Abstract

ADAN MANES, Jaime. On psychiatric judgement and its pretension of truth: a critical approach. Rev. Asoc. Esp. Neuropsiq. [online]. 2016, vol.36, n.130, pp.463-478. ISSN 2340-2733.

Psychiatric practice is legitimized by its adscription to a methodological approach that has represented a sure path towards true knowledge all throughout the modern era: the natural sciences. In spite of this, the history of psychiatry is scattered with theoretical, practical and conceptual inconsistencies that have demanded continuous efforts aimed at reaching a degree of stability that has never been more than transient. In the face of the natural sciences' failure to offer a stable framework of knowledge for psychopathology and subjective experience, we shall address psychiatry's object of study in order to shed some light on the reasons underlying its lack of progress, highlighting the illegitimacy of a natural-scientific approach towards subjective experience. We will find in hermeneutics an alternative methodological approach that will settle the basis for a systematic approach towards an analysis of subjective experience. We will further describe the notion of her-meneutic objectivity as an epistemic device aimed at legitimizing psychiatry's pretension of truth without resorting to a positivistic methodology, which has already proved to be inadequate when dealing with psychopathological phenomena.

Keywords : epistemology; psychopathology; hermeneutics; positivism.

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