Understanding understanding in psychiatry.
History of Psychiatry September 1, 2023 Joseph Gough
The distinction between understanding and explanation, originally used to defend history from physics, was foundational to Karl Jaspers' phenomenological psychiatry and remains influential. This paper examines what 'understanding' means in this context, why it persists in psychiatry, and what insights it offers. The author argues that while the notion is unhelpfully tied to the view that the mental is epistemologically and methodologically autonomous, it nonetheless highlights a significant gap in many approaches to psychiatry and the scientific study of humans.