Clinical phenomenology is about exploring anomalous forms of subjectivity and their conditions of possibility. It builds on the question “what it is like?” or “how does it feel?” to experience, from a first-person perspective, a given psychopathological symptom like, for instance, being deluded, or hallucinated, or addicted to a given substance or behavior. It aims to reconstruct the overall structure of the world a person affected by psychopathological symptoms lives by.
The purpose of clinical phenomenology is to improve understanding of abnormal mental conditions in order to reduce marginalization, stigma and epistemic injustice, to strengthen dialogue between vulnerable people and the social context in which they live, and to enhance effective therapeutic treatments, including biological and psychological ones.
This Section welcomes theoretical and empirical research, including quantitative and qualitative studies, single case reports, first-person accounts, collaborative writing and co-production of knowledge involving patients and clinicians, and all those papers that may contribute to develop care through an in-depth understanding of psychopathological phenomena.
Giovanni Stanghellini
MD and Dr. Phil. honoris causa, psychiatrist, is professor of Dynamic Psychology and Psychopathology at “G. d’Annunzio” University (Chieti, Italy) and Profesor Adjuncto “D. Portales” University (Santiago, Chile). He chairs the Association of European Psychiatrists (EPA) Section on Philosophy and Psychiatry and the Scuola di Psicoterapia Fenomenologico-Dinamica (Florence, Italy). Among his books, all published by Oxford University Press: Nature and Narrative (co-edited with KWM Fulford, K. Morris and JZ Sadler, OUP 2003), Disembodied Spirits and Deanimated Bodies. The Psychopathology of Common Sense (OUP 2004), Emotions and Personhood (with R. Rosfort, OUP 2013), One Hundred Years of Karl Jaspers’ General Psychopathology (co-edited with T. Fuchs, OUP 2013), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry (co-edited with KWM Fulford et al., OUP 2013) and Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology (co-edited with MR Broome et al., OUP 2019).
