The most fruitful way to understand patterns of psychiatric disorders is precisely through phenomenological psychopathology, emphasized Dr. Stefan Jerotić in his lecture “Decoding Pathological Experience: Phenomenological Psychopathology.”
In the lecture held on June 30, 2023, at the Institute of Social Sciences, Dr. Stefan Jerotić, a psychiatrist at the Clinic for Psychiatry of the University Clinical Center of Serbia and an Assistant professor at the Department of Psychiatry of the Medical Faculty, argued that the phenomenological philosophical tradition (Husserl, Jaspers, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty) provides a systematic method for exploring and articulating the content of consciousness, and thus a proper venue for studying the “disturbed” consciousness of psychiatric patients. By focusing on the “first-person” perspective, phenomenology enables deeper insights into the structure of subjective experience, making it an ideal tool for researching human subjectivity and the content of consciousness.
Phenomenological psychopathology is a discipline that utilizes the methodological framework of phenomenology to investigate and describe changes in the structure of subjectivity underlying psychopathological conditions, as he explained. The application of a phenomenological approach in clinical practice allows psychiatrists, through the use of a phenomenological conceptual framework, to establish changes in central structures of subjective experience in a much more precise and profound way. For example, a clear demarcation can be made in the way selfhood is altered in spectrum of psychotic disorders compared to major depression. Changes can also be observed in temporality – in the experience of the lived flow of time.
Through specific historical examples as well as examples from personal clinical work, Jerotić pointed out the manifestations of different patterns of self-disorders in psychosis and depression.
Dr. Stefan Jerotić’s lecture was the first within the seminar “Philosophy and Psychiatry” at the Center for Philosophy of the Institute of Social Sciences.
