Imperfect Cognitions

Matthew Broome This post is the second in a series of posts on a project on  agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. The research team members were asked the same four questions and today it is Matthew Broome's turn to answer. Matthew is an academic psychiatrist and Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham. His main research interests lie in the field early psychosis and in the philosophy and ethics of mental health.  What interests you about clinical encounters with young people in the mental health context? There were two main drivers to my interest. One is very practical: as a psychiatrist I often see young people with mental health problems and am aware of the difficulties they can face in getting the help and understanding they would like.  The second driver is more theoretical, but with p...

This post is by Kevin Aho . Professor Aho is chair of the Department of Communication and Philosophy at Florida Gulf Coast University. He is the author of Existentialism: An Introduction , Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body and co-author of Body Matters: A Phenomenology of Sickness, Illness, and Disease. The new edited collection Existential Medicine: Essays on Health and Illness gathers together a group of leading figures such as Havi Carel, Shaun Gallagher, Drew Leder, Matthew Ratcliffe, John Russon, Jenny Slatman, Robert Stolorow, Fredrik Svenaeus, and Kristin Zeiler who draw on the methods of existential and hermeneutic phenomenology to illuminate the lived-experience of illness. The primary aim of the collection is to challenge the detached and objectifying standpoint of mainstream medical science in order to deepen and broaden our understanding of health and illness and offer more sensitive and humane approaches to healthcare. To this end, the volume is not so concerned w...

Giovanni Stanghellini A course entitled The Phenomenological Bases of the Therapy of Severe Mental Disorders took place on April 9-11 in Florence. Organized by the  EPA (European Psychiatric Association) Section of Philosophy and Psychiatry, the course accommodated 30 practitioners and philosophers from all over Europe to offer an advanced practical workshop on Phenomenological Psychotherapy. The participants learned therapeutic skills from such professionals as Giovanni Stanghellini, Thomas Fuchs, Andrea Fiorillo, Andrea Raballo and Borut Skodlar. The first day started with an intensive but fascinating introduction by the course’s director Giovanni Stanghellini , who took his audience through the theoretical underpinnings of the phenomenological model, with philosophical references to Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas. Stanghellini argued that a human being ought to be seen and understood as a dialogue with Alterity. It is exactly in a dialogue, where the true essence of l...