Eugène Minkowski

Dans le numéro spécial de L’Europe en formation sur « Le fédéralisme personnaliste », c’est en en appelant à « Marc au-delà de Marc » qu’il était « vu de Ouagadougou » par Lazare Ki-Zerbo, soucieux d’en compenser la relative insensibilité aux enjeux de la spatialité tels qu’ils se présentent en Afrique. J'ai tenté d'ébaucher ici la réponse à ce défi qui pourrait provenir d’en amont de Marc, en me basant sur un ensemble de textes inédits d’Arnaud Dandieu que ce grand ancêtre du fédéralisme personnaliste avait pu rassembler avant sa mort prématurée en 1933 sous un titre qui parle de lui-même: L’espace ami de l’homme. C’est que Dandieu s’y propose précisément de « Repartir de la durée Bergsonienne »  pour opérer un « Renversement du bergsonisme »  , en construisant une phénoménologie de l’espace qui en fasse ressortir l’aspect hétérogène négligé par Bergson -et par Alexandre Marc à sa suite, ainsi qu’a pu le relever Ki-Zerbo. Si selon lui « les afro-fédéralistes appréhendent l’hétérogénéité à travers la spatialisation de la vie », la pensée de Dandieu franchit allègrement la « coupure épistémologique » située par Ki-Zerbo dans la Méditerranée, car elle comporte de nombreuses allusions explicites ou implicites à des aspects caractéristiques de la culture et de la pensée africaines comme points d'appui d'une phénoménologie de l'"espace vécu" (Eugène Minkowski) jusque dans ses implications sociopolitiques, voire religieuses.

Se è nel tempo e attraverso il movimento che partecipiamo alla vita, la morte ci nega per sempre questa possibilità. Nei sistemi viventi il tempo funge da organizzatore della situazione vitale dell’organismo. Il metabolismo e le funzioni vitali si compiono infatti attraverso lo scandire preciso e incalzante di ritmi biologici (tempo delle reazioni molecolari, il battito cardiaco, la respirazione). Con la morte si verifica il disgregamento della nozione di tempo. Non si tratta più del tempo della vita che unisce, che coordina, che costruisce, che organizza. Il tempo della morte è un tempo che distrugge, che disgrega, che disorienta, che sfilaccia l’unità della nostra esistenza nei frammenti non più ricomponibili di un puzzle. Ma la morte non è un fatto solo individuale, osserva lo psichiatra Eugène Minkowski in Le temps vécu (1933). La morte, infatti, pone anche fine a tutte le relazioni di affetto, parentela e amicizia che ci hanno accompagnato durante la vita. Nell’articolo mostro come, a partire dalla riflessione di Minkowski, si possa parlare della morte da una duplice prospettiva di tempo vissuto: la morte come evento che impone una riflessione sulla finitudine umana, e come esperienza del vissuto individuale (morte nel tempo vissuto), oppure della morte patologica, la quale implica la morte del vissuto, ossia del contatto vitale costitutivo dell`esistenza umana.

Parolechiave: Eugène Minkowski. Schizofrenia. Morte patologica.

People these days know the Universe as a Whole, because not knowing the edge between This and That. Its secret is the secret of a forgotten body, the seventh in the series of multifaceted as Life, Seven. We know six of it now. But the Ancestors knew all seven. // Люди ныне не знают Вселенной как Целого, не зная грани меж Этим и Тем. Тайна  ее есть тайна забытого тела, седьмого в строю многогранных как Жизнь, Семь. Мы знаем шесть ныне. А Пращуры знали все семь.

Français [English abstract follows].

« Sur l’horloge de l’histoire », note Adam Rayski, « les aiguilles avançaient plus vite pour les Juifs que pour les autres populations de l’Europe occupée. Le temps des autres n’était pas exactement le nôtre… » [Adam Rayski Nos illusions perdues, Paris, Balland, 1985, p. 91]. Cependant, les Juifs ne peuvent pas faire individuellement l’expérience du temps à un rythme constant. L’expérience du temps n’est en effet jamais uniforme. Concernant celle des Juifs de France pendant l’Occupation, elle n’a guère été vraiment interrogée, tout comme la manière dont leur temporalité est structurée durant ces années. À travers l’exemple rémois, notre propos entend démontrer l’importance de ces questions dans la compréhension de la condition des Juifs de France au cours de cette période. Il mobilise dans ce but de nombreux témoignages, ainsi que des concepts et notions de psychologie en plus des outils de l’historien. Au terme de notre démonstration d’inspiration phénoménologique, une temporalité en majeure partie différente dès 1942 de celle des non-Juifs se dessine, composite, saccadée. Elle traduit une persécution qui s’étend au final jusqu’à l’architecture soutenant la vie des Juifs de France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

* Romain Dupré, « The Lived Time of the Jews of France during the Second World War : the example of Reims ».

« On the clock of history », says Adam Rayski, « the hands advanced faster for Jews than for the other people of Europe that was under occupation. The time of the others was not exactly like ours… » [Adam Rayski Nos illusions perdues, Paris, Balland, 1985, p. 91]. Meanwhile, the Jews cannot individually experience time at a constant rate. Their experience of time is indeed never uniform. For the Jews of France during the Occupation, Time was hardly really questioned, like how their temporality was structured over the years. Using the example of Reims, our purpose intends to show the importance of these issues in the understanding of the status of the Jews of France during this period. For this purpose, he mobilises many testimonies and psychology concepts, in addition to the tools of the historian. At the term of our phenomenologically-inspired demonstration, Temporality contours between Jews and non-Jews show the emergence of major differences from 1942 onwards; Jews’ time being more interrupted, less constant. It reflects a persecution which in  the end extends to the architecture supporting the life of the Jews of France during the Second World War.

Modern psychiatry, as represented by Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), and phenomenology, as developed by Edmund Husserl, began around the same time, namely, during the last decades of the 19th century. Moreover, psychiatry and phenomenology have always shared a common goal: they have both sought detailed descriptions of human experience. This communality of goals has repeatedly led psychiatrists to turn to phenomenology for aid in explicating mental life. For many psychiatrists it has seemed that phenomenology offered a method that could help them better understand and conceptualize the experiences of their patients. As a result, psychiatrists have utilized various phenomenological approaches just as phenomenologists have explored subjects in psychiatry.

The history of this relationship has remained ambiguous, however. Frequently a gap has yawned between the broad theoretical perspectives adapted from phenomenology and the needs of clinical practice. Furthermore, psychiatrists-who are often trained in the biological and natural sciences-may feel disinclined to delve deeply into explorations of the subjective when these explorations appear to them to remain too abstract or metaphysical. And, returning the compliment, phenomenologists have usually exhibited a profound reluctance to ascribe centrality to biological and naturalistic perspectives. In the post-World War II years, impressive progress in empirical research has provided physicians with powerful means for diagnosis and treatment, for example, with psychopharmacology; because psychiatrists are always pragmatists at heart, these new insights have tended to supplant phenomenological insights.

More recently, the relationship has grown more complicated, and these complexities offer hope of a revitalized cross-fertilization between psychiatry and phenomenology. On the one hand, empirical research in psychiatry continues at an even more rapid pace. On the other hand, many physicians and patients are more aware of the gaps, inadequacies, and even untoward consequences of the one-sidedness of these new developments. This has spurred a turn towards holistic medicine, wellness, and environmental medicine that is more congenial to phenomenological views. Moreover, there is a growing recognition that phenomenological and neurobiological perspectives can no longer oppose one another; when properly conceived, each will strengthen the other. We shall first sketch a brief history of the relationships between phenomenology and psychiatry. Subsequently, we shall delineate possible directions that future inquiry might take.

Whereas classical Critical Theory has tended to view phenomenology as inherently uncritical, the recent upsurge of what has become known as critical phenomenology has attempted to show that phenomenological concepts and methods can be used in critical analyses of social and political issues. A recent landmark publication, 50 Concepts for Critical Phenomenology, contains no reference to psychiatry and psychopathology, however. This is an unfortunate omission, since the tradition of phenomenological psychiatry – as we will demonstrate in the present article by surveying and discussing the contribution of Jaspers, Minkowski, Laing, Basaglia, and Fanon – from the outset has practiced critical thinking, be it at the theoretical, interpersonal, institutional, or political level. Fanon is today, a recognized figure in critical phenomenology, even if his role in psychiatry might not yet have been appreciated as thoroughly as his anticolonial and antiracist contributions. But as we show, he is part of a long history of critical approaches in psychopathology and psychiatry, which has firm roots in the phenomenological tradition, and which keeps up its critical work today.

In this paper I focus on the emergence of the concept of the “historical a priori” at the origin of Foucault’s archeology. I emphasize the methodological function of this concept within Foucault’s archaeology, and I maintain that despite the different thesis it entails as compared to its philosophical sources, it pertains to one of the main issues of phenomenology, that is, the problematization of the relation between reality as it appears in its historicity, and transcendentality. I start from the interest of the young Foucault in existential psychiatry, and I focus on the French philosophical context in which Foucault’s Introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s “Dream and Existence” (1954) was conceived. My aim is to show that the first “phenomenological” phase of Foucault’s work is coherent, from a methodological point of view, with the development of archaeology intended as “historical epistemology.” I conclude by arguing that Foucault’s archaeology is methodologically linked to Canguilhem’s epistemology, in that the latter presents itself as an important attempt at linking together historicity and transcendentality.

Un passage mène de l’évolution darwinienne à l’ontologie phénoménologique, celle de Heidegger et surtout celle de Merleau-Ponty. Ce passage, c’est l’articulation du temps et de l’être du vivant que Darwin  a formulée longtemps avant Heidegger, en plaçant la temporalisation de la morphogenèse au cœur de son analyse du vivant comme trame unique d’interprétation de sa multiplicité. Le vivant est ce qu’il est parce que c’est le seul possible (par la sélection). Et ce transformisme selon le possible comme seule finalité, c’est le temps. "L’origine des espèces" et "L’être et le temps" sont deux étapes majeures de la pensée du temps. C´est dans la biologie de Jakob von Uexküll, inspirateur de l´être-au-monde de Heidegger, et dans la psychiatrie phénoménologique de Ludwig Binswanger et Eugène Minkowski que l´on trouve le passage entre Darwin et Heidegger: avec son concept de signe-moment, Uexküll a fait du temps la condition même de la rencontre entre le sujet vivant et le monde. Et la psychiatrie phénoménologique a sorti le Dasein de Heidegger de son immanence transcendentale pour en étudier, en particulier en termes de temporalité et de chair, les altérations qui se donnent dans la pathologie mentale. Ces altérations de l´être-au-monde sont des être-au-monde adaptatifs au sens évolutionniste du terme. Pour comprendre l´humain, il faudrait donc faire une ontologie évolutionniste du vivant.

Arnaud Dandieu (1897-1933), théoricien du groupe personnaliste Ordre Nouveau, s’appuya comme Merleau-Ponty sur la psychiatrie phénoménologique d’Eugène Minkowski (1885–1972) pour prolonger Bergson tout en contestant les termes de son opposition entre durée vécue et espace abstrait. L’identification clinique par Minkowski d’un espace vécu procède déjà d’une approche phénoménologique de l’âme dans son lien charnel au monde. En une sorte de cogito de la chair, Dandieu peut alors refonder la pensée sur l’expérience psychophysique du réel comme tension féconde entre «l’autre en tant qu’autre» et «l’autre en tant que semblable», dont les points-limites seraient l’exclusion schizoïde et la participation syntonique.

Il s’agira ici de saisir les enjeux de la pratique
« ethnopsy », c’est-à-dire ethno-psychiatrique et
ethno-psychanalytique. Pour ce faire, on définit tout
d’abord ses prémisses ; puis on repose la question
de l’émergence de la technoscience et de son lien
avec les religions et une certaine politique – toutes
deux centrales pour l’ethnopsy – ; enfin, on propose
une triple clef de lecture de l’effraction psychique,
qui est instrumentale en clinique ethnopsychiatrique
: l’oblitération de la « puissance vaginale »
selon Georges Devereux (1908-1985) ; la modulation
de la « sécurité ontologique » de ronald D.
Laing (1927-1989) et le devenir de la « syntonie »
chez eugène minkowski (1885-1972). en conclusion,
on reprend la question de l’empirisme radical
en psychothérapie, de l’écoute dans le monde de la
santé, et de l’hystérie de la philosophie.

A link to my translation of chapter 3 of the revised (1953) edition of Eugène Minkowski's "La Schizophrénie" as it appears on my blog.

An English translation of Chapter 2 of the first (1927) edition has been made available by Cutting and Shepherd in their The Clinical Roots of the Schizophrenia Concept (1987 CUP), more recently reprinted in chapter 16 of Broome et al. (2013) The Maudsley Reader in Phenomenological Psychiatry. His Lived Time has also been translated (1970, Northwestern University Press; a chapter from it is also in the Broome et al volume); as has 'A contribution to the study of autism: The interrogative attitude' (co-written with Targowla) (Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 2001, 8, 4, 271-8). But what is striking that, whilst Minkowski's book on schizophrenia is surely the most profound single volume on the topic, only 1 of its 6 chapters has previously been translated, and that from an edition which he considerably revised.

Minkowski truly had a great gift for bringing complex phenomenological thought to bear on psychopathological phenomena in a way which was humane, genuinely illuminating, and conceptually clear. The vast majority of today's writing on schizophrenia and psychosis is pitiful by comparison.

NB: this translation is neither authorised nor authoritative! My French is but poor. If you'd like to help improve the translation please let me know! This pertains especially to the parts where, being unsure of the best translation, I've included the French in square brackets. I've left untranslated Minkowski's core terminology of 'élan vital', 'élan personnel' and 'trouble générateur'. For the time being I've followed the translator of Lived Time in rendering 'devenir ambiant' as 'ambiant becoming' (but it seems to me that something like 'environmental flux' might work better).

The chapter concerns autism - in the original sense of the term as coined by Bleuler before the first world war, i.e. as a fundamental organiser of schizophrenic psychopathology. In fact Minkowski makes it far more central to our understanding of schizophrenic psychopathology than Bleuler ever did. He also revised Bleuler's conception, and something of his (Minkowski's) own earlier conception, of autism as having to do with interiorisation and immersion in fantasy, instead offering us a concept which equally includes the organisation both of the more world-engaging, and the more simply deficient, aspects of schizophrenic psychopathology.

The paper discusses two recent approaches to schizophrenia, a phenomenological and a neuroscientific approach, illustrating how new directions in philosophy and cognitive science can elaborate accounts of psychopathologies of the self. It is argued that the notion of the minimal and bodily self underlying these approaches is still limited since it downplays the relevance of social interactions and relations for the formation of a coherent sense of self. These approaches also illustrate that we still lack an account of how 1st and 3rd person observations can fruitfully go together in an embodied account of disorders of the self. Two concepts from enactive cognitive science are introduced, the notions of autonomy and sense-making. Based on these, a new proposal for an enactive approach to psychopathologies of the self is outlined that integrates 1st and 3rd person perspectives, while strongly emphasising the role of social interactions in the formation of self. It is shown how the enactive framework might serve as a basis for an alternative understanding of disorders of the self such as schizophrenia, as a particular form of socially constituted self-organisation

Whereas classical Critical Theory has tended to view phenomenology as inherently uncritical, the recent upsurge of what has become known as critical phenomenology has attempted to show that phenomenological concepts and methods can be used in critical analyses of social and political issues. A recent landmark publication, 50 Concepts for Critical Phenomenology, contains no reference to psychiatry and psychopathology, however. This is an unfortunate omission, since the tradition of phenomenological psychiatry – as we will demonstrate in the present article by surveying and discussing the contribution of Jaspers, Minkowski, Laing, Basaglia, and Fanon – from the outset has practiced critical thinking, be it at the theoretical, interpersonal, institutional, or political level. Fanon is today, a recognized figure in critical phenomenology, even if his role in psychiatry might not yet have been appreciated as thoroughly as his anticolonial and antiracist contributions. But as we show, he ...

"Michel Weber et Vincent Berne (sous la direction de), Chromatikon IX. Annales de la philosophie en procès — Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, 2012 (224 p., 23 €, ISBN 978-2-930517-44-5)

Jean-Marie Breuvart, À Xavier Verley, en forme de dédicace
I. Séminaires de recherche — Research Seminars
François Beets, Condillac et la recherche d’un nouveau schème catégorial
Jean-Marie Breuvart, Chaos et Non-Sens dans les philosophies de Whitehead et de Weil
Roland Cazalis, De l’organisme à la spiritualité : une trajectoire whiteheadienne
Michel Weber, Syntonie ou agencement ethnopsychiatrique ?
II. Études critiques — Critical Studies
Vincent Berne, Le transitoire, pour quoi faire ?
A. N. Whitehead, « Process and Reality »
Frédéric Bisson, Du bon usage des zombies
Ronny Desmet, On the difference between  physics and philosophical cosmology
Philippe Gagnon, Que reste-t-il de la théologie à l'âge électronique ?
Arran Gare, Ethics, Economics and Civilization
Leonard Gibson, A Whiteheadian Perspective on Psychedelic Experience and Research
Benjamin Schewel, Mathematics and Metaphysics
III. Comptes rendus — Critical Reviews
Jean-Marie Breuvart, Process Approaches to Consciousness
Jean-Claude Dumoncel, Mahler homéomère
Philippe Gagnon, Xavier Verley, Sur le symbolisme
Dimitri Ginev, Process Strategies on the Nexus Temporality-Continuity
IV. Informations réticulaires — Reticular News
Michel Weber, Le 11-Septembre entre mythe et grand récit
Oxford Centre for Mindfulness and Adaptation Practice
2012–2013 Séminaires — Seminars
2013 Whitehead Psychology Nexus Workshop
Publications
Abréviations — Abbreviations
Table des matières — Table of Contents"

The present short study plans to tackle the ontological question of the Ultimate from the perspective of an interpretation of Whitehead’s reformed subjectivism coming to terms with psychosis. The conundrum is the following: understanding the process subjectivism Whitehead is arguing for constitutes a royal path to grasp his overall intuition; what happens if we seek to apply it to psychosis?

"Schizophrenia, Minkowski, & Bergsonism" has been published in April 2018 and it portrays my perspective on the life and work of the great Polish-born French psychiatrist and philosopher Eugène Minkowski (1885-1972). I have written it in English to overcome the fact that the great majority of Minkowski's works have never been translated to English.

"Michel Weber et Pierfrancesco Basile (sous la direction de), Chromatikon IV. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès — Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, 2008. (216 p. ; ISBN 978-2-87463-137-5 ; 19, 30 € ; http://www.i6doc.com/fr/livre/?GCOI=28001100909170 ; http://www.i6doc.com/en/livre/?GCOI=28001100909170; http://www.i6doc.com/doc/chromatikon4 & http://www.i6doc.com/doc/chromatikon4-eng)
Table
Pierfrancesco Basile, Foreword: Whitehead after Whitehead
I. Séminaires de recherche — Research Seminars
Jean-Pascal Alcantara, La dérivation des transformations de Lorentz par Whitehead
Pierfrancesco Basile, Is Mental Composition Impossible in Principle?
Emeline Deroo, Le périr chez Whitehead : esquisse anthropologique
Ronny Desmet, Speculative Philosophy as a Generalized Mathematics
Xavier Verley, Whitehead et Leibniz
II. Etudes critiques — Critical Studies
Vincent Berne, Légalité de la nature et mondes possibles
Frédéric Bisson, L’aventure d’une ritournelle
Jason W. Brown, Perception, Memory and Subjective Time
Pete A. Y. Gunter, Bergson’s Divided Line and Minkowski’s Psychiatry
Phil Jenkins, Group Membership and Collective Obligation
Antonella Lang-Balestra, A Spinozian Reading of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary
James A. Marcum, Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism and Systems Biology
Nicholas Rescher, The Uneasy Union of Reality and Pragmatism in Inquiry
David Skrbina, On the Problem of the Aggregate
III. Comptes rendus — Critical Reviews
Steve Hulbert, Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses
Ronny Desmet, Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body
Jean-Marie Breuvart, Xavier Verley, La Philosophie spéculative de Whitehead
Jean-Marie Breuvart, Michel Weber, L’Épreuve de la philosophie
IV. Informations réticulaires — Reticular News
Discussion: Michel Weber, The Genocidal Logic of Neoliberalism
Séminaires — Seminars
Publications
Abréviations — Abbreviations
Table des matières — Table of Content
"

This article has a dual focus.  On the one hand, it traces the history of the tradition of the floating and rotating dome and relates it to the idea of the sublime.  On the other hand, it delves into the phenomenological component of the sublime as discussed in philosophy and as presented in literature and in architecture in relationship to expansive space.  In the process, it distinguishes between the architectural sublime, the cosmological sublime, and the spatial sublime.

Through a reference to two contemporary cinematographic narrations, this essay wants to explain the relationship between the fear of death and the awareness of our own mortality. Firstly, we will retrace the reasons why man fears death and the consequences of this fear, first of all the equivalence between survival and power. Secondly, the essay tries to show how learning how to die is the same as unlearning how to serve: the acquired awareness of the tight bond between life and death is an essential starting point to earn our own independence and liberation inside the social and political context where we live.

Time-consciousness has long been a focus of research in phenomenology and phenomenological psychology.  We advance and extend this tradition of research by focusing on the character of temporal experience under conditions of mania.  Symptom scales and diagnostic criteria for mania are peppered with temporally inflected language:  increased rate of speech, racing thoughts, flight of ideas, hyperactivity.  But what is the underlying structure of temporal experience in manic episodes?  We tackle this question using a strategically hybrid approach.  We recover and reconstruct three hypotheses regarding manic temporality that were advanced and modelled by two pioneers of clinical phenomenology: Eugène Minkowski (1885-1972) and Ludwig Binswanger (1881-1966).  We then test, critique, and refine these hypotheses using heterophenomenological methods in an interview-based study of persons with a history of bipolar and a current diagnosis of acute mania.  Our conclusions support a central hypothesis due to Minkowski and Binswanger, viz., that disturbance in the formal structure of temporal experience is a core feature of mania.  We argue that a suitably refined variant of Binswanger’s model of disturbance in manic protention helps to explain a striking pattern of impaired insight and impaired reasoning in manic episodes.

This book explores the nature of artistic and literary imagination, creativity, aesthetic experience, and genius, while offering a critique of the post-structuralist assault on transcendent values.  This involves distinguishing between the aesthetics of art and the sociology of art, a subject addressed in Part 1.  In Part 2, the principal arguments by major thinkers, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Norman Bryson, Jacques Derrida, Terry Eagleton, Stanley Fish, Michel Foucault, Paul de Man, Edward Said, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, and Hayden White, are subjected to an analytical critique.

Partindo da perspectiva de que a rapidez e a pressa se tornaram imperativos ao modo de vida na atualidade como uma consequência das transformações sociais e de produção das últimas décadas, é importante examinar a relação destes imperativos com o sofrimento apresentado na clínica por sujeitos submetidos ao imperativo da pressa.
Assim, pretende-se neste artigo examinar a posição destes sujeitos diante de seus sofrimentos na relação com o tempo e a direção de tratamento na clínica psicanalítica.

Közismert, hogy az utóbbi évtizedek humán- és társadalomtudományi kutatásainak egyik kulcsszava az emlékezet volt. Amikor az 1970-es években, egymással párhuzamosan Németországban és Franciaországban megindultak az első kutatások, sokakat töltött el az a remény, hogy új lendületet kapnak az emlékezet vizsgálata révén a történeti, az irodalmi, a szociológiai, az antropológiai, sőt a pszichológiai kutatások. Ám idővel fény derült arra a tényre, hogy az egyes diszciplínák – részben vagy teljes egészében – mást értenek az „emlékezet” fogalma alatt (ez utóbbi különösen a kognitív pszichológiára érvényes), ám a humántudományok sem jeleskedtek a fogalmi zűrzavar csillapításában. Ennek egyik legproblematikusabb aspektusa az volt, hogy még a nemzetközi kutatás sem foglalkozott kielégítően az emlékezet fogalomtörténetével, nevezetesen azzal, hogy egyes korszakokban különböző kontextusokban mit értünk, mit érthetünk memória alatt. Sarah Gensburger írása egyenesen zsákutcának nevezi a fentebb kivonatolt tendenciát.

Arnaud Dandieu (1897-1933), penseur transdisciplinaire personnaliste, et Claude Chevalley (1906-1984), mathématicien du groupe Bourbaki, ont conjointement analysé l'acte créateur d'extraire de l'expérience concrète la généralité artificielle du langage scientifique. Leur collaboration s'inscrit parmi les premières manifestations de la phénoménologie française, avec la psychopathologie d'Eugène Minkowski, dont ils s'autorisent pour distinguer la science du savant. C'est lui qui fait abstraction d'une réalité affective et concrète par l'acte rationnel d'exclusion de ce substrat qui en demeure la condition, seuil psychologique au-delà duquel opère sa propre activité logistique. Ce domaine de l'axiomatique est ainsi garanti aussi bien que circonscrit par celui du phénoménologue. Arnaud Dandieu (1897-1933) a fourni des bases anthropologiques plutôt que théologiques aux premières élaborations du personnalisme français, surtout connu pour la note existentielle qu'il apporta à la pensée chrétienne autour de la revue Esprit d'Emmanuel Mounier. Or Dandieu a plutôt fait école dans le groupe Ordre Nouveau, lui fournissant une doctrine qui sera reprise par l'aile radicale du mouvement fédéraliste européen d'après-guerre. Sa mort prématurée a pourtant laissé en plan une pensée transdisciplinaire inclassable, digne d'un écho bien plus large. Des éléments ont commencé d'en être redécouverts par des biais aussi disparates que l'étude des marges intellectuelles du surréalisme autour de Georges Bataille (son collègue à la Bibliothèque Nationale) et la philosophie des sciences, angle privilégié ici.

Contains the following essays:
1. Robin Fuller: 'More consistent and systematic than any form of writing I know'. Kurt Schwitters' Systemschrift 
2. Matthew Mindrup: Kurt Schwitters' Architectural Models
3. Cole Collins: 'From the back as from the front'. Feminist Perspectives in Anna Blossom has Wheels'.
4. Reasoning Irrationally. The Logics of Kurt Schwitters' Merz-World.
5. Allen Weiss: The Errant Text (with an introduction by Roger Cardinal.

The journal is available free to members or can be ordered from the society at a cost of 10 Euros (or equivalent) plus postage.

Recent research in the overlapping field of psychopathology and philosophy of schizophrenia has shown that the self is affected in different ways, on different levels, and at different moments. Although the importance of the disturbance of the self seems to be evident to phenomenological psychiatrists and is backed up by more and more empirical research, the influence of this idea in mainstream psychiatry is limited. The epistemological differences between mainstream and phenomenological psychiatry left aside, the inherent philosophical problems of the concept of the self may be partly to blame for this. As an attempt to clarify one of these problems, we will study the role of intersubjectivity in Schizophrenia.

The role of intersubjectivity in the constitution of the self and its disturbances is relatively absent in recent research. The main focus has been on the disturbance of the self, whereas the different symptoms that lead to a diagnosis of Schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions are discussed less. However, these remain crucial for the diagnosis and the experience of the patient. Moreover, other symptoms and signs of Schizophrenia can be described in relation to intersubjectivity, such as the once called schizophrenic autism that is close to the negative symptoms. With this paper we will go back to the roots of recent phenomenological research and try to come to a better understanding of the role of intersubjectivity in schizophrenia.

We will use the works of the French psychiatrist Eugène Minkowski (1885-1972) and  the  Japanese psychiatrist Kimura Bin (1931), who are regularly quoted and referred to when explaining the phenomenological study of the self and its disturbances. However, certain parts of their work that have to do with intersubjectivity seem to have been neglected. When considering the different cultural and philosophical backgrounds and times in which the authors lived and worked, remarkable parallels can be found. Minkowski is famous for his concept of Schizophrenia as a loss of vital contact with reality. Kimura, on the other hand, is best known for his use of the Japanese word “aida”, which relates to an intersubjective space, an in-between us. Combining their two views leads to the idea of Schizophrenia as a disturbance of intersubjective reality.

We will therefore study the relation between intersubjectivity and reality in the works of the two psychiatrists. This will lead not only to a different understanding of the self, but to a different understanding of schizophrenia as well. To illustrate this, the main concepts and ideas will be discussed in the light of intersubjectivity and reality. From “aida”, “jikaku” and meta-noesis of Kimura, to “l’ambiance”; “pénétration” and “élan vital” of Minkowski. Their common ideas lead to the conclusion that the disturbance of intersubjective reality is a vital part of schizophrenia. These ideas are not only relevant for diagnosis and understanding, but might have therapeutic consequences as well.

Department of Psychiatry, Sce du Pr Azorin, CHU Sainte-Marguerite, Marseille, France, (Stanghellini) Department of Neurological and Psychiatric Sciences, Section of Clinical Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, (Bezzubova) Department of ...

International vistas on philosophical psychiatry are summarized.Many investigators re-emphasize the continuing relevence for psychopathology of the classical perspectives of Jaspers and Husserl. The Husserlian reduction provides a solid methodological path for psychiatry, psychotherapy, and neurosciences. This presupposes a change in the attitude of the psychiatrist himself.