Notes on Jaspers

Jaspers in quotes:

"The question of what underlies all phenomena in general used to be answered in the old days by the notion of evil spirits. These later turned into disease entities that could be found by empirical investigation. They have proved themselves however to be mere ideas’.

The mere ideas of evil spirits or neurotransmitter abnormalities are explanatory models based on [to date] insufficient evidence. Such models serve as temporary organizing models for mental disorders until enough evidence accumulates against the model to demonstrate its inadequacy. Enough experimental evidence has accumulated to convincingly demonstrate that the evil spirits model is inadequate; almost enough evidence has accumulated to demonstrate the neurotransmitter model is inadequate. Looking at the relationship between theoretical models and their translation in practice, it appears that most of the time, until a conceptual model is invalidated, the model tends to be seen as valid and used as if it is valid in day to day practice. Psychiatry is no exception to this rule.

‘We have intuitions of a whole which we call schizophrenia but we do not grasp it; instead we enumerate a vast number of particulars or simply say “ununderstandable”, while each of us only comprehends the whole from his own experience of actual contact with such patients’.

Our understanding of the unintelligible is filtered through the lenses of our own experience. While what is clear is clear to everyone in the same way, what is unclear is unclear to each individual in a individual way. 

Concepts to compare and contrast:

• psychopathology of "the sick human individual" vs. psychopathology of "human sickness" [Musalek 2013]
• superficial checklists of diagnostic criteria vs. understanding of a patient's experience of his illness [Musalek 2013]
• • professional, authoritarian, expert monologue vs. therapeutic, democratic dialogue [Musalek 2013]
• expert opinion vs. genuine curiosity
• see patients as they are vs. "through the distorting prism of our own preconceptions" [Sims 2013]