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Psicopatología General
La Psicopatología general, de Karl Jaspers es una de las obras clásicas en la historia de la psiquiatría. Fue publicada en 1913, cuando el autor contaba con 30 años de edad, y contribuyó a establecer los métodos para aplicar en la psiquiatría, con gran provecho, una impostación filosófica cuyos cimientos se hallan en Husserl.
El principal mérito de esta obra es haber iniciado el ambicioso intento de comprensión psicológica y de compenetración que permite captar y analizar, lo más puramente posible, las vivencias del hombre enfermo de la psique, superando la simple observación de lo que en dicho hombre era solo objetivo.
El principal mérito de esta obra es haber iniciado el ambicioso intento de comprensión psicológica y de compenetración que permite captar y analizar, lo más puramente posible, las vivencias del hombre enfermo de la psique, superando la simple observación de lo que en dicho hombre era solo objetivo.
962 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1946
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About the author
Karl Jaspers
421 books370 followersJaspers was born in Oldenburg in 1883 to a mother from a local farming community, and a jurist father. He showed an early interest in philosophy, but his father's experience with the legal system undoubtedly influenced his decision to study law at university. It soon became clear that Jaspers did not particularly enjoy law, and he switched to studying medicine in 1902.
Jaspers graduated from medical school in 1909 and began work at a psychiatric hospital in Heidelberg where Emil Kraepelin had worked some years earlier. Jaspers became dissatisfied with the way the medical community of the time approached the study of mental illness and set himself the task of improving the psychiatric approach. In 1913 Jaspers gained a temporary post as a psychology teacher at Heidelberg University. The post later became permanent, and Jaspers never returned to clinical practice.
At the age of 40 Jaspers turned from psychology to philosophy, expanding on themes he had developed in his psychiatric works. He became a renowned philosopher, well respected in Germany and Europe. In 1948 Jaspers moved to the University of Basel in Switzerland. He remained prominent in the philosophical community until his death in Basel in 1969.
Jaspers' dissatisfaction with the popular understanding of mental illness led him to question both the diagnostic criteria and the methods of clinical psychiatry. He published a revolutionary paper in 1910 in which he addressed the problem of whether paranoia was an aspect of personality or the result of biological changes. Whilst not broaching new ideas, this article introduced a new method of study. Jaspers studied several patients in detail, giving biographical information on the people concerned as well as providing notes on how the patients themselves felt about their symptoms. This has become known as the biographical method and now forms the mainstay of modern psychiatric practice.
Jaspers set about writing his views on mental illness in a book which he published in 1913 as General Psychopathology. The two volumes which make up this work have become a classic in the psychiatric literature and many modern diagnostic criteria stem from ideas contained within them. Of particular importance, Jaspers believed that psychiatrists should diagnose symptoms (particularly of psychosis) by their form rather than by their content. For example, in diagnosing a hallucination, the fact that a person experiences visual phenomena when no sensory stimuli account for it (form) assumes more importance than what the patient sees (content).
Jaspers felt that psychiatrists could also diagnose delusions in the same way. He argued that clinicians should not consider a belief delusional based on the content of the belief, but only based on the way in which a patient holds such a belief (see delusion for further discussion). Jaspers also distinguished between primary and secondary delusions. He defined primary delusions as autochthonous meaning arising without apparent cause, appearing incomprehensible in terms of normal mental processes. (This is a distinctly different use of the term autochthonous than its usual medical or sociological meaning of indigenous.) Secondary delusions, on the other hand, he classified as influenced by the person's background, current situation or mental state.
Jaspers considered primary delusions as ultimately 'un-understandable,' as he believed no coherent reasoning process existed behind their formation. This view has caused some controversy, and the likes of R. D. Laing and Richard Bentall have criticised it, stressing that taking this stance can lead therapists into the complacency of assuming that because they do not understand a patient, the patient is deluded and further investigation on the part of the therapist will have no effect.
Most commentators associate Jaspers with the philosophy of existentialism, in part because he draws largely upon the existentialist roots of Nietzsche and Kierk
Jaspers graduated from medical school in 1909 and began work at a psychiatric hospital in Heidelberg where Emil Kraepelin had worked some years earlier. Jaspers became dissatisfied with the way the medical community of the time approached the study of mental illness and set himself the task of improving the psychiatric approach. In 1913 Jaspers gained a temporary post as a psychology teacher at Heidelberg University. The post later became permanent, and Jaspers never returned to clinical practice.
At the age of 40 Jaspers turned from psychology to philosophy, expanding on themes he had developed in his psychiatric works. He became a renowned philosopher, well respected in Germany and Europe. In 1948 Jaspers moved to the University of Basel in Switzerland. He remained prominent in the philosophical community until his death in Basel in 1969.
Jaspers' dissatisfaction with the popular understanding of mental illness led him to question both the diagnostic criteria and the methods of clinical psychiatry. He published a revolutionary paper in 1910 in which he addressed the problem of whether paranoia was an aspect of personality or the result of biological changes. Whilst not broaching new ideas, this article introduced a new method of study. Jaspers studied several patients in detail, giving biographical information on the people concerned as well as providing notes on how the patients themselves felt about their symptoms. This has become known as the biographical method and now forms the mainstay of modern psychiatric practice.
Jaspers set about writing his views on mental illness in a book which he published in 1913 as General Psychopathology. The two volumes which make up this work have become a classic in the psychiatric literature and many modern diagnostic criteria stem from ideas contained within them. Of particular importance, Jaspers believed that psychiatrists should diagnose symptoms (particularly of psychosis) by their form rather than by their content. For example, in diagnosing a hallucination, the fact that a person experiences visual phenomena when no sensory stimuli account for it (form) assumes more importance than what the patient sees (content).
Jaspers felt that psychiatrists could also diagnose delusions in the same way. He argued that clinicians should not consider a belief delusional based on the content of the belief, but only based on the way in which a patient holds such a belief (see delusion for further discussion). Jaspers also distinguished between primary and secondary delusions. He defined primary delusions as autochthonous meaning arising without apparent cause, appearing incomprehensible in terms of normal mental processes. (This is a distinctly different use of the term autochthonous than its usual medical or sociological meaning of indigenous.) Secondary delusions, on the other hand, he classified as influenced by the person's background, current situation or mental state.
Jaspers considered primary delusions as ultimately 'un-understandable,' as he believed no coherent reasoning process existed behind their formation. This view has caused some controversy, and the likes of R. D. Laing and Richard Bentall have criticised it, stressing that taking this stance can lead therapists into the complacency of assuming that because they do not understand a patient, the patient is deluded and further investigation on the part of the therapist will have no effect.
Most commentators associate Jaspers with the philosophy of existentialism, in part because he draws largely upon the existentialist roots of Nietzsche and Kierk
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 28, 2024
Suitably teutonic and exceptionally insightful.
The same illness, dementia praecox for example (schizophrenia), may be characterised in one individual by simple delusions of jealousy and persecution, while in another, the same ideas can develop to an extraordinary degree of richness and the changed experience of life turn into a fountain of originality and poetic creativity. The symptomatology of every psychiatric disturbance will correspond with the degree of psychic development attained by the patient.
The cultural milieu in which a human being grows up and lives merely furthers or retards the unfolding of the individual constitution (Anlage). Man lives by participating in the collective cultural achievements of history and only reaches his own individual development through them… Manifestations of mental illness obviously attain far more richness and variety when they occur at higher cultural levels… Doctors in private clinics possess incomparably valuable case material in their educated patients, whereas public clinics know only too well the monotony of hysteria in the simpler type of patient.
Illness and normality:
Willmans once expressed this neatly in conversation showing the paradoxical character of the concept of illness: ‘Normality… is a slighter degree of feeble-mindedness…’ If we take intellectual giftedness as our standard - the majority of men are slightly feeble-minded. But the average, that is, the attribute of the majority, is the measure for health, and therefore slight feeblemindedness is what is healthy. But slight feeblemindedness is a term for something ‘sick.’ Therefore something that is sick is also normal. Therefore healthy=sick. This means the obvious dissolution of this pair of concepts if they are to depend on norms or averages…
The borderline for sickness therefore has been drawn according to what psychologically is a superficial point of view and, when anti-social tendencies appear, according to the viewpoint of police administration. There are different borderlines for the poor and for the property-owning and they are different again in a psychiatric clinic, a sanatorium and a psychotherapist’s consulting room.
It is worth noting that madness has evoked awe as well as horror. The ‘holy sickness’ of epilepsy was thought to be the effects of daemonic or divine influences. Plato says: ‘Now the greatest goods come to us from a madness which is lent to us by divine favour… according to ancient testimony a madness sent from the gods is more desirable by far than mere human reasonableness.’ Nietzsche poured his scorn on those who rejected the bacchic dances of the Greeks and the Dionysian orgies as if they were ‘popular disorders’ to be mocked at and deprecated from a level of healthy smugness. ‘The poor things have obviously no inkling how pallid and ghostlike their so-called health would have seemed to these others.’ Nietzsche defines the cultured philistine as follows: ‘Lastly, he invents a general effective formula, ‘health,’ in respect of his habits, ways of looking at things, his likes and dislikes and dismisses every uncomfortable disturber of his peace under the suspicion of being sick or highly strung.’ Both Plato and Nietzsche are speaking of illness not in the sense of its being less than health and sheerly destructive but as an enlarged state, an enhanced state, a state of creativity. Madness of this sort is more than health. Nietzsche asks: Perhaps there are healthy neuroses? In any case, where there is an awakened sense of the human abyss, and no possible pretext for ordering the world, no possible human ideals or genuine outlook on the world, madness and psychopathy acquire a human significance. They are an actuality in which such possibilities are revealed, which the healthy person conceals from himself, avoids and guards himself against. But the healthy person who keeps his psyche marginally exposed and who investigates the psychopathological will find there what he potentially is or what is essentially there for him, distant and strange though it may be, a message from beyond the actual margins of his experience. The fear and awe felt for certain forms of illness are not only historically matters of superstition but of lasting significance.
The same illness, dementia praecox for example (schizophrenia), may be characterised in one individual by simple delusions of jealousy and persecution, while in another, the same ideas can develop to an extraordinary degree of richness and the changed experience of life turn into a fountain of originality and poetic creativity. The symptomatology of every psychiatric disturbance will correspond with the degree of psychic development attained by the patient.
The cultural milieu in which a human being grows up and lives merely furthers or retards the unfolding of the individual constitution (Anlage). Man lives by participating in the collective cultural achievements of history and only reaches his own individual development through them… Manifestations of mental illness obviously attain far more richness and variety when they occur at higher cultural levels… Doctors in private clinics possess incomparably valuable case material in their educated patients, whereas public clinics know only too well the monotony of hysteria in the simpler type of patient.
Illness and normality:
Willmans once expressed this neatly in conversation showing the paradoxical character of the concept of illness: ‘Normality… is a slighter degree of feeble-mindedness…’ If we take intellectual giftedness as our standard - the majority of men are slightly feeble-minded. But the average, that is, the attribute of the majority, is the measure for health, and therefore slight feeblemindedness is what is healthy. But slight feeblemindedness is a term for something ‘sick.’ Therefore something that is sick is also normal. Therefore healthy=sick. This means the obvious dissolution of this pair of concepts if they are to depend on norms or averages…
The borderline for sickness therefore has been drawn according to what psychologically is a superficial point of view and, when anti-social tendencies appear, according to the viewpoint of police administration. There are different borderlines for the poor and for the property-owning and they are different again in a psychiatric clinic, a sanatorium and a psychotherapist’s consulting room.
It is worth noting that madness has evoked awe as well as horror. The ‘holy sickness’ of epilepsy was thought to be the effects of daemonic or divine influences. Plato says: ‘Now the greatest goods come to us from a madness which is lent to us by divine favour… according to ancient testimony a madness sent from the gods is more desirable by far than mere human reasonableness.’ Nietzsche poured his scorn on those who rejected the bacchic dances of the Greeks and the Dionysian orgies as if they were ‘popular disorders’ to be mocked at and deprecated from a level of healthy smugness. ‘The poor things have obviously no inkling how pallid and ghostlike their so-called health would have seemed to these others.’ Nietzsche defines the cultured philistine as follows: ‘Lastly, he invents a general effective formula, ‘health,’ in respect of his habits, ways of looking at things, his likes and dislikes and dismisses every uncomfortable disturber of his peace under the suspicion of being sick or highly strung.’ Both Plato and Nietzsche are speaking of illness not in the sense of its being less than health and sheerly destructive but as an enlarged state, an enhanced state, a state of creativity. Madness of this sort is more than health. Nietzsche asks: Perhaps there are healthy neuroses? In any case, where there is an awakened sense of the human abyss, and no possible pretext for ordering the world, no possible human ideals or genuine outlook on the world, madness and psychopathy acquire a human significance. They are an actuality in which such possibilities are revealed, which the healthy person conceals from himself, avoids and guards himself against. But the healthy person who keeps his psyche marginally exposed and who investigates the psychopathological will find there what he potentially is or what is essentially there for him, distant and strange though it may be, a message from beyond the actual margins of his experience. The fear and awe felt for certain forms of illness are not only historically matters of superstition but of lasting significance.
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August 3, 2025Al fin...
El esfuerzo de Jaspers por darle una base filosófica al encuentro mente/órgano se agradece pero queda retratada la intención de la razón por determinar el desarrollo del comportamiento poniendo como patología el delirio y no atisbando que es un problema en la persona, no en el órgano (determinado como una forma de conducta que no integra mundo y no como una atrofia orgánica). Que le permite elaborar sobre la heredabilidad de las patologías mentales en los genes, el determinismo en toda su expresión sin siquiera notarlo, por tanto dando justificación a la clasificación de un comportamiento como patología y abriendo veda a toda elaboración cognitivo-conductual como clínica y no simplemente como problema ético de individúo ante el mundo.
Este gran ensayo a pesar de interpretaciones posteriores que abre y justifica, es didáctico para todo el sabe que el concepto enfermedad mental debe ser una atrofia o degeneración del órgano y no una mala integración o adecuación del individuo al mundo.
El esfuerzo de Jaspers por darle una base filosófica al encuentro mente/órgano se agradece pero queda retratada la intención de la razón por determinar el desarrollo del comportamiento poniendo como patología el delirio y no atisbando que es un problema en la persona, no en el órgano (determinado como una forma de conducta que no integra mundo y no como una atrofia orgánica). Que le permite elaborar sobre la heredabilidad de las patologías mentales en los genes, el determinismo en toda su expresión sin siquiera notarlo, por tanto dando justificación a la clasificación de un comportamiento como patología y abriendo veda a toda elaboración cognitivo-conductual como clínica y no simplemente como problema ético de individúo ante el mundo.
Este gran ensayo a pesar de interpretaciones posteriores que abre y justifica, es didáctico para todo el sabe que el concepto enfermedad mental debe ser una atrofia o degeneración del órgano y no una mala integración o adecuación del individuo al mundo.
August 26, 2024
Неймовірне поєднання психіатрії та філософського погляду. Вперше бачу настільки переплетиний матеріал. Особливо цікаві думки, які починаються з психіатрії і продовжуються в філософії. Поєднання досвіду, знань та мужрості створили неймовірний матеріал. Книжка для довгих роздумів. Іноді важко читати через щільність ідей і думок, зупиняєшся і обдумуєш сторінку декілька годин. Моя повага автору за висвітлення та перенесення психіатрії на філософію. Рекомнедую для фахівців в галузі психіатрія.
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March 12, 2026In psicopatologia il modo (la forma) con cui ci si mostra è più rilevante all'occhio clinico di quello che si mostra (il contenuto).
Le situazioni umane limite, come le psicosi, servono a conoscere l'essenza dell'esistenza. Ci rendono edotti di cose che ci riguardano, che esistono ma non siamo abituati a vedere.
Le situazioni umane limite, come le psicosi, servono a conoscere l'essenza dell'esistenza. Ci rendono edotti di cose che ci riguardano, che esistono ma non siamo abituati a vedere.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews