In it, Jaspers made a distinction between two apparently irreconcilable methods of comprehending mental symptoms: understanding and explaining. According to Jaspers, a patient’s experiences can be understood if they are seen to arise meaningfully from the person’s personality and life history. The key to a psychological analysis of a patient’s abnormal experiences is therefore the clinician’s empathetic understanding of the patient’s subjective world and life story. In some cases, however, symptoms arise in such a way that no amount of empathy can link them understandably to the patient’s
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