Paving the way for systemic phenomenological psychiatry - the forgotten heritage of Wolfgang Blankenburg.
Frontiers in Psychiatry January 1, 2022 Samuel Thoma, Michael Konrad, Lisa C. Fellin et al.
Phenomenological psychopathology typically locates the core disturbance of mental illness within the individual's experience, but this overlooks the social context of symptoms and treatment. Wolfgang Blankenburg's concept of 'loss of common sense' as the structural core of schizophrenia instead accounts for both personal experience and the interactional structures of families and social milieus. His family studies of young people with schizophrenia, largely neglected, show how he expanded the phenomenological approach in a systemic direction. The paper links Blankenburg's work with current systemic explanatory models of schizophrenia, discusses clinical and scientific implications, and calls for further research on synergy between phenomenological and systemic approaches.