Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences 2011; Vol.4, Issue 2

The new issue of Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences is online. Two articles focus on phenomenological psychopathology.
In the first one, Maria Luísa Figueira and Luís Madeira (Lisbon University) discuss the role of time and space in the phenomenology of bipolar disorders, particularly in mania. Theories by Heidegger, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty as well as by Minkowsky, Binswanger, Fuchs, Parnas, and Sass are reviewed in relation to euphoric and dysphoric manic and hypomanic states.
This article can be freely downloaded at: http://www.crossingdialogues.com/Ms-A11-01.pdf
In the second paper, Paola Gaetano discusses a previous paper published on a past issue of Dial Phil Ment Neuro Sci (Kraus A. Existential a prioris and the phenomenology of schizophrenia). She argues that the current diagnostic systems have inadvertently resulted in an impoverished clinical practice; From their purely descriptive point of view schizophrenic symptoms that would appear bizarre and senseless. On the contrary, Gaetano suggests that there is substantial meaning underlying psychotic phenomena and that an Heideggerian conception of human existence (the existence is always 'in the world', 'near the things' and 'with the others' in the unity of the Dasein) may help understand the subjective experience of a schizophrenic patient and increase diagnostic accuracy and treatment adequacy. This article is at this link: http://www.crossingdialogues.com/Ms-A11-02.pdf
A third article (Mari Stenlund: Involuntary antipsychotic medication and freedom of thought) deals with a complex issue in applied ethics: what is the relationship between the use of involuntary antipsychotic medication and a delusional person's freedom of thought? The author shows that clinical practice strictly depends on the way we conceive freedom. Accordingly, she discuss different stances in the psychopharmacological approach in the light of three different views of freedom, namely, freedom as negative freedom, freedom as having an autonomous mind and freedom as capability. Download at: http://www.crossingdialogues.com/Ms-C11-02.pdf
Another paper discusses the classic antipsychiatric text of Thomas Szasz (The myth of mental illness) from a semiotic point of view. It is shown that Szasz’s revolution is to consider the hysterical symptoms as a foreign language, thus allowing a semiotic analysis. Accordingly, the somatic language of the hysteric person is discussed as an iconic protolanguage. The conclusion is that the hysterical symptom speaks its proper language and our ethical commitment is primarily to empathically listen to it (Valeria Lelli: The body language: a semiotic reading of Szasz' Anti-psychiatry). The link to read this contribution is: http://www.crossingdialogues.com/Ms-C11-03.pdf
Finally, Sofia Siwecka presents the epistemological ideas of a great figure in the early philosophy of medicine: Ludwik Fleck. Fleck anticipated many ideas later defended by the “new philosophy of science” (e.g. Thomas Kuhn) but is only rarely cited because his main contributions are in Polish. Siwecka directly translated Fleck’s texts and introduces the reader to his theory of knowledge. Applied to psychiatry, the ideas of Fleck shed light on how psychiatric diagnoses are influenced by a specific thought style that directs the observations and affects the development of knowledge and the formation of connections between concepts. This article is at: http://www.crossingdialogues.com/Ms-C11-04.pdf