Karl Jaspers: el hombre y su trascendental contribución a la psiquiatría

Abstract

First, the author alludes to the transcendence of Karl Jaspers as philosopher and psychiatrist and to the multiple celebrations realized around the world in 2013 remembering the 100 years of the first edition of his “General Psychopathology”. Second, he briefly refers to his biography and to the special circumstances which led him to move from psychiatry to philosophy (1918) and three decades later (1948) to abandon Germany and to settle in Switzerland. Third, this author reviews the essential themes treated in each of the six parts of his General Psychopathology. Fourth, he analyzes in detail what could be considered as the five more fundamental contributions by Karl Jaspers to psychopathology as science and to psychiatry as praxis. These are: The introduction of the phenomenological method in psychopathological research and clinical practice; The introduction of the method of understanding in diagnosis and treatment of mentally ill patients; The concepts of “process” and “development” as a base for a possible classification of psychotic disorders; The concept of “situation” as a way to overcome the mechanistic thinking implicit in the concept of “reaction”. And, finally, the introduction of the dialectic approach to psychopathology and psychiatry and its importance for enlightening the complexity of mental abnormalities.