W01.04 - Why books?

Abstract

In the context of this Joint Section Workshop – jointly organized by the AEP Sections 'Women's Mental Health’ and ‘Philosophy and Psychiatry’ - on 'Scientific reading and writing in psychiatry' the title of this talk poses the question of the rapport between two kinds of knowledge: theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. Some clinical problems and a paradox derive from this: Does theoretical knowledge stand in the way of practical skills like the immediate grasping of the other's experience as in empathic understanding? Does theoretical knowledge act as a set of prejudices tackling "taking inside" the other's thoughts and feelings? The paradox is the following: Do we understand other persons thanks to our prejudices (or a set of commonly shared prejudices)? A tentative way out from these problems and paradoxes are Giordano Bruno's concept of "docta ignorantia" or Edmund Husserl defintion of the phenomenologist as an "eternal beginner". The notion of epoché, i.e. bracketing one's background knowledge in order to highlight it, may prove useful too.