Psychiatric Diagnosis and Classification - ResearchGate

144 PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSIS AND CLASSIFICATION
of consciousness, that is, any investigation whatsoever has consciousness as
its pivot and condition.
Phenomenology calls attention to the fact that it is possible to investigate
consciousness in several ways. It is not only possible to consider it as an
empirical object somehow endowed with mental properties, as a causally
determined object in the world, but also as the subject of intentional directedness
to the world, i.e. as the subject for the world, asÐto paraphrase
WittgensteinÐthe limit of the world [29]. And as long as consciousness is only
considered as an empirical object, which is the predominant case in contemporary
materialism, the truly significant aspect of consciousness, the fact
that it is the dimension that allows the world to manifest itself, will be
overlooked.
The term phenomeno-logy literally means an account or knowledge of a
phenomenon. Phenomenon is that which shows itself, that which manifests
itself, an appearance. Consciousness enables or is a condition of such manifestation;
it is a dative of all appearing phenomenality). Phenomenology does
not distinguish between the inaccessible noumenon thing-in-itself) and its
``outer'' appearance phenomenon in the Kantian sense): for phenomenology
the phenomenon is always a manifestation of the thing itself. This
way of discussing consciousness, as the constitutive dimension that allows
for identification and manifestation, as the ``place'' ``in'' which the world
can reveal and articulate itself, is radically different from any attempt to
treat it as merely yet another object in the world.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL ACCOUNT OF THE
FUNDAMENTAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
We will now present some of those central features of consciousness that
phenomenology has elucidated in numerous analyses. Such an account is,
as it has been argued above, a necessary first step in any scientific explanatory
account and in any classification of pathological experience. The very
notion of anomalous experience is a contrastive concept, i.e. it can only be
articulated against the background of the normal experience. It is therefore
our contention that this brief exposition will not only familiarize the reader
more closely with the ways in which phenomenology performs its analyses;
it will also provide a much needed introduction to the essential structures
of human subjectivity, a comprehension of which is indispensable for a
sophisticated and faithful description of anomalous experience. To mention
just a few examples: to identify the essential differences between, say,
obsessions, pseudo-obsessions, and episodes of thought interference in the
incipient schizophrenia, it is necessary to grasp different possible ways
of being self-aware; to differentiate between the non-psychotic and the