Psychopathology: an edgeless razor?

Phenomenology yesterday, today, and tomorrow: a proposed phenomenological response to the double challenges of contemporary recovery-oriented person-centered mental health care

This paper argues that a dialectical synthesis of phenomenology's traditional twin roles in psychiatry (one science-centered, the other individual-centered) is needed to support the recovery-oriented practice that is at the heart of contemporary person-centered mental health care. The paper is in two main sections. Section I illustrates the different ways in which phenomenology's two roles have played out over three significant periods of the history of phenomenology in 20th century psychiatry: with the introduction of phenomenology in Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology in 1913; with the development a few years later of structural phenomenological psychopathology; and in the period of post-War humanism. Section II is concerned with the role of phenomenology in contemporary mental health. There has been a turn to phenomenology in the current period, we argue, in response to what amounts to an uncoupling of academic psychiatry from front-line clinical care. Corresponding with the two roles of phenomenology, this uncoupling has both scientific aspects and clinical aspects. The latter, we suggest, is most fully expressed in a new model of "recovery," defined, not by the values of professionals as experts-by-training, but by the values of patients and carers as experts-by-experience, specifically, by what is important to the quality of life of the individual concerned in the situation in question. We illustrate the importance of recovery, so defined, and the challenges raised by it for both the evidence-base and the values-base of clinical decision-making, with brief clinical vignettes. It is to these challenges we argue, that phenomenology through a synthesis of its twin roles is uniquely equipped to respond. Noting, however, the many barriers to such a synthesis, we argue that in the current state of development of the field, it is by way of a dialectical synthesis of phenomenology's roles that we should proceed. From such a dialectic, a genuine synthesis of roles may ultimately emerge. We conclude with a note on the wider significance of these developments, arguing that contrary to 20th century stereotypes, they show psychiatry to be leading the way for healthcare as a whole, in developing the resources for 21st century person-centered clinical care.

Diagnosis or Diagnosing? From Symptoms to a Phenomenological-Psychoanalytic Stance on the Patient's World

While on the one hand therapists can count on a number of codified and standardized diagnostic procedures, on the other hand it is hard to believe that in their daily work therapists slavishly follow these standardized procedures. In a clinical assessment, the diagnosis seems to be the outcome of a naïve and fuzzy process that is strongly influenced by personal training, by, theoretical models, and by one's masters as well as the experience gained in the field. What happens inside the no man's land of the clinical encounter? Can we identify some landmarks in these "amoeboid" exploratory moves? This paper addresses diagnosis not only as a noun or name ("diagnosis"), but also as a verb ("diagnosing"), arguing that a diagnostic space opens up thanks to an oscillatory state of mind that emerges at the intersection of different ways of looking "through" the symptom.

Models of borderline personality disorder: recent advances and new perspectives

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

The purpose of this article is to review the most relevant conceptual models of borderline personality disorder (BPD), with a focus on recent developments in this area.

RECENT FINDINGS

Several conceptual models have been proposed with the aim of better understanding BPD: the borderline personality organization, emotion dysregulation, reflective (mentalization) dysfunction, interpersonal hypersensitivity and hyperbolic temperament models. These models have all been supported to some extent and their common components include disorganized attachment and traumatic early experiences, emotion dysregulation, interpersonal sensitivity and difficulties with social cognition. An attempt to integrate some components of the conceptual models of BPD has resulted in an emerging new perspective, the interpersonal dysphoria model, which emphasizes dysphoria as an overarching phenomenon that connects the dispositional and situational aspects of BPD.

SUMMARY

Various conceptual models have expanded our understanding of BPD, but it appears that further development entails theoretical integration. More research is needed to better understand interactions between various components of BPD, including the situational factors that activate symptoms of BPD. This will help develop therapeutic approaches that are more tailored to the heterogeneous psychopathology of BPD.

Preliminary Validation of the Interpersonal Dysphoria Model of Borderline Personality Disorder

BACKGROUND

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is one of the most puzzling psychiatric disorders. In order to improve its understanding and management, we have recently proposed an interpersonal dysphoria model that emphasizes the key role of the complex emotional state of dysphoria in BPD. The purpose of this study was to test the interpersonal dysphoria model using a structural equation modeling analysis.

SAMPLING AND METHODS

The sample consisted of 105 patients with BPD and 105 healthy controls. A total of five self-report instruments and three semistructured interviews were administered to the participants.

RESULTS

The best-fitting structural model fit the data well in the BPD sample. Background dysphoria and negative interpersonal disposition were significant predictors of situational dysphoria, which in turn was a significant predictor of various symptoms of BPD. This model differs from the originally proposed one in terms of impaired empathy not being a component of negative interpersonal disposition and organizing and disorganizing BPD symptoms being replaced by interpersonal (abandonment fears, angry outbursts, and stormy relations) and affective (affective shifts and emptiness) symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

Although some revision was needed, the findings provide support to the proposed model, which needs to be further tested in a larger sample of individuals with BPD.

Phenomenological psychopathology in contemporary psychiatry: interfaces and perspectives

Due to growing skepticism about the current psychiatric model, psychopathology has once again aroused interest in the psychiatric field. This article intends to examine the current perspectives of the phenomenological approach of psychopathology in the context of psychiatry. To this end, we will situate phenomenology along the historical course of psychopathology, presenting the particularities of its understanding of the psychiatric object, and finally, we will defend, in general terms, the affinity of the phenomenological approach with the aspirations and practical needs of the field of psychiatry.

Differential typology of delusions in major depression and schizophrenia. A critique to the unitary concept of 'psychosis'

It is a current trend in psychiatry to discard the Kraepelinian dichotomy schizophrenia vs. manic-depressive illness and use the overinclusive label 'psychosis' to broadly indicate the whole spectrum of severe mental disorders. In this paper we show that the characteristics of psychotic symptoms vary across different diagnostic categories. We compare delusions in schizophrenia and major depression and demonstrate how these phenomena radically differ under these two psychopathological conditions. The identification of specific types of delusions is principally achieved through the differential description of subjective experiences. We will use two general domains to differentiate schizophrenic and depressive delusions, namely the intrinsic and extrinsic features of these phenomena. Intrinsic features are the form and content of delusions, extrinsic ones include the background from which delusions arise, that is, changes in the field of experience, background feelings, ontological framework of experience, and existential orientation. This kind of systematic exploration of the patients' experience may provide a useful integration to the standard symptom-based approach and can be used to establish a differential typology of the clinical manifestation of psychosis based on the fundamental alterations of the structures of subjectivity characterizing each mental disorder, particularly with respect to the Kraepelinian dichotomy schizophrenic vs. manic-depressive illness.

Conceptualization of the liability for schizophrenia: clinical implications

Historically, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia have emphasized several features, including symptoms of psychosis, a dissociation of symptoms from their etiology, a reliance on clinical symptoms, and a categorical approach to classifying the disorder. Although these emphases are quite useful, they have limitations. We review these here, and stress the importance of incorporating recent data on the genetic /biological and neurodevelopmental origins of schizophrenia into current conceptions of the disorder. We also review “schizotaxia, ” which is a concept thai embodies this point of view, occurs before the onset of psychosis, and is hypothesized to represent the liability for schizophrenia. If our hypothesis on this point is correct, the identification of schizotaxic individuals will eventually facilitate the development of prevention strategies by identifying a premorbid (but clinically significant) condition for schizophrenia. Moreover, the identification of biological or neuropsychological components of schizotaxia will provide more specific bases for developing novel treatment interventions. Our initial attempts to develop protocols for the assessment and treatment of schizotaxia are encouraging, and will be reviewed.

What is it like to be a person with Schizophrenia in the social world? A first-person perspective study on Schizophrenic Dissociality--part 2: methodological issues and empirical findings

OBJECTIVE

This is an empirical study exploring the personal level of experience of social dysfunction in persons with schizophrenia.

METHOD

We adopted a qualitative method of inquiry based on a review of transcripts of individual therapy sessions conducted for 52 persons with chart diagnoses of schizophrenia or schizotypal disorder.

RESULTS

In our interviews, the experience of the social world in persons with schizophrenia emerged as an overall crisis of immediate, prepredicative, prereflexive attunement, typically accompanied by feelings of invasiveness and abnormalities in bodily and emotional sensations; a hyperreflexive mode for understanding the intentions of other persons, and a sceptical, aversive and sometimes utopian attitude towards sociality.

CONCLUSION

Social dysfunction in persons with schizophrenia may reflect a disorder of the process of corporeal identification/differentiation that allows both for the intersubjective understanding through body-to-body attunement and for the demarcation between self and other.

The meanings of psychopathology

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

The scope of the present review is to criticize the trivial meanings of 'psychopathology' and re-examine its technical meanings and the role that psychopathology as the discipline that studies abnormal mental phenomena can play in today's clinical practice and research, and in the conceptualization of mental disorders.

RECENT FINDINGS

I will first describe and discuss the way the term 'psychopathology' is mainly used in current psychiatric literature. This meaning, I will argue, is trivial. Then, I will move on to its technical meanings, including three classic sub-areas: descriptive, clinical and structural psychopathology, stemming from the studies of Karl Jaspers, Kurt Schneider and the phenomenological movement in psychiatry.

SUMMARY

I will address the meanings of the term 'psychopathology' in current literature and contrast it with its meanings in continental 20th century tradition. The relevance of the discipline of psychopathology for psychiatry is three-fold: it is the common language that allows psychiatrists to understand each other; it is the basis for diagnosis and classification; it makes an indispensable contribution to understanding the patients' personal experiences.

Ontological assumptions of psychiatric taxonomy: main rival positions and their critical assessment

The scientific classification of human psychopathology raises a host of important philosophical issues ranging over all major areas of philosophical inquiry; logic, semantics, ontology, epistemology and ethics. The paper focuses on the major views of the ontological status of our psychodiagnostic constructs; idealism, nominalism and finally, neoaristotelian realism. Idealism holds that our psychodiagnostic constructs represent ideal essences, instantiated imperfectly by individual mental patients of the same psychodiagnostic class. These ideal essences are construed either as abstract forms dwelling in an autonomous realm of eternal abstract objects--platonistic idealism--or as ideal objects emerging in and grasped directly by a pure or absolute consciousness--husserlian idealism. By contrast, nominalism claims that our psychodiagnostic constructs are nothing but conventional common names of sets of individual mental patients, invented and adopted on purely pragmatic grounds such as their practical utility, especially in predicting their clinical course and outcome under various types of treatment. Finally, neoaristotelian realism holds that, though our psychodiagnostic constructs are concepts, and thus of our own making, they are not arbitrary ones but grounded in objective features shared by individual mental patients of a given psychodiagnostic class. It is argued that both idealism and nominalism are flawed and thus untenable--though for different reasons--and a refined version of neoaristotelian realism defended.

A inclusão da subjetividade no ensino da Psicopatologia

O estudo da Psicopatologia tem sido freqüentemente apresentado em sua dimensão descritiva. Apesar da relevância para o ensino - auxiliar o aluno a reconhecer a dimensão sintomatológica dos quadros psicopatológicos -, exclui a dimensão subjetiva da experiência do adoecimento e seus aspectos relacionais. Partindo da tradição antropológico-existencial, apresentamos uma experiência de ensino de Psicopatologia que considera tais dimensões relevantes para a compreensão do sofrimento mental. Trabalhando com estudo de caso descritivo, são apresentadas duas novas modalidades de práticas na disciplina Psicopatologia Especial I, oferecida para alunos do curso de Psicologia da UFRJ. A proposta é ampliar o ensino prático, tradicionalmente centrado no modelo da extensa entrevista clínica, realizada diante de um grande grupo de alunos que a tudo assistem passivamente. Pretendemos aproximar o ensino e a prática da Psicopatologia dos ideais da Reforma Psiquiátrica Brasileira, que concebe o adoecimento mental como fenômeno complexo, envolvendo a relação do sujeito com o mundo.

Values in persons with schizophrenia

This is an explorative study on the values of persons with schizophrenia based on transcripts of individual therapy sessions conducted for 40 persons with chart diagnoses of schizophrenia or schizotypal disorder. Values are action-guiding attitudes that subject human activities to be worthy of praise or blame. The schizophrenic value system conveys an overall crisis of common sense. The outcome of this has been designated as antagonomia and idionomia. Antagonomia reflects the choice to take an eccentric stand in the face of commonly shared assumptions and the here and now "other." Idionomia reflects the feeling of the radical uniqueness and exceptionality of one's being with respect to common sense and the other human beings. This sentiment of radical exceptionality is felt as a "gift," often in view of an eschatological mission or a vocation to a superior, novel, metaphysical understanding of the world. The aim of this study is neither establishing new diagnostic criteria nor suggesting that values play an etio-pathogenetical role in the development of schizophrenia but improving our understanding of the "meaning" of schizophrenic experiences and beliefs, and by doing so reducing stigmatization, and enhancing the specificity and validity of "psychotic symptoms" (especially bizarre delusions) and of "social and occupational dysfunction" through a detailed description of the anthropological and existential matrix they arise from.

Psicopatologia da autonomia: a importância do conhecimento psicopatológico nos novos dispositivos de assistência psiquiátrica

O lugar que o conhecimento psicopatológico tem ocupado, e pode vir a ocupar na prática clínica dos centros de atenção psicossocial (CAPS) - serviços comunitários destinados ao tratamento de pacientes com transtornos mentais graves, persistentes, em quadros agudos ou não - é a questão central deste artigo. Analisam-se brevemente as conseqüências da hegemonia da psicopatologia descritiva para o desenho das intervenções nesses serviços e discutese se a psicopatologia do ser social poderia ser ferramenta para o construção de cuidado que visa promover a autonomia possível para os pacientes viverem em comunidade.