Papers by Osborne Wiggins
Seishin shinkeigaku zasshi = Psychiatria et neurologia Japonica, 2003
Key ideas of philosophical anthropology furnish the framework for a description of the personalit... more Key ideas of philosophical anthropology furnish the framework for a description of the personality type, typus melancholicus. These key ideas are: (1) all living beings are related to and interact with their environments, (2) all living beings must maintain their identities in distinction from their environments, (3) the biological constitution of human beings leaves them instinct-deficient, (4) the human-world relationship must therefore be partially determined by cultural shaping, and (5) social roles and norms determine the consciousness and behavior of human beings. "Dispositional vectors" are basic tendencies within human beings that move them toward particular forms of world-relatedness. These dispositional vectors are: over-identification with social norms (hypernomia), struggle with social norms (agonomia), under-identification with social norms (hyponomia), and over-identification with personal norms (idionomia). When the dispositional vector of hypernomia moves i...
Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 2005
Psychopathology, 2013
In later editions of his General Psychopathology, Karl Jaspers prescribes many different methods ... more In later editions of his General Psychopathology, Karl Jaspers prescribes many different methods and theoretical points of view for psychopathologists to utilize. Each of these perspectives on the subject matter of psychopathology, however, gives the investigator access to only one dimension of the patient's being. Hence, Jaspers insists that several different perspectives must be employed in order to avoid a one-sided and partial comprehension of the patient and his or her problem. He advocates a multiperspectival approach in psychopathology. Nevertheless, Jaspers remains aware that the patient is a unified whole. This unified whole, however, is not knowable as such, but can rather be approached only under the guidance of an 'idea' of the whole. Jaspers takes the basic notion of 'idea' (Idee) from Kant, but he modifies and uses it for his own purposes. Jaspers' multiperspectivalism may seem to invite charges of relativism because it leaves the psychopathologist to…
Psychopathology, 2000
There is new interest in subjective experiences of schizophrenia. This kind of analysis emphasize... more There is new interest in subjective experiences of schizophrenia. This kind of analysis emphasizes the subjective stories of patients, and the methods do not pretend to have the objectivity of science. However, the plausibility and the empathetic resonance of the single case may bring subjective confirmation to the validity of an insight and indicate new directions of research. Following this line, the authors present a study of 3 single cases of 'reflexive' residual type of schizophrenia. The methods for selecting the cases and the philosophical groundings of the concept of 'reflexive schizophrenia' are explained. The analysis of the single cases revealed that (1) schizophrenic persons' cognitive deficit is related to the constitution of common sense; (2) some schizophrenics cope with the cognitive deficit by creating a theoretical corpus of axioms stemming from common sense, namely the 'axioms of everyday life'; (3) this mechanism of coping is described as an inflexible attachment to 'axioms of everydayness', and (4) this attachment to common sense releases the patient from all personal investment of self in the process of anchoring in the living world and, on this basis, allows a relatively solid, although distant, attachment to reality. The nature of deficit in schizophrenia is also discussed by confronting the phenomenological point of view and the neuropsychological, that is the so-called 'theory of mind'.
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 2001
ABSTRACT
Journal of Personality Disorders, 1991
The dimensional approach to personality disorders nicely exemplifies "the dominant research ... more The dimensional approach to personality disorders nicely exemplifies "the dominant research program of present-day American psychiatry." This approach, however, must confront the problems of (1) the immense variability of human personalities and (2) the necessary interpretive nature of our assessment of human personality. These two problems are better dealt with through the ideal type approach. Ideal types help unify psychiatric conceptualization because the same types can guide clinical examination and treatment as well as provide general hypotheses for research. Ideal types differ from "the dominant research program" (A) by furnishing concepts of personality disorders that differ from polythetic categories, prototypes, or dimensional scales; and (B) by requiring the use of the interpretive method of "understanding" in psychiatric research. Ideal types and understanding enhance research by providing it with a much larger evidential base than is available with the dominant research program. This larger evidential base allows researchers to probe more adequate the complexity and intricacy of personality disorders.
Phenomenology and The Cognitive Sciences, 2005
Schizophrenia, like other pathological conditions of mental life, has not been systematically inc... more Schizophrenia, like other pathological conditions of mental life, has not been systematically included in the general study of consciousness. By focusing on aspects of chronic schizophrenia, we attempt to remedy this omission. Basic components of Husserl’s phenomenology (intentionality, synthesis, constitution, epoche, and unbuilding) are explicated and then employed in an account of chronic schizophrenia. In schizophrenic experience, basic constituents of
Comprehensive Psychiatry, 1986
... In addition, the transition can be understood, from this perspective, as "explication,&q... more ... In addition, the transition can be understood, from this perspective, as "explication," ie, the ... ofexplication: Taking its departure from the customary meanings of the terms, explication aims at ... When liberalized, the notion of operation "does not require manipulation of the objects ...
The Journal of nervous and …, 1997
The reports of a person suffering from loose associations and disordered behavior serve as the ba... more The reports of a person suffering from loose associations and disordered behavior serve as the basis for a phenomenology of some central components of psychotic experience. Especially salient are "the expansion of the horizon of meanings," "the emergence of explicit experiences from implicit ones," and "the reduction of complexity." The phenomenological concepts thus developed supplement recent discoveries in neuroscience and experimental psychopathology. Cognitive neuroscientists have depicted the surface of the brain as a repository of self-organizing cortical maps of mental life. Furthermore, experimental psychopathologists have characterized semantic associative networks in normal experience and in psychosis. The authors conclude by joining the phenomenology of psychotic consciousness with the findings of these neuroscientists and experimental psychopathologists.
Transplant …, 2006
Each year an estimated 7-million people in the USA need composite tissue reconstruction because o... more Each year an estimated 7-million people in the USA need composite tissue reconstruction because of surgical excision of tumors, accidents and congenital malformations. Limb amputees alone comprise over 1.2 million of these. This figure is more than double the number of solid ...
The American Journal …, 2004
Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, 2010
Basing ourselves on the writings of Hans Jonas, we offer to psychosomatic medicine a philosophy o... more Basing ourselves on the writings of Hans Jonas, we offer to psychosomatic medicine a philosophy of life that surmounts the mind-body dualism which has plagued Western thought since the origins of modern science in seventeenth century Europe. Any present-day account of reality must draw upon everything we know about the living and the non-living. Since we are living beings ourselves,
Papers in peer-reviewed journals by Osborne Wiggins
A Spanish translation of "Karl Jaspers - the Icon of Modern Psychiatry".
Chapters in Books by Osborne Wiggins
Chapter in Karl Jaspers’ Philosophy and Psychopathology; Springer Press, 2013
This essay has three aims. We wish to emphasize that (1) one of the main theses of Jaspers’ Gener... more This essay has three aims. We wish to emphasize that (1) one of the main theses of Jaspers’ General Psychopathology is that our knowledge is limited to particular points of view within which alone evidence can be interpreted and assessed; (2) this early position of Jaspers (already present in the 1913 edition) has found indirect support recently in a carefully reasoned book by the prestigious philosopher of natural science, Ronald N. Giere, entitled Scientific Perspectivism (2006); and (3) Jaspers’ conviction regarding the perspectivalism of knowledge remained powerfully influential throughout all his thought, even in his later philosophy
Uploads
Papers by Osborne Wiggins
Papers in peer-reviewed journals by Osborne Wiggins
Chapters in Books by Osborne Wiggins