Human Vulnerability: A Phenomenological Approach to the Manifestation and Treatment of Mental Illness

ABSTRACT

Going beyond the scope of psychiatric diagnoses, this study introduces the concept of human vulnerability as a means of linking the phenomenological approach—focusing on the patient’s experience—with psychotherapeutic treatment. To this end, it applies Karl Jaspers’ concept of “limit situation” to the existential vulnerability in the manifestation of mental illness and the ontological vulnerability in schizophrenia. From a psychological or empathic standpoint, vulnerability, as experienced in different cases of mental illness, refers to the condition of being confronted with disturbing meaningful social encounters with others. In these social encounters, existential meanings acquire disturbing qualities for a person’s integrity, giving rise to various psychopathological phenomena. This study incorporates the practice of psychotherapy and empirical research to suggest that the experience of vulnerability is crucial not only in understanding the manifestation of mental illness but also a key element of phenomenological psychotherapeutic treatment, and it uses schizophrenia as an example.

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This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Sellman, ‘Towards an understanding’; Sellman, ‘Vulnerability and nursing’.

2 Ibid., 3.

3 Kendler and Prescott, Genes, environment, and psychopathology.

4 Auerbach, ‘Psychological vulnerability’.

5 Allen et al., ‘Social determinants’.

6 Irarrázaval, ‘Vulnerability in Schizophrenia’.

7 Irarrázaval, ‘The Lived Body’.

8 Haram et al., ‘Dialogue Therapy’; Irarrázaval, ‘Psychotherapeutic Implications’; Lysaker et al., ‘Insight and Personal’; Lysaker et al., ‘Disturbances in Self-Experience’; Lysaker et al., ‘Metacognitive Deficits’; Seikkula et al., ‘Five-Year Experience’; Škodlar and Henriksen, ‘Toward a Phenomenological’; Stanghellini and Lysaker, ‘The Psychotherapy’.

9 Cavell, Must We Mean; Irarrázaval, ‘Empathy for the Foreign’.

10 Fuchs, Ecology of the Brain.

11 Husserl, The Crisis of European.

12 Maturana and Varela, El árbol del conocimiento; Varela, Conocer: Las ciencias cognitivas; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind; Schutz and Luckmann, The Structures.

13 Jaspers, ‘Die phänomenologische Forschungsrichtung’, 318.

14 Ibid.

15 Irarrázaval and Sharim, ‘Intersubjectivity in Schizophrenia’.

16 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen.

17 Jaspers, General Psychopathology.

18 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen.

19 Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence.

20 Fuchs, ‘Existential Vulnerability’.

21 Jaspers, Allgemeine Psychopathologie.

22 Irarrázaval, ‘Vulnerability in Schizophrenia’.

23 Blankenburg and Mishara, ‘First Steps Towards’; Stanghellini, ‘For an Anthropology’; Stanghellini, ‘Vulnerability to Schizophrenia’.

24 Irarrázaval and Sharim, ‘Intersubjectivity in Schizophrenia’.

25 Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity.

26 Irarrázaval, ‘Vulnerability in Schizophrenia’.

27 Irarrázaval and Sharim, ‘Intersubjectivity in Schizophrenia’.

28 Cavallaro, ‘The Phenomenon of Ego-Splitting’.

29 Parnas et al., ‘EASE: Examination of Anomalous’, 248.

30 Irarrázaval, ‘A Phenomenological Paradigm’.

31 Carel, ‘A reply to’.

32 Haram et al., ‘Dialogue Therapy in Psychosis’.

33 Häfner, ‘The Concept of Schizophrenia’.

34 Škodlar and Henriksen, ‘Toward a Phenomenological’, 8.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chilean National Research and Development Agency: ANID / FONDECYT de Iniciación / 2020 / FOLIO 11200138.