Introduction: Themes and Perspectives

This book originates from the need to integrate a first-person perspective into mainstream academic research in psychiatry and its relation to neurology. First and foremost, it recognizes that psychiatric patients can offer unique viewpoints and insights, not only into their own pathology but into the broader and basic categories of being a person—the kinds of experiences associated with perception, emotion, action, selfhood, embodiment and communication—that may be disordered during mental illness. While conventional psychiatric paradigms predominantly emphasize empirical quantification and pathological categorization, the intricate weaving of human mental states presented by patient experience suggests the presence of a larger ontological tapestry than what is represented currently. For now, the complex patterns in this tapestry can only be imagined, but we know that whatever image they make must afford a more expansive view. An approach that incorporates the subtle variations of embodied lived experiences and emotional landscapes, in addition to neurocognitive processes. But how do we find this place? This is where philosophy, and phenomenology in particular, come in handy, as a bridge.