Two Essays on the Philosophy of Mental Health. Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Psychopathology and Psychotherapy 12+

📘 In this book the authors propose a novel understanding of the meaning and treatment of psychopathology. They consider contemporary explanations of mental health problems such as cognitive distortion, impeded self-actualisation or unconscious conflict, and make the argument that these explanations are incomplete. Instead, they view psychological symptoms as expressing a 'mixed reality.' By 'mixed reality' they intend to emphasise that troubled thoughts, feelings and behaviour not only reflect disorder, but also contain a normalising or healing tendency - analogous to the healing tendency that is activated in any living organism which finds itself in a wounded state. In the interest of providing a context or framework for understanding this healing tendency, they investigate the philosophical underpinnings of the notions of normality and abnormality. They define normality in terms of the complementarity between the uniqueness of personal existence and the linking force of relationship, and see abnormality in terms of the breach of this complementarity. In view of this emphasis on 'being' and 'relationship' they consider various philosophical approaches to the question of how things 'are' in themselves and how they 'relate' to one another. In exploring these issues they examine, with particular attention, the works of three contemporary thinkers: Graham Harman, Kenneth Gergen and Kenneth Schmitz. This examination leads the authors ...