Alternative philosophical conceptualizations of psychopathology

Hubert L. Dreyfus

pp. 41-50

in: Harold Durfee, David T. Rodier (eds), Phenomenology and beyond, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

Alternative conceptualizations, which often turn into acrimonious oppositions, already abound in psychotherapy. The humanists condemn the behaviorists; the existentialists defend the patient as subject against what they take to be Freudian objectification; family therapists define themselves in opposition to individual therapists. Nevertheless, I wish to propose an alternative to these alternatives, since I am convinced that these oppositions pale in the light of two fundamentally opposed but complementary views of the mind. I will call these alternative conceptions of the mind and of psychopathology, epistemological and ontological, and will contrast Freud's fundamentally epistemiological approach with Merleau-Ponty's ontological account.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice