1. Philosophy and Psychiatry:
Reflections of Mind

2. Des neurosciences à l’inconscient
43e Congrès annuel de l’AMPQ
Jeudi le 11 juin 2009
16h00 à 17h30

3. Geopoliticus child watching the birth of the new man - Dali

4. Philosophy & Psychiatry
Vincenzo Di Nicola
Psychologist and Child Psychiatrist
Université de Montréal
Doctoral candidate
European Graduate School

5. Key words Philosophy and psychiatry
Phenomenology and existential psychiatry
Ethics and biopolitics

6. Pedagogical objectives
1. To identify the history of the
relationship between psychiatry
and philosophy.

7. Pedagogical objectives
2. To offer an overview of areas of mutual
interest to both psychiatry and philosophy,
including philosophy of mind,
philosophy of science and definitions of the
person, identity and what we consider as
essentially human qualities.

8. Pedagogical objectives
3. To review two areas in more detail:
(a) phenomenology and existential
psychiatry, and
(b) ethics and biopolitics.

9. Areas of mutual interest
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of science
Philosophy of technology
Phenomenology (as a science of the person and hence a foundation study for psychiatry)
Philosophy as a tool for social exploration (identity, the definition of the person)
Ethics and biopolitics

10. Uses of philosophy by psychiatry
Inspiration
Validation
Justification

11. Other uses of philosophy
Edification
Consolation

12. Other uses of philosophy
Clinical philosophy …
Consolation as intervention
Applied philosophy …
Bio-ethics
Research ethics
Professional ethics

13. What is philosophy? Everything is like something, what is this like?
--Bryan Magee, Men of Ideas (1982)
quoting English novelist E.M. Forster

14. What is philosophy?
The purpose of philosophy is to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations (1953)

15. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

16. What is philosophy?
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.
--G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right
(1820)

17. G.W.F. Hegel ( )
( )

18. What is philosophy?
One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it...
When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then has a shape of life grown old.
By philosophy’s gray in gray it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.
—G.W.F. Hegel, “Preface,” Philosophy of
Right (1820)

19. What is philosophy?
Understanding, clarification, edification, reflection, groundwork, foundations …
Critical theory, deconstruction

20. What is philosophy? Two kinds of philosophers …
Those who build up theories and explanations, carefully, brick by brick
--Aristotle, Aquinas, William James, Freud
Those who tear them down, critically … brick by brick or with a wrecker’s ball
--Luther, Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault

21. What is psychiatry? This can be imagined as a philosophical question
People often invoke philosophical considerations in their definition of psychiatry …

22. What is psychiatry? Karl Jaspers … phenomenological psychiatry
R.D. Laing … existential psychiatry
Salvador Minuchin … structural family therapy
Mara Selvini Palazzoli … systemic family therapy
Samuel Guze … Why Psychiatry is a Branch of Medicine
Robert Spitzer … architect of DSM … descriptive nosography, atheoretical

23. What are they?
Sigmund Freud
Karl Jaspers
Jean Piaget
Michel Foucault

24. What are they? Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Neurologist &
neuropathologist
Founder of
psychoanalysis
Philosopher

25. What are they? Karl Jaspers (1883-1959) Phenomenological Psychiatrist
Professor of
Philosophy

26. What are they? Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Natural scientist
Genetic epistemology
Philosophy:
Jürgen Habermas

27. What are they? Michel Foucault (1926-1984) Psychologist Philosopher:
Structuralism & post-
structuralism
Historian
Critic

28. Philosophical deconstruction
Why do family therapists still refer to psychodynamics ?

29. Philosophical deconstruction
Alternatives for describing families and family phenomena …
Relationships, attachment
Interpersonal patterns
Myths, rules, rituals
Family as a structure, system
Family life as a text (to be edited)
The family as a storying culture

30. Philosophical deconstruction
Why do so many terms for negative psychosocial factors come from hydraulics and materials sciences ?
Stress
(Mental) fatigue
Tension
Resistance

31. Philosophical deconstruction
And of course, so do the positive factors …
Resilience
Bouyancy
Rebound

32. Philosophical deconstruction
What do we mean by development ?
Growth (Classical models, Dante)
Evolution
--Convergence, teleology (Teilhard de Chardin)
Ages & stages (Paediatrics)
IQ as a model (Binet, Dalton)
Unfolding
--Genetic epistemology (Piaget, Kohlberg)

33. Philosophical deconstruction
Explanatory models are usually based on metaphors
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ( )
Cancer Ward (1968)
Susan Sontag ( )
Illness as Metaphor (1978)
Aids and Its Metaphors (1988)

34. Phenomenology and existential psychiatry
Karl Jaspers ( )
Ludwig Binswanger ( )
R.D. Laing ( )

35. Phenomenology and existential psychiatry
Karl Jaspers
( )
Phenomenological
Psychiatrist
General Psychopathology

36. Phenomenology and existential psychiatry
Ludwig Binswanger ( )
Existential analysis
The Case of Ellen West
with many rereadings
(R.D. Laing, Sal Minuchin)

37. Phenomenology and existential psychiatry
R.D. Laing ( )
Scottish psychiatrist
and psychoanalyst
Existential philosophy
and psychiatry
Pioneer in family studies
Critical psychiatry

38. Ethics and biopolitics
Giorgio Agamben (b. Rome, 1942)

39. Ethics and biopolitics
Giorgio Agamben (b. Rome, 1942)
Key notions:
Homo sacer/Sacred Man (1998)
Stato di eccezione, État d’exception,
State of Exception (2005)

40. Ethics and biopolitics
Key notions:
Biopolitics
Adopted from Foucault (a technology of power, biopower)
Biós (a form of life) vs Zōē (mere life)
Biopolitics is the reduction of others to bare life

41. Conclusion
The history of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis are intimately intertwined with philosophical questions

42. Conclusion
Understanding this history will help us avoid reductive modes of thought
Contemporary psychiatry accepts the notion of paradigms as evolution and progress

43. Conclusion
A full account of mind cannot be provided by an understanding of brain
No matter how sophisticated the argument for biological psychiatry becomes (cf. Eric Kandel), it will not speak to mind, fully understood.

44. Conclusion
Leon Eisenberg put the question as brainlessness vs mindlessness
or psychoanalysis without brain vs biological psychiatry without mind

45. Conclusion I expand the question to include:
Mind (the science of mental life)
Body (biological psychiatry)
Heart (phenomenology, empathy)
Soul (meaning, transcendence)

46. Conclusion Our culture is at war with subjectivity
Technopoly is the surrender of culture to technology

47. Conclusion
We have not exhausted what phenomenological psychiatry can teach us by elucidating human experience and expanding our empathy