Describes the changing sounds of the rain, the slow soft sprinkle, the drip-drop tinkle, the sounding pounding roaring rain, and the fresh wet silent after-time of rain.

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental _Phénoménologie de la perception _signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers. _Phenomenology of Perception _stands in the great phenomenological tradition of Husserl, (...) Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s contribution is decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors, particularly Descartes and Kant, to confront a neglected dimension of our experience: the lived body and the phenomenal world. Charting a bold course between the reductionism of science on the one hand and "intellectualism" on the other, Merleau-Ponty argues that we should regard the body not as a mere biological or physical unit, but as the body which structures one’s situation and experience within the world. Merleau-Ponty enriches his classic work with engaging studies of famous cases in the history of psychology and neurology as well as phenomena that continue to draw our attention, such as phantom limb syndrome, synaesthesia, and hallucination. This new translation includes many helpful features such as the reintroduction of Merleau-Ponty’s discursive Table of Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive Translator’s Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of Merleau-Ponty’s references to now available English translations. Also included is a new foreword by Taylor Carman and an introduction to Merleau-Ponty_ _by Claude Lefort. Translated by Donald A. Landes. (shrink)

In the formative years of psychiatry Freud, Bleuler, and Jaspers all studied Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness as a model of psychotic thought. Sass provides a nuanced interpretation of Schreber's Memoirs in the context of Wittgenstein's analysis of philosophical solipsism. A dauntless critic of the illusions of philosophy, Wittgenstein likened the speculative excesses of traditional metaphysics to mental illness. Sass observes that many of the "intellectual diseases" that Wittgenstein discerned - diseases involving detachment from social existence and (...) practical concerns, and exaggerated processes of abstraction and self-consciousness - have striking affinities with the symptoms of schizophrenia. Like the philosophical solipsist, the schizophrenic may define his or her own consciousness as the center of the universe - and may experience his or her delusional world as a product of that same consciousness. (shrink)

Madness and Modernism provides a phenomenological study of schizophrenic disorders, criticizing some standard conceptions of these disorders. Sass argues that many aspects of this group of disorders can actually involve more sophisticated (albeit dysfunctional) forms of mind and experience.

In 1910, Karl Jaspers wrote a seminal essay on morbid jealousy in which he laid the foundation for the psychopathological phenomenology that through his work and the work of Hans Gruhle and Kurt Schneider, among others, would become the ...

This paper focuses on the phenomenological significance of schizophrenics' auditory hallucinations and begins with the face-to-face relationship in order to describe the schizophrenic experience. Following European psychiatrists like Blackenburg and Tatossian, the authors compare the bracketing of reality in the Husserlian phenomenological reduction with that of the hallucinatory experience. "Hallucinatory epoché" is used to refer to the schizophrenic way to experiencing auditory hallucinations. The problem of intentionality is then discussed, in addition to that of dialogue, internal time, living body, and (...) intersubjectivity. In this way, "voices" appear as a modification of the own inner voice of the hallucinating person. The "other, " at the origin of the "voices, " is described in terms of transparence, the quality of being univocal, and the quality of being a priori in the perfect tense. This other is not an alter ego, "it" is an alius. Descriptions of hallucinatory voices at several levels of experience, that is, at the transcendental and empirical levels along with descriptions at the level of the life-world, may be at the basis of certain modern empirical theories of "voices. " Results obtained from the European phenomenological point of view and Hoffman's findings in the cognitive field are then compared. The authors finally discuss a case of "speech therapy" and argue that a possible avenue for phenomenological research on schizophrenia is to explore narrativity on the basis of single case studies. One of the goals of phenomenological psychiatry is to assist empirical research in finding new relationships between the stories told by the hallucinator-relationships that are presupposed in clinical experience. (shrink)

Research conducted in Montreal with schizophrenic patients was aimed at exploring the mode of Being-in-the-world and the kind of lifeworld associated with a positive evolution. Data were collected through open-ended interviews with patients who were contrasted for their rate of rehospitalization. The analysis combined structural analysis, inspired by hermeneutics, and discourse analysis. The interpretation of the data was guided by the framework provided by European phenomenological psychiatry. The research indicates that nonrehospitalization is associated with a specific mode of Being-in-the-world, which (...) is described at several levels: At the structural level, it is marked by a stance of "positive withdrawal" dominated by personal detachment; self-perceptions evidence various semiological and rhetorical strategies that contribute to the rearticulation of a sense of personal identity; narratives reveal that patients resort to a limited number of specific life strategies for relocating themselves within their own biography and within the present world. Hypotheses are posed regarding the potential influence of the North American culture on the restorative strategies drawn from the patients' narratives. (shrink)

Schizophrenic hallucinations can be understood only as a function of the totality of the schizophrenic's personality, that is, only in the context of the person's entire being-in-the-world. For essential reasons, there is a predominance of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, and these typically take the form of human voices. This paper argues that the essential reasons here are human reasons. That is, hallucinations arise primarily on account of a human or personal deficit. We argue that the deficit in question is, most (...) fundamentally, the radical one of a disturbed relation between the subject and the world in general. The schizophrenic slackens the normal "intentional arc" that casts the subject out into a world. Our thesis is that this slackening has interpersonal roots and that hallucination can be understood as a desperate attempt to compensate for the impoverishment of being-in-the-world and, specifically, for the deficiency in human relations; hence, the "human" voices. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of a central psychopathological concept, the notion of "poor reality-testing. "Using ideas from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, I consider the nature of delusions in schizophrenia, largely through examining Daniel Paul Schreber's famous Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Many schizophrenic individuals do not in fact mistake their fantasies for reality, as is traditionally assumed. Rather, I argue, they engage in a solipsistic mode of experience, a felt subjectivization of the lived world that is associated with a (...) stance of passivity and hyperconsciousness. I discuss the existential conditions and consequences of this stance and show that certain anomalous or paradoxical features of schizophrenic delusion are explicable on this phenomenological account. (shrink)

In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism.

The subjective experience of schizophrenia, its cause, and its course have been consistent topics of interest within the phenomenological tradition since its inception. After 80 years of study and the efforts of many investigators, however, phenomenological contributions have so far had only a modest impact on current understandings of this disorder. In this article, the author reviews the methodological and theoretical issues involved in the development of a phenomenological approach to understanding schizophrenia. Drawing examples from his own empirical research, the (...) author illustrates the three steps of description, understanding, and explanation required by an application of the phenomenological method to this empirical domain. He then considers obstacles to the acceptance of insights generated through this method by the mainstream psychiatric community. In conclusion, he suggests that the promise offered by a phenomenological approach will most likely be fulfilled when investigators appeal to the phenomenological conviction in intentionality to provide the guidelines for an empirical science of subjective life. (shrink)

Schizophrenia has historically been considered a severe psychiatric disorder with a chronic and progressive course; an assumption that has shaped both clinical research and public policy. Recent studies have suggested, however, that many people recover from this disorder to varying degrees, prompting new research approaches that focus on factors influencing improvement as well as pathology. An empirical-phenomenological approach appears especially promising as an avenue to investigating the active role the person may play in improvement. The dimensions of everyday life that (...) are discussed as providing a conceptual framework for investigations of the active role of the person are intentionality, temporality, and meaning. Within this framework a four-step process of recovering and reconstructing the self in schizophrenia is then delineated, with concrete illustrations of each step drawn from interviews with one young woman with schizophrenia. The findings are taken to represent the kinds of valuable insights that may be garnered from an empirical-phenomenological approach to research built upon a recognition of the importance of the dimensions of intentionality, temporality, and meaning in the everyday life of those afflicied with severe mental illness. There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again. T. S. Eliot. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers' phenomenology remains important today, not solely because of its continuing influence in some areas of psychiatry, but because, if fully understood, it can provide a method and set of concepts for making new progress in the science of psychopathology. In order to understand this method and set of concepts, it helps to recognize the significant influence that Edmund Husserl's early work, Logical investigations, exercised on Jaspers' formulation of them. We trace the Husserlian influence while clarifying the main components (...) of Jaspers' method. Jaspers adopted Husserl's notions of intuition, description, and presuppositionlessness, transforming them when necessary in order to serve the investigations of the psychopathologist. Jaspers also took over from Wilhelm Dilthey and others the tools of understanding (Verstehen) and self-transposal. The Diltheyian procedures were integrated into the Husserlian ones to produce a method that enables psychiatrists to define the basic kinds of psychopathological mental states. (shrink)

Technical delusions are highly significant for the diagnosis of schizophrenia. What can we learn from the content and the formal aspects of this kind of delusion about the primary schizophrenic experiences underlying the technical delusion and about its meaning and purpose for the patient? In a phenomenological investigation of six schizophrenics, comparing their experiences in technical delusion with the normal experience of technical phenomena, I describe the patient's relationship to himself, to his world, and to others and the modalities of (...) his hallucinatory perceptions. Finally, I discuss the effect of the technical delusion on the patient's relationship to reality. (shrink)