Existential psychotherapy: overcoming dualism in the new philosophy of psychiatry The revival of intensive research in the philosophy of psychiatry

during the last years of XX century is first of all connected with the progress in neuroscience and cognitive sciences. Neuroscientists themselves note that their work promotes revision of the traditional philosophical problems, such as nature of consciousness, personal identity, and our knowledge of "other minds" [Andreasen N. C. Brave new brain: conquering mental illness in the era of the genome. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2001]. The new philosophy of psychiatry starts to play the most significant role among interdisciplinary scientific and practical fields of study of brain and mind. It happens partly because of the truly impressive circle of problems raised, and partly because of energetic efforts of the research centers and institutes. The new philosophy of psychiatry is a trend closely intertwined with the AngloAmerican philosophy of consciousness. The latter uses psychopathological phenomena to illustrate philosophical issues such as psycho-physical problem and problem of free will and to clarify such concepts as "consciousness", "self," "I" (G. Graham, G.L. Stevens, L. Bortolotti, P. Gipps and B. Fulfold, M. Davies, D. Dennett, and H. Humphreys). These problems are posed and solved in a dualistic manner, which is common to analytical philosophy in general. Analytical philosophy of psychiatry considers psychiatry as just another branch of medicine, and mental illness as a physiological disorder, which can now be regarded as dominant tendency among psychiatrists. The problem is that such an analysis of case studies in psychiatry does not allow understanding of the actual language of mental illness. Where the analytical philosophy of psychiatry sees only "a case", existential psychotherapy develops a history of disease in order to recreate the moment of occurrence of "delirium." Analytical philosophy of psychiatry cannot thus consider delirium as something different from itself. Analysis of delirium is always more or less an analysis of the description of delirium. An existential approach relies more on Wittgensteinian philosophy and his thought that philosophy cannot give it [language] any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is [Philosophical Investigation 124]. In the report I will demonstrate three examples of description of the psychiatric phenomena. In the first two examples, the concepts of analytic philosophy are used in the analysis of fixed ideas. In the last one, the terms of moral philosophy are used in the research of psychopathy. These examples show that dualistic way of studying of psychopathology is clearly inadequate. An attempt to overcome dualism and to combine "the analysis of consciousness" with existential psychotherapy leads to a born of new "neuro-philosophical" categorical concepts.

Author: Polina Dyachkina, MA student at the Faculty of Social Sciences in The Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; head specialist at the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology at Russian Academy of State Service at the President of the Russian Federation. Contacts: pdyachkina@yandex.ru, heveluc@gmail.com, +79153672409