Karl Jaspers’ General Psychopathology (Allgemeine Psychopathologie) and Its Implication for the Current Psychiatry

Karl Jaspers is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and humanist. In 1913, he published the General Psychopathology (GP; Allgemeine Psychopathologie), the first edition. Despite the passage of one hundred years after the GP was published, GP still has a potential value to present a phenomenological and comprehensive viewpoint for psychiatry to overcome Kraepelinian-biological absolutism. The philosophical backgrounds of a Jaspersian phenomenological sense have been related to both the transcendence and the immanence roots. Partly under the influence of a Husserlian distinction between the natural and phenomenological attitudes, a rigid distinction between explanation and understanding has been proposed as the proper epistemological method in Jaspers’ GP. Further, the fact that a distinction between process and development has been presented as the psychical phenomenon is understandable. The integrated and comprehensive viewpoint establishment for the state of “Babylonian confusion of tongues” in German psychiatry as well as the newly initiating phenomenological trend in psychiatry have been the legacies of Jaspers’ GP. Moreover, the common theoretical backgrounds may be shared by the Jaspersian sense and humanitarian approaches in Korean psychiatry. Also, the Jaspersian sense may help the current molecular psychiatry to have a chance to overcome its solipsism and limitations.