Phänomenologie und Medizin

Abstract

This paper pursues two aims. First, it outlines the main intentions of a recently established research project dealing with problems of subjectivity in the field of medicine. Secondly, it discusses Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis with a view to what this famous physician considers a phenomenological method appropriate to the special requirements of his field of work. Considering whether his ideas make sense from the point of view of a phenomenological philosophy, we try to explain some basic correspondences of phenomenology and Weizsäcker’s anthropological medicine. Doing this, we focus on two issues, namely objectivity and subjectivity, and theory and practice. Referring to the latter there are two meanings of ‚practice‘ which have to be carefully distinguished: natural experience embedded in our daily life-world activities on the one hand, and applications of (natural-)scientific knowledge on the other hand.

Sense of self-determination and the suicidal experience. A phenomenological approach

“…Hence the phenomenological method is perfectly suited to describe experiential structures in the first-person-perspective; but it is, of course and just like every other method, not able to describe mental life exhaustively. To be more precise, the phenomenological method implies a ‘methodically critical attitude’ ( methodenkritische Einstellung , Rinofner-Kreidl, 2003, p. 90ff), a claim in line with most Husserlian phenomenologists.…”

No departure to "Pandora"? Using critical phenomenology to differentiate "naive" from "reflective" experience in psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine (A comment on Schwartz and Wiggins, 2010)

“…However, this methodic opposition, which is merely a nod to commonsensical mind-body dualism (or the so-called explanatory gap) is not satisfactory. We are convinced that it is important to adopt (and retain) a "methodically critical attitude" (in German, "methodenkritische Einstellung", see [ 17 ]), i.e., an attitude which is critically aware of the methods it employs and the inhering limits of these methods. Importantly, this critical attitude does not itself yield to either side in the debate between the human and natural sciences.…”