Psychotherapie und die Anerkennung des Fremden

The aim of the present paper is three-fold: it reveals the inherent limitations of the concept of disorder in psychopathology and psychotherapy. It argues that characteristics of the person such as individuality, subjectivity and identity, have to be considered in psychiatric and psychotherapeutic concepts. And it shows that psychotherapy is dependent on cultural, social and socio-economic factors that are neglected in many theories. The paper uses clinical and epistemological arguments. It arrives at the conclusion that the above mentioned limitations have a common ground. They could be overcome, if psychiatry and psychotherapy were self-reflective and self-critical in respect to the inherent limitations of theory and practice and if they integrated concepts of being different in their basic theories so that symptoms, persons and cultural or societal peculiarities could be recognised and acknowledged.—The paper has been written as a comment to D. Orlinsky's statements considering disorder-specific psychotherapies from the viewpoint of psychotherapy research.     

Die Atomistik bei Ludwig Boltzmann. Zur wissenschaftlichen und philosophischen Bedeutung einer kontroversen Position am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts

The atomic hypothesis according to Ludwig Boltzmann. The scientific and philosophical importance of a controversial position at the close of the 19th century. This paper examines Boltzmann’s standpoint in the controversy over the existence of atoms between himself on the one hand and Mach, Ostwald, Helm and to some extent Duhem on the other hand. The latter wanted to develop a physics only constructed with perceptible phenomena. Because of the lack of empirical evidence of the atoms at that time they did not accept them for the construction of physics. In contrast, Boltzmann found the acceptance of atoms to be a fruitful assumption, since for him the construction of physics required going beyond perceptible phenomena. Two different conceptions of nature and of the ways to know nature clashed in this disagreement between Boltzmann and his opponents. Op-posing one-sided positions, Boltzmann supported the hypothetical character of science, in which more than one basic hypothesis can be advanced: he was open to the possibility of fundamental revolutions in science.

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Die Atomistik bei Ludwig Boltzmann. Zur wissenschaftlichen und philosophischen Bedeutung einer kontroversen Position am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts

     

Die Welt und die Evidenz. Zu Husserls Erledigung des Cartesianismus

This paper aims to show that Husserl’s thought represents a dismissal of Cartesianism. I argue that at the basis of Husserl’s thought lies an account of perception and evidence that is completely different from Descartes’. Anticipating an insight which will be developed by analytical philosophy, Husserl claims that a perception or evidence can be called into question only on the basis of other perceptions and evidences. Indeed, all questioning of a single perception or evidence presupposes that perception and evidence are reliable and cannot concern perception and evidence as such, but only their single instances. Therefore, phenomenological reduction is not a methodological doubt, and Husserl’s cogito has a different meaning from Descartes’ cogito. This approach is based on an account of reality, at the core of which lies the identification between what is real and what is experienceable, but it does not lead to a reduction of things to consciousness.     

Normische Gesetzeshypothesen und die wissenschaftsphilosophische Bedeutung des nichtmonotonen Schliessens

Normic Laws and the Significance of Nonmonotonic Reasoning for Philosophy of Science. Normic laws have the form ‘if A then normally B’. They have been discovered in the explanation debate, but were considered as empirically vacuous (§1). I argue that the prototypical (or ideal) normality of normic laws implies statistical normality (§2), whence normic laws have empirical content. In §3–4 I explain why reasoning from normic laws is nonmonotonic, and why the understanding of the individual case is so important here. After sketching some foundations of nonmonotonic reasoning as developed by AI-researchers (§5), Iargue that normic laws are also the best way to understand ceteris paribus laws (§6). §7 deals with the difference between physical and non-physical disciplines and §9 with the difference between normicity and approximation. In §8 it is shown how nonmonotonic reasoning provides a new understanding of the protection of theories against falsification by auxiliary hypotheses. §10, finally, gives a system- and evolution-theoretical explanation of the deeper reason for the omnipresence of normic laws in practice and science, and forthe connection between ideal and statistical normality. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Psychotherapie und die Anerkennung des Fremden Kommentar zu D. Orlinsky

Die Arbeit setzt sich drei Ziele: Sie will Grenzen und Einschränkungen aufzeigen, die im aktuell gebräuchlichen Störungsbegriff enthalten sind. Sie will zeigen, was verloren geht, wenn die Person des einzelnen Kranken, verstanden als Individualität, Subjektivität und Identität, in Diagnostik und Therapie zu wenig beachtet wird, und sie will darauf hinweisen, dass soziale, kulturelle und gesellschaftliche Faktoren in der Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie zu berücksichtigen sind. Methodisch bedient sich die Arbeit v. a. wissenschaftstheoretischer und philosophischer Argumente. Sie kommt zur Schlussfolgerung, dass die Grenzen von Diagnostik und Therapie in allen drei Bereichen eine gemeinsame Grundlage haben. Sie lassen sich überwinden, wenn Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie selbstreflexiv die Grenzen der eigenen Verfahren berücksichtigen und wenn Fremdheit und Andersheit (des Symptoms, des Mitmenschen, des kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Umfelds) prinzipiell anerkannt werden. Der Text versteht sich als Kommentar zu D. Orlinskys Ausführungen zur störungsspezifischen Psychotherapie aus der Sicht des Psychotherapieforschers in diesem Heft.     

Die Eigenart des Geistigen. Induktive und einsichtige Psychologie

Ohne Zusammenfassung