of the Lockean
model, only disagreeing on the informational (i.e. epistemological) contribution
of each of its components. ’Mental acts’ mean here ’mental experiences or
events’ but not ’acts’ (in the sense of activity). In fact, during this period, and
following Aristotelian usage, the opposite of the word act was not passivity but
potentiality. Mental states could, thus, be of two types: actualized (or mental
acts proper) and non-actualized, but both were ’intentional’.
This latter term, in turn, did not mean ’doing something on purpose’ but
referred to the medieval sense of ’picturing or being directed to something’. So
by ’intentionality’ was meant the ability of the human mind to refer to objects
outside itself.22,23 In the Brentanian and Husserlian versions, however,

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’intentionality’ was considered as a structural dimension of the mental act, but
no assumption was made with regard to its origins.24 Husserl, however,
criticized Brentano’s views for ’he had not gone beyond an externally
classificatory-descriptive consideration of intentional lived experiences ...&dquo;5
Husserl, in turn, was to be criticized by Searle for having left out causality
altogether.26
The individuation of mental acts
In addition to the need to separate mental from physical objects and to evaluate
their informational content, there was the question of how were mental acts to be
individuated, i.e. distinguished from one another. For example, Dilthey wanted
psychology to develop ways of ascertaining personal experiences and meanings
rather than seeking general laws to account for classes of experiences. 27 Mental
acts, however, were less amenable to the techniques used to individuate physical
objects (e.g., detailed description or identification of spatio-temporal coordinates).
In fact, at the end of the nineteenth century the individuation of mental acts was
based on knowledge of: (1) what object the act was directed to, and (2) its
psychological mode, i.e. whether the subject entertained it as an idea, feeling or
volition.
The question, however, remained: where does the information on which the
individuation process is based come from? The solution, until the end of the
nineteenth century, had been the so-called ’object theory’, according to which
information came from the object pictured by the mental act. 28 This view came to
grief when applied to objectless mental contents such as hallucinations or unicorns.
Brentano, who has so often been mentioned as the father of phenomenology,
upheld, in fact, a variant of ’object theory’ ’29 and Husserl also criticized him
for it.30,31,32
In 1892, the great logician Gottlob Frege offered a solution to the problem of
’objectless’ mental contents.33 Frege was not, of course, concerned with mental acts
but with the issue of linguistic reference,34 and distinguished between an
expression, its sense and its referent (i.e. the mental act, its content and the object).
Frege’s model was imported into phenomenology as the ’content theory of
intentionality’. 35 According to this theory, the mental act was to be individuated in
relation to its content, not its object; the mental act itself, however, was directed to
the referent or object. Frege’s emphasis on ’sense’ as something which many people
(indeed everyone) might hold in common was not lost to phenonlenology: it
provided the epistemological terra firma on which the stand against ’psychologism’
was taken.36

Psychologism: origins and problems

’Psychologism’, a popular philosophical view during the nineteenth century, stated
that there could only be individual minds and ideas but not universally shared
meanings; and that mathematics and logic (like all other forms of thinking) were

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 307
subjected, in the final analysis, to the laws and processes of psychology; in other
words, their epistemological foundations were to be found, not in some a priori
’given’, but in the empirical study of cognition.
During the seventeenth century, Descartes and Locke had temporarily solved
the problem of the relationship between psychology and epistemology,
respectively by using a divine rule, and by the development of a native form of
psychology. 37 Both solution were challenged during 38
the Enlightenment, and
new solutions were offered by Condillac and Kant. Psychologism reappeared
in Germany early in the nineteenth century, sponsored by J. F. Fries 9 and
F. E. Benecke4° and somewhat later in England under the auspices of J. S. Mill.
It occurred as a reaction against Hegel and Kant, particularly against the latter’s
classification of judgements into empirical, analytical and synthetic a priori.
Empirical statements depended for their truth on the external world, and
analytic statements for theirs on the clarity of their definitions. The nature of the
synthetic a priori statements was, however, less clear, for these were supposed to
contain information about the world which had been obtained by means other
than direct experience (e.g., intuition). In the end the entire Kantian
classification was challenged by J. S. Mi1141 who reduced all analytical and
synthetic a priori judgements to empirical statements, i.e. he claimed that the
truth of logic and mathematics depended upon the experiencing of such
relationships in the real wor1d.42 In the late nineteenth century a further step was
taken: if the truth of all statements depended upon empirical testing, then logical
demonstration no longer sufficed. Psychology, the only science of the mind, was
charged with testing all principles. But since (by definition) all empirical
statements could be true or false, then there was the possibility that logical
principles and mathematical relationships could be false. It was thus incumbent
upon psychology to uncover the way in which the mind operated.
This reduction of logic and mathematics to psychology was resisted by many.
One of the first to do so was Frege.43 Brought up in this intellectual
environment, it is not surprising that Husserl hesitated between the two
positions. Indeed, his earliest writings defended a version of ’psychologism’; for
example, he defended the so-called ’theory of abstraction’ which was an
empiricist attempt to explain how the concept of ’general term’ is acquired.44
For this he received a severe rebuke from Frege. 45
Husserl
Husserl’s work can be divided into three stages. During the earliest or
’psychological’ period attempted to provide a psychological foundation for the
he
eternal truth of numbers. This period was brought to an end by Frege’s savage
review of The Foundations of Arithmetic. The second or middle period contained
the full development of his phenomenological views, as stated in Logical
Investigations (1901-1903) and Ideas (1913): this period came to an end with the
writing of Formal and Trascendental Logic in 1929. The third period culminates
in 1936 with the almost mystical book on The Crisis of European Science... Of

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308
these threeperiods only the first two might be of relevance to the history of
psychopathology; the third, perhaps, to some aspects of psychoanalysis.
To understand Husserl’s flirtation with ’psychologism’ it is essential to know
the problem he was reacting against. As has been briefly mentioned, the
nineteenth century inherited from Kant a classification of statements into
analytical (e.g., mathematical and logical), empirical (i.e. scientific) and
synthetic a priori. J. S. Mill called into question the meaning of analytical
statements and classified them as synthetic; in practice, this meant that all
statements, including mathematical and logical statements were ’empirical’, and
hence, subject to correction. By the time Husserl was at university the claim was
being made that, since logic was but the expression of thinking processes,
psychology should be called upon to decide on the final value of logical
statements. This view influenced Husserl’s doctoral thesis. There has been
disagreement as to the extent of Husserl’s psychologism. Frege thought it was
clear, as did Osborn: ’It was a time in which he attempted to solve logical and
mathematical problems through the instrumentality of psychology... ,46,47
Spiegelberg, on the other hand, saw Husserl’s psychologism as an early
aberration and still refers to his ’pre-phenomenological period; 48 more recently
Schmitt has seen the Philosophy of Arithmetic as an at ’a psychological
attempt9 On
analysis of certain basic logical and mathematical notions’. the other hand,
de Boer, 50 Kelkel and Scherer,51 and Dartigues52 believed that Husserl took an
anti-psychologism stance from the beginning. It seems clear, however, that what
Spiegelberg has called Husserl’s ’striking shift 53 marks the moment in which
he moved away from psychologism. During this first period, however, there is
no talk on the ’phenomenological’ method, and hence it is unlikely to be of
relevance to psychopathology. Indeed, Jaspers did not refer at all to this first
period of Husserl’s writings.
The second period may, however, be more important. It is then that Husserl
developed to the full his ’content’ theory and expanded upon the phenomenological
method. In regard to the former he wrote in the Fifth Investigation: ’An
experience may be present in consciousness although the object does not exist at
all, and is perhaps incapable of existence ...’54 Husserl’s content theory was
based upon the view that: (a) all intentional acts have content; (b) content
determines to which object the acts refer; (c) there are objectless acts, i.e. the
content of an act may fail to determine an object for the act in question.55 In
regard to method Husserl wrote: ’method means goal-directed activity in an
intelligible, insightful manner, which is fit to lead to the goal. Still better, we
should say goal-directed doing which, with its stage points, these products,
presents the way the doer goes, goes by doing and seeing.’ And in regards to the
phenomenological method: ’we can exercise phenomenological reduction on
every perception belonging here, therefore on every external, trascendental
perception, precisely as a methodical operation of reduction to the purely
immanent, to pure subjectivity.’
Husserl went on developing ever more refined distinctions; at the end of his

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life he left unfinished a complicated and sometimes confusing conceptual edifice.
Husserlian philosophy encompassed solutions to problems in areas as diverse as
metaphysics, referential logic, epistemology and the philosophy of mind; all of
these, at the beginning, seemed hidden under the almost innocent problem of
the scope of psychology. Since those early days phenomenologists have
wandered further afield, to rehearse their method in sociology, 56,57 PolitiCS,11,59
philosophical anthropology, 60,61and psychoanalysis.62
Unless the word ’description’ is used in a strange fashion, it is difficult,
therefore, to accept that phenomenology was, is, or ever will be, just a
sophisticated method of ’description’. From a technical point of view, the issue
is whether it is possible to extricate, from what admittedly is a complex
theoretical whole, anything that can meaningfully be said to stand on its own, as
a ’phenomenological method’. It is closer to the historical facts to consider
phenomenology, first and foremost, as a metaphysical and epistemological
doctrine into which instrumental strategies were built for describing mental
entities. Its raison d’itre was not to obtain tame and neutral descriptions; it was
to capture ’experiential essences’, coveted for their eternal value. Thus the
phenomenological method promises epistemological gains which far exceed
anything that the conventional observational strategies of clinical psychopathology
are able or purport to offer.

Phenomenology and English philosophy

Up to the 1920s, phenomenology made little impact on English philosophy. In
1922, Husserl gave four lectures in German during a visit to London, and although
the organizers (University College) secured the help of great chairmen (Dawes
Hicks, James Ward, Wildon Carr and George E. Moore), the lectures caused little
stir and certainly far less that Husserl’s Paris lectures of 1925, eventually published
as the Cartesian Meditations.63 Metz has suggested, however, that Bosanquet,

Hicks, and probably Stout, came under the influence of Husserl. 64

In 1924, a young Gilbert Ryle seems to have felt some sympathy for the
’Logical Investigations’, and consequently was asked to deliver ’an unwanted
course of lectures entitled ’Logical Objectivism: Bolzano, Brentano, Husserl,
and Meinong’. These characters were soon known in Oxford as ’Ryle’s three
Austrian railway stations and one Chinese game of chance’.65 In a more serious
vein, Ryle did not fail to notice the hiatus separating the earlier and later periods
of Husserl’s philosophy: ’I realized pretty soon that Husserl’s intentionalist,
anti-psychologistic theory of meaning/non-sense, which was what interested me,
owed nothing to his posterior phenomenology, and bequeathed too little to it ...’66

The meanings of ’description’

It would seem that it is important to distinguish between the phenomenological
and conventional meaning of ’description’, for confusing the two has generated

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310
much misunderstanding. Descriptions in phenomenology are characterized by
four important features. Firstly, they are not meant to collect itemized
information on the world, or to form the basis for empirical statements of the
kind that might be considered as relevant to science in general or DP
in particular; indeed, one of the most determined efforts to produce a
’phenomenological philosophy of science’ turned into a failure.67 Secondly,
phenomenological descriptions apply only to subjective experiences; thus
objective signs such as psychomotor retardation, tremor, catatonia, or soft
neurological signs are left out altogether. Thirdly, for the capturing of
experiential essences the phenomenological method of description relies on the
exercise of extra-ordinary human faculties such as intuition and empathy;
indeed, observational strategies based on the conventional sense modalities are
not encouraged. Fourthly, as mentioned above, phenomenological descriptions
endeavour to capture ’immutable essences’. These can be understood in two
ways: as tantamount to operational definitions (i.e. as the first stage in the
development of any scientific programme) or as quasi-metaphysical entities. The
former interpretation is flawed in that it adds nothing to the description and
hence is insufficient to justify the sobriquet ’phenomenological’; the latter,
probably the correct one, forces upon the psychiatrist unacceptable philosophical
commitments; but it also does away with the myth of neutral descriptions.
’Theory-free’ descriptions
But, are ’theory-free’ or ’neutral’ descriptions possible in psychopathology? The
view taken in this section is that they are not. The argument goes like this: all
descriptive activity is subject to two levels of theoretical control. There is, first of
all, an overt, first-order, theoretical framework governing the way in which
descriptive categories are applied, and at the same time, providing rules for the
understanding of the items or contents captured by the said descriptive
categories. But there is also a covert, second order, hidden theoretical
framework, a sort of meta-theory about the domain to be described, which is not
at all times (or necessarily) within the purview of the subject undertaking the
description; this meta-theory controls the way in which the domain is parsed
out, the way in which that particular region of reality is broken up.
Efforts by Jaspersian phenomenologists to achieve theory-free descriptions
only affect the first of these theoretical controls. It is possible to set aside first-
order theories because these can be changed at will, but doing so may create the
illusion that the ensuing descriptive activity has become theory-free. This is only
a mirage; there is still the control of the second-order theory, which cannot be
thus set aside, particularly in the case of the psychopathological description of
experiences and subjective events. In other words, descriptions of this nature,
whether phenomenological or not, are ex-hypothesis theoretical activities. For
example, if I describe a visual hallucination as a ’coloured patch’ and make no
assumptions whatsoever regarding its mechanisms, causes and meaning, I
cannot conclude that I have just achieved a neutral description, or captured a

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 311
pure fact. I cannot do so because I have not bracketed out the meta-theory which
controls the deeper grammar of my description: the theory that warrants my
segregating the coloured patch from its background and my considering it as a
experience with certain boundaries in time and space. This theoretical level is
certainly resistant to the Jaspersian method.

The historical context and Ph. Chaslin

As has already been said, since the middle of the nineteenth century there was in
Europe (particularly in France) a great descriptive tradition in psychopathology.
By the turn of the century this had been distilled in a series of major
works, 68,69,70 culminating with a great book on psychopathology published by
Philippe Chaslin,71,72,73, 4 a year before Jaspers’ own book. Indeed, Jaspers
seems to have incorporated many of Chaslin’s descriptions in his work.
An important point about these descriptions is that they were often
accompanied by searching theoretical analyses of the descriptive activity.
Starting with Moreau’s call for the incorporation of subjective states into the
of madness,75 writers like Baillarger, Brierre de Boismont
symptomatolo~y
and Despine 6 began to distinguish between description and theoretical
explanation. Kolle acknowledged that ’the French, in particular, developed this
symptomatological approach into a fine art, although the practice of psychiatry
profited little from these investigations ...’77 According to Kolle, Jaspers’ main
contribution was the ’construction of a psychiatric system of methods’. Kolle
was right in not insisting on the claim that Jaspers’ contribution had been in the
area of description. His view is supported by Tellenbach, an acknowledged
phenomenologist: ’Jaspers has the merit of having enriched psychiatry by
introducing Dilthey’s spiritual psychology and his theory of understandable
connections ...’7g~79 If it is the case that there was already a strong European
tradition in descriptive psychopathology, why is it often claimed that Jaspers
started it? Did he perhaps start ’phenomenological psychopathology?

Psychiatry and phenomenology around Jaspers’ time

Jaspers was not the only psychiatrist of his generation to believe that
’phenomenology’ might be of use to psychiatry. In 1912, for example, Wilhelm
Specht founded the Zeitschrift für Pathopsychologie which included Bergson,
Münsterberg and Kflpe amongst its editors; the avowed intention of this group
was to develop a ’descriptive psychology’ in which ’phenomenological description’
took precedence over experimental explanation. Influenced by Husserl, Brentano,
Reinach and Schapp, Specht was, however, soon to show his real colours: the
Zeitschrift took an anti-organicist stance sponsoring the view that phenomenology
should reclaim for psychopathology the realm of the ’subjective’; which Specht
(wrongly) believed had been neglected during the nineteenth century.
The assumptions underlying Specht’s ’subjectivist’ view were that mental
illness was purely psychological in nature, and that ’empathy’ and ’intuition’

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312
were the right methods to understand it. As Specht put it (in a way that might
have interested his Freudian rivals), understanding consisted in the ’loving
penetration of the patient He also believed that clinical observation as
practiced in conventional medicine was inappropriate for this task. Theory-laden
as these views are, they are a truer reflection of the uses and limitations of
phenomenology, and of the way it was perceived by his generation than Jaspers’
claim that phenomenology supported a theory-free method of description.
’Empathy’ and ’intuitive understanding’ played a crucial role in Jaspers’ early
thinking. They were methods of experiential appraisal, characterized by a sort
of epistemological directness that penetrated the theoretical veneer shrouding
the object to be appraised. Both methods, however, have historically and
conceptually little to do with the spirit and preoccupations of1 Husserlian
phenomenology, and find origin in the work of Dilthey and others

Jaspers and phenomenology before 1913

Jaspers wrote on Phenomenology, and mentioned Husserl (whose work
apparently he only read in 1909) in two papers, both published before 1913.
Writing on intentionality in Disorders of Perception 82 he stated: ’I personally
believe that this old notion has found its clearest expression in Husserl, whose
research is the source of my own conceptualizations here ...’; Jaspers sent a
reprint of this article to Husserl.g3 He also dealt with Husserl’s ideas in his
’Phenomenological approach in psychopathology’ . g4 This article reads like an
introduction to clinical propaedeutics (as applied to mental states) and contains
little explicitly philosophical material. Jaspers wrote it, in fact, to justify before
H. W. Grfhle (a psychiatrist in the Heidelberg Clinic, and himself interested in
’Phenomenology’) his own views on how to take a psychiatric history and
organize case-conferences. He first offers a division (known since Moreau in the
1850s) of ’psychic events’ into objective and subjective. Then, well into the
paper, he makes the oft-quoted claim that it is ’this preliminary work of
representing, defining and classifying psychic phenomena, pursued as
an independent activity, (that) constitutes phenomenology’ ’so long as ...

such independent, systematic investigations had not been undertaken, this

phenomenological approach remained limited to a number of unconnected
opinions’ ... ’within the sphere of psychological research E. Husserl has taken
the first decisive step towards a systematic phenomenology, his predecessors in
this having been Brentano and his school ... in psychopathology there have
been a number of attempts to create a phenomenology ...’. To illustrate what
he meant, Jaspers quotes, rather revealingly, the writings of Kandinsky, 85
Oesterreich,g6 and Heckler. 87 The choice of these works is odd: Kandinsky’s
book is little more than a conventional description of his own hallucinatory
experiences; Oesterreich’s is heavy with obscure theorizing, and shows little in
the way of clear, empathic descriptions of anything; and Hecker’s paper is
equally laden with philosophical disquisition. Why did Jaspers choose these

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 313
examples? Were there not others, particularly in the French clinical literature,
nearer to what he was trying to describe? This is surprising, for there is
evidence that by 1908 he had already scanned the French literature. 88
In the 1912 paper, Jaspers felt he had identified two steps in phenomenological
description: the gaining of a clear representation of what is actually going on in the
patient’s mind; and the isolation and formulation of the psychic phenomena.
There are three methods of phenomenological analysis: immerse oneself in the
patients behaviour; question him carefully; and, examine written self-descriptions.
By means of these methods three types of information are obtained: (1) phenomena
known to us from our own experience (e.g., falsifications of memory);
(2) phenomena which are to be understood as exaggerations or combinations of
phenomena we experience (e.g., pseudo-hallucinations), and (3) phenomena
inaccessible to empathic understanding to which we can only get close by
analogy or metaphor (e.g., passivity experiences). Jaspers counsels restraint with
regard to theories: ’numerous phenomenological approaches have been smothered
almost at once by theoretical endeavours’. 89
But the 1912 paper leaves unresolved the issue of how the objective of
phenomenology can be achieved without using a theory, particularly when ’it
must be borne in mind that the experiences of individual patients are infinitely
manifold; that phenomenology only extracts from them some general features
which can be found equally in some other case and therefore can be called the
same feature, whereas the infinity of individual experience continues to
change ...’ Even a mythical, ’early’ Husserl would have disagreed with this.
For, what controls the process of feature-extraction? Is the selection procedure
not already theory-laden?9° These pre-1913 works show already an unwillingness
of Jaspers to become involved in issues worrying Husserl at the time, and leave
one with the impression that he was half-hearted about what Husserl was then

calling phenomenology. They are, however, historically informative for they

escaped the periodic editing that distorts so much the conceptual chronology of
General Psychopathology (GP) (carried out both by Jaspers himself and later on
by Kurt Schneider). Thus, in regards to observation, description and classification,
there is in these early papers little that was not already in the psychiatric
literature around Jaspers’ time. Two further questions arise: what is the extent
of the contribution of Husserlian phenomenology to Jaspers’ early work? Could
the pre-1913 papers, and indeed the first edition of GP have been written if he
had not been aware of the writings of Husserl?
Of this early stage Jaspers 91 wrote: ’My own investigations as well as my
reflections about what was being said and done in psychiatry had led me on
tracks which were new at the time. Philosophers gave the impetus for two
essential steps. As method I adopted Husserl’s phenomenology, which, in its
beginning, he called descriptive psychology; I retained it although I rejected its
further development to insight into essences (Wesensschau). It proved to be
possible and fruitful to describe the inner experiences of patients as phenomena
of consciousness. Not only hallucinations, but also delusions, modes of

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314
ego-consciousness, and emotions could, on the basis of the patients’ own

descriptions, be described so clearly that they became recognizable with

certainty in other cases. Phenomenology became a method for research.’
The General Psychopathology (GP)
In GP, Jaspers does not often refer to either Husserl or phenomenology (it is the
seventh edition of this book, a veritable palimpsest enshrining almost 50 years of
editing, that is available in English).92 GP is based on ideas which bear only
partial relation to Jaspers’ later philosophical interests. The book was repeatedly
modified and added to after 1921, particularly by Kurt Schneider, up to the
edition that Jaspers is said to have re-written during the Second World V~lar.93,94
The origins of the book are of some interest. Jaspers tells us that in 1911 he
received an invitation from Wilmanns, the deputy clinical chief at Heidelberg
(the Head being Nissl) and from Ferdinand Springer, the publisher, to write a
short textbook on general psychopathology: ’I was seized by enthusiasm and
buoyancy to bring order at least into the factual data and to further the
methodical consciousness ... I felt supported by the spirit of the hospital and
the knowledge we all shared. In this circle it was not too difficult to write a
general psychopathology Thus I presented in my Psychopathology, a
...

systematic arrangement of theories ... what mattered was to survey all possible
pictures without lapsing into any ...395
Interestingly, footnotes where reference to Husserl and phenomenology is
made, were edited either from edition to edition, or from original to English
translation. Thus, only up to the 1920 (second) edition96 did Jaspers refer in
Note 1 to Husserl’s ’logischen Untersuchungen, Vol II’: why did he delete it in
later editions? In regard to the content of the note itself, it is difficult to accept
Jaspers’ claim that the main thrust of Logical Investigations was ’methodological’
or that it was about ’psychological enquiry’! This runs counter to the fact that by
1911, when Jaspers began to write GP, Husserl had long abandoned worrying
about descriptive methods; indeed, it is difficult to identify a period in Husserl
philosophy when he was just concerned with descriptive methodology. At any
rate, Husserl explicitly repudiated the term ’descriptive psychology’ as early as
1903: ’I myself felt its deficiency soon after the publication of the first volume
(1900) and soon found occasion (in a review in the Archiv für systematische
Philosophie, ix, 397) to rectify the name I had given to phenomenology
(descriptive psychology) which was liable to misinterpretation ...’9~ But the
translators of the English edition also took the occasional licence. For example,
the relevant part of Footnote 1 in the seventh edition was translated thus: ’No
new principle but a new thoroughness in the old method is offered by Husserl in
his phenomenological basis for psychological inquiry. 98 The word ’old’ is not
present in the German edition. Such liberties were not, however, taken by the
French translators - a youthful J. P. Sartre being one of them99 - or in the
Spanish version. loo
Even more interesting is the history of the second footnote mentioning

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 315
Husserl and phenomenology. In its final version it states: ’The term phenomenology
was used by Hegel for the whole field of mental phenomena as revealed in
consciousness, history and conceptual thought. We use it only for the much
narrower field of individual psychic experience. Husserl used the term initially
in the sense of a ’descriptive psychology’ in connection with the phenomenon of
consciousness; in this sense it holds for our own investigations also, but later on
he used it in the sense of the &dquo;appearance of things&dquo; (Wesensschau) which is not a
term we use in this book. Phenomenology is for us purely an empirical method of
inquiry maintained solely by the fact of patients’ communications. It is obvious
that in these psychological investigations descriptive efforts are quite different
from those in the natural sciences. The object of study is non-existent for the
senses and we can experience only a representation of it. Yet the same logical

principles are in operation. Description demands the creation of systematic

categories, as well as a demonstration of relationships and orderly sequences on
the one hand and of sporadic appearances, unheralded and unforeseen, on the
other.,101 This footnote underwent major metamorphosis in the successive
editions of GP. In the first, it is very short and refers to phenomenology
providing a handle for the analysis of experiences and only quotes Jaspers’ 1912
paper. In the second edition, the text remains the same but includes a new
reference (’Baade 1915’). The reference to Hegel, together with the incursion
into the philosophy of science, only appear after the fourth edition. So, the final
version of this footnote seems to have been written as a justification. Here,
Jaspers grants that descriptions are theoretically committed, and that clusters and
relationships must be taken into account. His only concession to the past is that
the object of study (one assumes he is referring to patients’ subjective
experiences) is ’non-existent for the senses’. This confirms the view that, even as
late as this edition, Jaspers did not consider that signs (e.g., retardation or
catatonic posturing) could be meaningfully described in a ’phenomenological’
manner, and that this term must be limited to the description of subjective
experiences as contained in the ’patients’ communications’. Signs had to be
studied by a different methodology, and he dealt with this in a paper entitled the
’Doctor and his Patient’ where once again he differentiated between psychological
’understanding’ and causal explanation. l02
Jaspers deals with the practical aspects of the phenomenological method in
Chapter 1 of GP, where he goes beyond what he had said in the 1912 paper: ’we
confine description solely to the things that are present to the patient’s
consciousness. Anything which is not a conscious datum is for the present non-
existent... close contemplation of an individual case often teaches us the
phenomena common to countless others. What we have grasped in this way is
usually encountered again. It is not so much the number of cases seen that
matters in phenomenology but the extent of the inner exploration of the
individual case, which needs to be carried to the furthest possible limit. In
histology, when we examine the cerebral cortex, we expect to account for every
fibre and every cell. So in phenomenology we expect to account for every psychic

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316
phenomenon, every experience met with in our investigation of the patient and
in his own self-description ...&dquo;03 This aspiration to comprehensiveness of
description and of understanding (more in keeping with his later philosophical
views) contrasts with his 1912 claim that phenomenology did not need to analyse
all the mental contents of the patient (for they were infinite in number) but only
concentrate on those which were recognizable as symptoms (i.e. common) to a
class of patients.
In GP, Jaspers justifies the role of theory and taxonomy by suggesting a
division of all phenomena into direct and indirect: ’Every phenomenon has the
character of direct experience but for analytical and purposive thought it is
essential for the psyche to stand outside this immediate experience. The basic
phenomenon that renders such thinking and purpose possible may be called
reflection, the turning back of experience on itself and on its content. Hence
indirect phenomena come into being and indeed all human psychic life shows the
pervasiveness of this reflective activity
To summarize Jaspers’ views so far: psychological analysis is to be carried out
at an elementary level, i.e. at the level of isolated units of analysis (which
included subjective and objective elementary events), and at the level of
combinations of these elements, in which case links are to be sought between
them and mental states, duly explained and understood. The elementary
building bricks are dealt with by phenomenology; the links by the techniques
available in the observational and quantificatory realm of science. The combined
states, on the other hand, constituted the proper field of understanding
(Verstehen) psychology. According to Jaspers, phenomenology and understanding
were different strands of his thought, and had been instilled in him by Husserl
and Dilthey, respectively.

Jaspers, Husserl and Husserlian phenomenology

As mentioned before, there is little agreement on the extent of Husserl’s
influence on Jaspers. Kolle emphasized his contribution to the ’biographical
method in psychiatry’. 105 James Collins suggested that Jaspers had only a
qualified admiration for Husserl.lo6 Kaufmann identified a ’radical difference
between Husserl’s and Jaspers’ positions’.’07 Lefevre claimed (contradicting
Kolle) that before Jaspers there was no ’clearly circumscribed method for the
description of subjective experiences’ but conceded that Husserl and Kiilpe
might have started something: ’in Jaspers’ usage &dquo;phenomenology&dquo; means
illustrative representation of individual experience; it is an empirical method
designed to define experienced mental states, i.e. subjective mental phenomena
within the narrowest possible confines; to distinguish between them; and to
separate them terminologically ...’1°g More recent writers are equally unhelpful.
Stierlin, in his important paper on the philosophical basis of Jaspers’ psychiatry,
makes the suggestion that the ghost haunting GP is Kant’s and not Husserl’s,
and adds that the later Jaspers came under the spell of Max Weber.109,1l0Müller-
Hegemann also remarked that Jaspers tried to separate, as Kant had done, the

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 317

’ideological from the experienced reality’ .11Lanteri Laura, in his classical paper
on the concept of process in Jaspers does not mention Husserl once, but
112
emphasizes the influence of Dilthey. Jeanne Hersch also mentions Dilthey
and states that Jaspers ’wanted to encompass all images (of madness) without
allowing himself to be trapped in any’ .113 Kremer-Marietti agreed that Dilthey
played an important role and states that Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology
allowed Jaspers to ’describe the intimate experiences of patients to understand
illusions and delusions ...’.114 Pichot suggestively stated that‘Jaspers’ personal
development is almost a mirror image of that of Ribot’s’, and after summarizing
his work, goes on to say ’his position was later to be severely criticized even by a
member of the Heidelberg School in the person of Mayer-Gross, who pointed
out that the concept of ’psychological comprehension’ was so flexible that it lent
itself too readily to infinite extensions and hence, in practice to the
that all psychopathological manifestations were psychogenic Wolfram
contention
Schmitt, in a paper on the question of method, pointed out that ’Jaspers is, with
his method of phenomenological comprehension, near the early Husserl’.116 In
the 1983 Heidelberg meeting to celebrate the centenary of Jaspers’ birth,
Blakenburg commented upon what he calls the ’static’ aspects of Jaspers’
phenomenological descriptions, 117 and Glatzel upon his limited definition of
symptom. 118 Gerd Huber, in turn, felt that Jaspers had introduced something
fundamentally new as compared to Kraepelinian 19 and deserved to be
defended against widespread misunderstanding. psychiatry, As against this Beauchesne
has stated that ’Jaspers stayed very close to Kraepelinian psychopathology and
classification’.12o Salamun also expressed a lukewarm view: ’Jaspers borrowed
from Husserl’s phenomenology the method of description this author had
outlined in an initial stage stage as a sort of descriptive psychopathology, but
never incorporated into his ideas proper Husserlian
and similar feelings have been expressed by Heimann.12
phenomenology . 121
It would seem, therefore, justified to cast doubt on the view that Husserl’s
ideas (early or late) were of real influence on the method that Jaspers chose to call
’phenomenological’. It is more likely that Jaspers used Husserl’s name to
legitimate his own youthful ideas on psychopathological description. Even the
view that there was an ’early’ Husserl has been challenged.123 Internal evidence
is also compatible with the hypothesis that the influence of Husserl was
negligible, for there is little radically new in Jaspers’ method of description,
when compared, say, with that practised by alienists during the latter part of the
nineteenth century. The central question is whether a putative ’phenomenological
method’ can stand on its own, i.e. be made independent from the ontological and
epistemological assumptions characterizing phenomenology in all its forms; the
124’125
answer is that it cannot. Jaspers himself rarely or ever mentioned Husserl
in his later philosophical work.126 Furthermore, when he was asked to compile a
list of classic philosophical books he did not include any by Husser1.12~ In his
excellent analysis of Jaspers’ thought, Koestenbaum stated: ’the influence of
Husserl is also apparent, although it is perhaps unconscious, since it is mostly

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318
unacknowledged ...’ ’... Husserl’s ideas of the transcendental ego and
transcendental consciousness conform to Jaspers’ descriptions of the inner self
(Existenz) and the outermost boundaries of the world (das Umgreifende)’ .128 So,
according to this author, if there is any influence, it relates to the metaphysical
aspect of phenomenology, the very aspect that Jaspers was at pains to disown.
Years later, whilst reminiscing on the publication of Husserl’s important book
on Philosophy as a Strict Science, Jaspers rather brutally wrote: ’Insofar as
Husserl was a professor of philosophy he seemed to me to have committed a
betrayal of philosophy in the most naive and pretentious manner ...’. 129
Deshaies was correct in claiming that Jaspers’ notion of ’comprehension’ was not
phenomenological: This ’method is intuitive’ ’it is a psychologism that has
...

not much to do with Husserl’s phenomenology; this latter method was grounded on
the Cartesian ’cogito’, and the bracketing of the world, and attempted to capture
essences and develop a transcendental philosophy’.13o Of all writers, Spiegelberg
has been the one who has analysed in more detail the problems posed by Jaspers’
phenomenological claims. He quoted a conversation with Jaspers in his later
years that almost settles this issue: ’He minimized the role of Husserlian
phenomenology to such an extent that he no longer to it a decisive role
for his own development, even in his psychopathology’ .13 Spiegelberg concluded assigned
that Jaspers may be said to have founded ’phenomenological psychopathology’,
but that whatever this means it was a ’phenomenology [that] might have indeed
developed without Brentano and Husserl’. 132
Phenomenology and private mental states
It would seem. therefore, that Jaspers entertained an idiosyncratic view of
phenomenology. To analyse mental contents the philosopher must use, according
to Husserl, a ’phenomenological’ method which is as much a thought strategy as a
mental attitude. The method, however, was not meant to apply to the analysis of other
minds, for, as he wrote: ’phenomenological descriptions do not refer to experiences
or classes of experiences of empirical individuals; phenomenology knows nothing
and assumes nothing about personalized experiences, yours or mine’.133 Jaspers’
suggestion that psychiatrists might apply the phenomenological method to the
analysis of someone else’s experience (i.e. the patient’s) is not consistent with
this view and it is strange that he also felt that it was possible to practise
phenomenological analysis on the written descriptions of mental states. One
cannot help thinking, therefore, that his insistence on ’empathy’, on putting
oneself in the patient’s shoes, was an attempt to cope with his anomalous use of
the phenomenological method. Nor it is difficult to conclude that, during the
early stages of his career (when he still had no personal philosophical system),
Jaspers needed to legitimate his own brand of nineteenth century descriptivism, and
that ’phenomenological description’ was the appropriate term for this purpose.

Jaspers, Dilthey, and the concept of ’comprehension’

An alternative explanation for the origin of his ideas, and one which is not based

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 319
on the red herring of phenomenology, seems required. In his classic book,
Martin-Santos interpreted Jaspersian phenomenology as an ’empirical psychology’,
i.e. ’as a pure description of the mental states’.134 In this task, Martin-Santos
continues, ’Jaspers pays little attention to the theoretical difficulties involved ...
he simply says that such a task is hard and that there is no innate human ability
to undertake it ...’ The Spanish writer also notices that in marked constrast to
Dilthey, Jaspers does not use the term ’experience’ (Erlebnis) as his unit of
analysis, instead he talks (in a rather old fashioned and very medical way) of
’psychological phenomena’ or ’elements’. These terms are left obscure, but they
seem characterized by: ’instantaneity’, ’intentionality’ and ’primitiveness’; of
these three features, the first (and perhaps the most restrictive), makes
impossible any attempt at longitudinal observation. This rigidity in Jaspers’
concepts is not mentioned by those who consider GP as the fountainhead for all
empirical research in psychiatry.
Even more worrying is Jaspers’ exaggerated reliance on the powers of the
observer and on the use of his/her cognitive and social context to decide on
whether or not a given mental state is ’comprehensible’. This has been correctly
castigated by Castilla del Pino: ’Jaspers’ criteria lead to an over-valuation of the
position of the observer ...’ 135
In regards to ’understanding’ Jaspers wrote: ’Phenomenology presents us with
a series of isolated fragments broken out from a person’s total psychic

experience ... how are these various data to be related? In some cases the
meaning is clear and we understand directly how one psychic event emerges
from another. This mode of understanding is only possible with psychic
events ... In phenomenology we scrutinize a number of qualities or states and
the understanding that accompanies this has a static quality’ ’Broadly ...

speaking, however, &dquo;understanding&dquo; has two different meanings, according to

whether it is termed static or genetic. The static mode denotes the presentation to
oneself of psychic states, the objectifying to oneself of psychic qualities ... the
genetic mode [is] that of empathy, of perceiving the meaning of psychic
connections and the emergence of one psychic phenomenon from another’.136
Commenting upon this distinction, which is once again theory-laden, Lagache
wrote: ’If one takes into account the period in which Jaspers was writing and his
philosophical orientation, it is difficult not to see that there was something else
hidden behind his claim that static and phenomenological understanding were
the same ... [namely] a dynamic component’. 137 Lagache was here making a
case for psychoanalysis. Debate on the usefulness of Jaspers’ view on

’understanding’continues. ~~’~~~
Summary
Jaspers was, of course, entitled to call his descriptive strategy whatever he liked.
The rules of the game, however, dictate that he provide operational criteria by
means of which his ’phenomenological’ method could be meaningfully distinguished

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320
from that associated with nineteenth-century descriptivism.1 ~3 For the method
to be worth adopting, he needed to show that psychiatrists could gain extra-
information (or understanding) by re-labelling observational methods as
’phenomenological’. If this was so, then young psychiatrists should be taught
phenomenology. If not, then there is little point in complicating matters by
introducing terms like phenomenology. Related to this question is that of
Jaspers’ real influence on descriptive psychopathology. Granting that all
depends on how ’influence’ is defined and measured, it can safely be said that
this seems to vary according to country and to psychiatric school. For example,
leading American psychiatrists’ 44, 145 seem to give these a different
concepts
meaning from that employed by European specialists. 146,147 In general,
however, there are those who feel that Jaspers has not been very influential; one
of these, surprisingly, was Kurt Schneider himself, who on the occasion of the
25th anniversary of GP, complained that its influence had been ’scanty’. 141 It is
often repeated that Jaspers was right in castigating the aetiological manicheism
of his time, i.e. the fact that young psychiatrists had then to follow either Freud
or the ’brain mythologists’. Apart from the fact that this is an oversimplified
account of the state of psychiatry at the beginning of the twentieth century, the
point is irrelevant to the question of symptom description. Indeed, holding
either ideological position does not condemn clinicians to being bad descriptivists,
or to being unable to exercise empathy or understanding. During the 1910s, the

aetiological and descriptive languages were, so to speak, orthogonal to each

other; this is why alienists of different persuasion such as Freud, Janet,
Meynert, Magnan, Ball and Luys (inter alia), were able to produce classical
descriptions of mental states, and for all one knows, some may have been,
regardless of their theoretical view, very empathic clinicians!
It would seem, therefore, that there is little evidence that Husserlian
phenomenology had a major influence on Jaspers; the only evidence for this, so
far, being his early but lukewarm statements to this effect. Needless to say, the
dazzling scholarship of GP is not proof of such association; indeed, the book
is crystal-clear and shows none of the obscurities affecting contemporary
phenomenological works. So, both contextual evidence (and Jaspers’ later
avowal) suggest that: (1) Husserlian phenomenology played no significant role in
GP: (2) Jaspers wanted to retain the word phenomenology to describe a
particular style and method of information-gathering and understanding
(description via empathy); (3) Kant, Dilthey and Weber seem to have been more
important to Jaspers’ ideas than Husserl, particularly in dichotomies such as
form/content, and explanation/understanding. Jaspers’ definitions of symptom
’description’ and of ’psychological element’ are no different from what was going
on before his time; and in the areas where Jaspers seems to have offered a new
combination of strategies such as understanding, comprehension, intuition and
empathy in the specific field of psychiatry, one finds that these remain general
and abstract, and peripheral to the scientific approach. At best, they are
supposed to capture only narrow regions of the patients’ symptomatology.

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 321
Originated in Dilthey’s work, these categories carry the faint echoes of problems
which are no more, and cannot support the current descriptive and psychometric
needs of psychiatry.
The more likely historical scenario is that soon after 1900, nineteenth-century
descriptive psychopathology encountered phenomenology; this much talked-
about alliance was just a marriage of convenience. Around this period, and as a
result of the decline of classical nineteenth-century psychology, the conceptual
foundation of DP had become suspect and required buttressing. Phenomenology,
with its emphasis on subjectivity and descriptivism, became the ideal partner.
But phenomenology itself needed empirical anchoring; this resulted from the
fact that, for all its anti-psychologism and demands for neutrality, phenomenology
was rapidly developing into yet another variety of armchair psychology. Jaspers’
youthful eloquence made it appear as if phenomenology had been put to work, at
least on the concrete problem of describing and understanding symptoms. A
comparison of the clinical meaning and usage of these symptoms before and after
1913 shows, however, that the ’phenomenological’ treatment did not alter them
at all.

NOTES and REFERENCES

1. Heimann, H., ’Der Einfluss von Karl Jaspers auf die Psychopathologie’.
Psychiatrie und Neurologie, cxx (1950), 1-20.
2. Taylor, F. K., ’The role of phenomenology in psychiatry’. British Journal of
Psychiatry, cxiii (1967), 765-770.
3. Berner, P. and Küfferle B., ’British phenomenology and psychopathological
concepts: a comparative review’. British Journal of Psychiatry, cxl (1982), 558-565.
4. Shepherd, M., ’Karl Jaspers: General Psychopathology’. British Journal of Psychiatry,
cxli (1982), 310-312.
5. Shepherd, M., ’Introduction: The sciences and general psychopathology’. In
M. Shepherd and O. L. Zangwill (eds), General Psychopathology (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-8.
6. Spiegelberg, H., Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry (Evanston, IL.:
Northwestern University Press, 1972).
7. Walker, C., ’Philosophical concepts and practice: the legacy of Karl Jaspers’
psychopathology’. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, i (1988), 624-629.
8. Klein, E., A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Vol. 2
(Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1967).
9. Cassirer, E., El problema del conocimiento en la filosofía y las ciencias modernas
(translated from the original German edition of 1907 by W. Roces), Vol. 2 (México:
Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1956), 487-498.
10. Dartigués, A., Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie? (Paris: Privat, 1972).
11. Lyotard, J. F., La phénoménologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959).
12. Guislain J., Leçons orales sur les phrénopathies, ou traité théorique et pratique des
maladies mentales, Vol. 1 (Gand: L. Hebbalyinck, 1852), 309.
13. Spiegelberg, H., The Phenomenological Movement (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982).

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322
14. Rancurello, A. C., A Study of Franz Brentano (New York: Academic Press, 1967).
15. Hodges, H. A., The Philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1952).
16. Brentano, F., Psychology from an Empirical Point of View. First edition 1874.
Version consulted was translated by A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell and
L. L. McAllister (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 88.
17. Dilthey, W., Ideen über eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie. Gesammelte
Schriften, Vol. 5 (Stuttgart: Teubner), 1957.
18. Ebbinghaus, H., ’Über erklärende und beschreibende Psychologie’. Zeitschrift für
Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, vii (1896), 161-205.
19. Caparrós, A., Ebbinghaus (Barcelona: Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 1986).
20. Husserl, E., Phenomenological Psychology, translated by J. Scanlon (The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1977), 25.
21. Arens, K., Structures of Knowing (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989).
22. Spiegelberg, H., ’Der Begriff der Intentionalität in der Scholastik, bei Brentano,
und bei Husserl’. Philosophische Hefte, v, 75-9121.
23. Chisholm, R. M., ’Intentionality’. In P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Vol. 4 (New York: MacMillan, 1967), 201-204.
24. Morrison, J. C., ’Husserl and Brentano on intentionality’. Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, xxxi (1970), 27-46.
25. Husserl, E., Phenomenological Psychology, trans. by J. Scanlon (The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1977), 25.
26. Searle, J., Intentionality. An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), 65.
27. Hodges, H. A., The Philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1952).
28. Sajama, S. and Kamppinen, M., A Historical Introduction to Phenomenology
(London: Croom Helm, 1987).
29. Rancurello, A. C.,
A Study of Franz Brentano (New York: Academic Press, 1968).
30. de Boer, T., The Development of Husserl’s Thought, trans. by T. Plantinga (The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1978).
31. Rouse, J., ’Husserlian phenomenology and scientific realism’. Philosophy of
Science, liv (1987), 222-232.
32. Jennings, J. L., ’Husserl revisited’. American Psychologist, xli (1986), 1231-1240.
33. Frege, G., ’On sense and reference’. In P. Geach and M. Black (eds),
Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege (Oxford: Blackwells, 1966), 56-78.
34. Dummett,M., Frege. Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth, 1973).
35. Sajama, S. and Kamppinen, M., A Historical Introduction to Phenomenology
(London: Croom Helm, 1987).
36. The influence of Frege on Husserl has been well explored by J. N. Mohanty,
Husserl and Frege (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 1982).
37. Cassirer, E., Filosofía de la ilustración (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
1950), chapter iii, 112-154.
38. Cassirer, E., Filosofía de la ilustración (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
1950), chapter iii, 112-154.
39. Cassirer, E., El problema del conocimiento en la filosofía y en las ciencias modernas,
Vol. III, Los sistemas post-kantianos (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1957),
532-572.

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 323
40. Windelband, W., Historia de la Filosofia Moderna, Vol. 2 (Buenos Aires: Nova,
1948),318-328.
A System of Logic, 8th Edition (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1898
41. Mill, J. S.,
(first edition 1843)).
42. Mill, J. S., A System of Logic, 8th Edition (London, Longmans, Green & Co, 1898
(first edition 1843)), 370.
43. Frege, G., The Foundations of Arithmetic. A Logico-mathematical Inquiry into the
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as: ’The phenomenological approach in psychopathology’. British Journal of

Psychiatry, cxiv (1968), 1313-1323).

85. Kandinsky, V., Kritische und klinische Betrachtungen im gebiete der Sinnestauschungen
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Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, ix (1912), 391-408.
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of Karl Jaspers (Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1957), 5-94.
92. Jaspers, K., General Psychopathology trans. by J. Hoenig and M. Hamilton
(Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1963; being a translation of the 7th
German Edition).
93. Baeyer, Von W., ’Symposium on psychopathology to mark the centenary of
Jaspers’ birthday (Heidelberg, 1983)’. Psychological Medicine, xiv (1984), 457-460.
94. Schmitt, W., ’Grundlinien psychiatrischer praxis bei Karl Jaspers’. In E. Seidler
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95. Jaspers, K., ’Philosophical autobiography’. In P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy
of Karl Jaspers (Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1957), 17-19.
96. Jaspers, K., Allgemeine Psychopathologie für Studieren, Ärtze und Psychologen, 2nd
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97. Husserl, E., ’Prólogo a la segunda edición’. Investigaciones lógicas. Vol 1.
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(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963), 3.
99. Jaspers, K., Psychopathologie Générale. Translation of the 3rd German edition by A.
Kastler and J. Medousse; proof-read by J. P. Sartre and P. Nizan (Paris: Alcan, 1928).
100. Jaspers, K., Psicopatología General. Translation of the 5th German edition by
A. Vela (Buenos Aires: Aguilar, 1950).
101. Jaspers, K., General Psychopathology, trans. by J. Hoenig and M. Hamilton
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963), 55.
102. Jaspers, K., ’Arzt und Patient’. Studium Generale, vi (1953), 435-443.
103. Jaspers, K., General Psychopathology, trans. by J. Hoenig and M. Hamilton
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963), 56-77.
104. Ibid., 58.
105. Kolle, K., ’Karl Jaspers as psychopathologist’. In P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The
Philosophy of Karl Jaspers (Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1957).
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position’. Journal for the History of the Behavioural Sciences, x (1974), 213-226. On

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the influence of Max Weber on Jaspers and his General Psychopathology see also
Henrich, D., ’Karl Jaspers: thinking with Max Weber in mind’. In W. J Mommsen
and J. Osterhammer (eds), Max Weber and his Contemporaries (London: Unwin
Hyman, 1987), 528-544.
110. Schwartz, M. A. and Wiggins. O. P., ’Diagnosis and ideal types: a contribution to
psychiatric classification’. Comprehensive Psychiatry, xxviii (1987), 277-291.
111. Müller-Hegemann, D., ’Jaspers and the Heidelberg Psychiatric School’. International
Journal of Psychiatry, vi (1968), 50-62.
112. Lanteri-Laura, G., ’La notion de processus dans la penseé psychopathologique de
K. Jaspers’. L’Evolution psychiatrique, xxvii (1962), 459-499.
113. Hersch, J., Karl Jaspers (Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 1978), 15.
114. Kremer-Marietti, A., Jaspers (Madrid: Edaf, 1974), 29.
A Century of Psychiatry (Paris: Dacosta, 1984), 82.
115. Pichot, P.,
116. Schmitt, W., ’Karl Jaspers und die Methodenfrage in der Psychiatrie’. In
W. Janzarik (ed.), Psychopathologie als Grundenlagenwissenschaft (Stuttgart: Enke,
1979), 74-82.
117. Blankenburg, W., ’Unausgeschopftes in der Psychopathologie von Karl Jaspers’.
Nervenarzt, Iv (1984), 447-460.
118. Baeyer, Von W. ’Symposium on psychopathology to mark the centenary of
Jaspers’ birthday (Heidelberg 1983)’. Psychological Medicine, xiv (1984), 458.
119. Ibid., 459.
120. Beauchesne, H., Histoire de la psychopathologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1986), 180.
121. Salamun, K., Karl Jaspers (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1985), 15.
122. Heimann, H., ’Der Einfluss von Karl Jaspers auf die Psychopathologie’.
Psychiatrie und Neurologie, cxx (1950), 1-20.
123. Dartigués, A., Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie? (Paris: Privat, 1972).
124. Salamun, K. Karl Jaspers (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1985).
125. Sajama, S. and Kamppinen, M. A Historical Introduction to Phenomenology
(London: Croom Helm, 1987).
126. Jaspers, K., Philosophie, 3 Vols (Berlin: Springer, 1932).
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128. Koestembaum, P., ’Karl Jaspers’. In P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. Vol 4 (New York: Macmillan,1967), 254-258.
129. Jaspers, K., Rechenschaft und Ausblick. Reden und Aufsatze (München: Piper,
1951),386.
130. Deshaies, G., Psychopathologie Générale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1967), 20.
131. Spiegelberg, H., Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1972), 178.
132. Ibid., 191.
133. Husserl, E., ’Prólogo a la segunda edición’. Investigaciones lógicas. Vol 1.
Traducción de G. M. Morente y J. Gaos (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1929),
17.
134. Martin-Santos, L. Jaspers y la comprensión del enfermo mental (Madrid: Paz
Dilthey,
Montalvo, 1955), 181.
135. Castilla del Pino, C., Introducción a la psiquiatría. 1. Problemas generales. Psico(pato)logía
(Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1978), 96.

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136. Jaspers, K., General Psychopathology, trans. by J. Hoenig and M. Hamilton
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963), 27.
137. Lagache, D., ’Jaspers y la inteligibilidad de lo psíquico’. In Obra, II (1939-1946)
(Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1982), 51-62 (first published in French in 1941), 54.
138. Embmeier, K. P. ’Explaining and understanding in psychopathology’. British
Journal of Psychiatry, cli (1987), 800-804.
139. Jenner, F. A., Monteiro, A. C. and Vlissides, D., ’The negative effects on
psychiatry of Karl Jaspers’ development of Verstehen’. Journal of the British Society
for Phenomenology, xvii (1986), 52-70.
140. Harrison, P. J., ’General Psychopathology: Karl Jaspers’. British Journal of
Psychiatry, clix (1991), 300-302.
141. Appel, K. O., ’Dilthey’s distinction between "explanation" and "understanding"
and the possibility of its mediation’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, xxv (1987),
131-149.
142. Rickman, H. P., ’The philosophical basis of psychiatry’. Philosophy of Social
Sciences, xvii (1987), 173-196.
143. Daumézon, G. and Lanteri-Laura, G., ’Signification d’une sémiologie phéno-
ménologique’. L’Encéphale, xxiii (1961), 478-511.
144. Rotov, M., ’Phenomenology or physicalism?’ Schizophrenia Bulletin, xvii (1991),
183-186.
145. Andreasen, N. C., ’Reply to "phenomenology or physicalism?"’ Schizophrenia
Bulletin, xvii (1991), 187-189. (This author manages to quote Hegel’s Phenomenology
of Mind, about the only book which does not need to be quoted in terms of the topic
under discussion!)
146. Blankenburg, W., ’Phänomenologie als Grundlagendisziplin der Psychiatrie’.
Fundamenta Psychiatrica, v (1991), 92-101.
147. Blankenburg, W., ’Karl Jaspers (1883-1969)’. In D. Engelhardt and F. Hartmann
(eds), KlassikerderMedizin. Vol. 2 (München: C. H. Beck, 1991), 351-453.
148. López Ibor, J. J., ’Karl Jaspers en su centenario’. Actas Luso-españolas de
, x (1982), 321-326.
Neurología y Psiquiatría

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