Everywhere and Nowhere

Reflections on Phenomenology as Impossible and Indispensable (in Psychology and Psychiatry)

Bibliographic Data

ID2228205
AuthorsLouis Sa (0000-0003-2694-0423, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume47
Issue3
Pages544-564
Publication date2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0093-1896 • E-ISSN: 1539-7858
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/713545
OpenAlexW3139118031
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited5

This essay argues for the necessity of a phenomenological perspective on mind and mental disorder while also emphasizing the inherent difficulty of adopting such an orientation. Here I adopt a via negativa approach—by considering three forms of error that the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty recognize as needing to be guarded against, lest they subvert the project of attaining an adequate understanding of consciousness or subjectivity: namely (1) prejudices deriving from theory and common sense, (2) distorting effects of reflection, and (3) what Heidegger termed the forgetting of the ontological difference. Phenomenology insists on the importance of studying subjective life while also acknowledging the epistemological paradoxes inherent to this domain—a domain whose very self-evidence is inseparable from mystery, whose visibility conceals a deeper invisibility. I consider these issues in light of phenomenology's relevance for certain issues in psychopathology and literary representation

Consciousness · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Invisibility · Phenomenology (philosophy · Psychoanalysis · Subjectivity · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychology

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