Understanding in Psychopathology and Engaged Epistemology

The article outlines the problem of understanding mental disorders and the proposed distinctions significant in terms of all research done in the context of the philosophy of psychiatry. Inspired by the phenomenological and hermeneutic approach, engaged epistemology is presented as a tool which helps to reveal the significant aspects of mental illness and psychopathology. By revealing the embodiment and the deep relation between the body and the outside world, engaged epistemology allows for a description of the dimensions of psychotic experience, as well as a more in-depth analysis of particular psychopathologies (and the related disorders of identity, lack of sense of reality and problems in relations with others). Scientists studying the phenomenological tradition made efforts to reliably describe the subjective experience of patients, and to critically evaluate the scientific ability to study illnesses. The hermeneutical critique of psychiatry, in turn, resorts to revealing its sociocultural background which determines the horizon for objective, scientific, clinical research.