Phenomenology as a Form of Empathy

Ratcliffe, Matthew

doi:10.1080/0020174x.2012.716196

Cited by 131 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…He repeatedly asserts that the prereflexive natural attitude must be bracketed but does not subject this claim to any sustained investigation. Ratcliffe is more explicit about this [18], but, as I will argue, his answers are not satisfactory. Given that second-order empathy depends on performing the phenomenological reduction, it seems essential to at least have some sense of what that involves and whether it is possible.…”

Section: First-order Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In relation to the first, primary move, Stanghellini wants us to bracket our pre-reflexive natural attitude [17] and Ratcliffe [18] suggests we suspend our habitual acceptance of the world. We do so in order to realise that our sense of reality and belonging which we take for granted in the natural attitude is a phenomenological achievement.…”

Section: First-order Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

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A critical perspective on second-order empathy in understanding psychopathology: phenomenology and ethics

Rashed

2015

Theor Med Bioeth

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Abstract:The centenary of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology was recognised in 2013 with the publication of a volume of essays dedicated to his work (edited by Stanghellini and Fuchs). Leading phenomenological-psychopathologists and philosophers of psychiatry examined Jaspers notion of empathic understanding and his declaration that certain schizophrenic phenomena are 'un-understandable'. The consensus reached by the authors was that Jaspers operated with a narrow conception of phenomenology and empathy and that schizophrenic phenomena can be understood through what they variously called second-order and radical empathy. This article offers a critical examination of the second-order empathic stance along phenomenological and ethical lines. It asks: (1) Is second-order empathy (phenomenologically) possible? (2) Is the second-order empathic stance an ethically acceptable attitude towards persons diagnosed with schizophrenia? I argue that second-order empathy is an incoherent method that cannot be realised. Further, the attitude promoted by this method is ethically problematic insofar as the emphasis placed on radical otherness disinvests persons diagnosed with schizophrenia from a fair chance to participate in the public construction of their identity and, hence, to redress traditional symbolic injustices.

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Section: First-order Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: First-order Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical perspective on second-order empathy in understanding psychopathology: phenomenology and ethics

Rashed

2015

Theor Med Bioeth

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“…It is important to emphasize at this point that the self-disorder (instability of ipseity/intentional arc) may throw the patient into a new ontological-existential perspective or ‘modal space' [41], an often solipsistic framework, no longer ruled by reliable certitudes and axioms of the ‘natural attitude' concerning space, time, causality, and self-identity. There is an altered ontological position, i.e.…”

Section: Schizophrenia As a Self-disordermentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjectivity and Schizophrenia: Another Look at Incomprehensibility and Treatment Nonadherence

Parnas

Henriksen

2013

Psychopathology

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Psychiatry is in a time of crisis. The absence of significant breakthroughs to actionable etiological knowledge has left the discipline in a state of uncertainty and worries are being voiced about its status and future. In our view, the stagnation can be, at least in part, ascribed to an excessive, behaviorist-oriented, epistemological, and ontological simplification of psychopathology. The aim of this phenomenological study is to articulate the notion of the ‘disordered self' in schizophrenia, a notion that we believe constitutes an important step forward in grasping its essential pathogenetic structures. Through the framework of self-disorders, we analyze two domains of the psychopathology of schizophrenia, seeking to recast their puzzling nature into more useful clinical and scientific terms. First, we examine the so-called schizophrenic incomprehensibility (bizarre gestalt, bizarre delusions, and ‘crazy actions') and argue that grasping the altered framework for experiencing, associated with the disordered self, makes these phenomena appear comprehensible to a considerable extent. Second, we explore the issue of treatment noncompliance and provide a novel account of ‘poor insight' into illness. We propose that poor insight into schizophrenia is not simply a problem of insufficient self- reflection due to psychological defenses or impaired metacognition, but rather that it is intrinsically expressive of the severity and nature of self-disorders. The instabilities of the first-person perspective throw the patient into a different, often quasisolipsistic, ontological-existential framework. We argue that interventions seeking to optimize the patients' compliance might prove more efficient if they take the alterations of the patients' ontological-existential framework into account.

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“…However, first of all, within the deeper logic of self-organization, the struggle itself would be seen as a form of evaluation, and thus, positively, as a form of adaptive care taking. Suffering is then never just an expression of a physiological deficiency, nor of 16 I believe that Matthew Ratcliffe's more encompassing phenomenological approach to mental illness accords well with this project (Ratcliffe 2012). Ratcliffe emphasizes that in order to understand experiences in mental illness we should bracket our usual assumption of a Bshared world^as the basis for empathising with another person.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The enactive approach and disorders of the self - the case of schizophrenia

Kyselo

2015

Phenom Cogn Sci

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The paper discusses two recent approaches to schizophrenia, a phenomenological and a neuroscientific approach, illustrating how new directions in philosophy and cognitive science can elaborate accounts of psychopathologies of the self. It is argued that the notion of the minimal and bodily self underlying these approaches is still limited since it downplays the relevance of social interactions and relations for the formation of a coherent sense of self. These approaches also illustrate that we still lack an account of how 1st and 3rd person observations can fruitfully go together in an embodied account of disorders of the self. Two concepts from enactive cognitive science are introduced, the notions of autonomy and sense-making. Based on these, a new proposal for an enactive approach to psychopathologies of the self is outlined that integrates 1st and 3rd person perspectives, while strongly emphasising the role of social interactions in the formation of self. It is shown how the enactive framework might serve as a basis for an alternative understanding of disorders of the self such as schizophrenia, as a particular form of socially constituted self-organisation.

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Phenomenology as a Form of Empathy

Cited by 131 publications

References 23 publications

A critical perspective on second-order empathy in understanding psychopathology: phenomenology and ethics

A critical perspective on second-order empathy in understanding psychopathology: phenomenology and ethics

Subjectivity and Schizophrenia: Another Look at Incomprehensibility and Treatment Nonadherence

The enactive approach and disorders of the self - the case of schizophrenia

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