Main description:

The vast majority of mental health clinicians and researchers rely on diagnostic systems based on operational criteria. However, in their everyday practice, many clinicians also pay attention to their own feelings or intuitions about the patient. For an even greater number of clinicians, this process may occur inadvertently. Scholars from various fields are increasingly stressing the importance of complementing the emphasis on operational criteria with thoughtful attention to the subjective and intersubjective elements involved in a thorough psychopathological evaluation.

This book aims at capturing the essence, implications and full potential of the clinician's subjective experience in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. It gathers contributions from several different disciplines, such as phenomenology, neuroscience, the cognitive sciences, and psychoanalysis. It also presents the development, validation, and clinical application of a psychometric instrument that reliably investigates the clinician's feelings, thoughts, and perceptions related to the clinical encounter.

Contents:

The psychiatric assessment: first-person, second-person and third-person perspectives (Thomas Fuchs).- Analyzing the patient's and the clinician's subjective experience: epistemological issues (Dan Zahavi (alternatively: Svetlana Sholokhova, Valeria Bizzarri).- The importance of subjective data for psychiatric theory, research, and treatment (John Strauss).- The phenomenologically-informed clinician during the psychiatric assessment (Joseph Parnas/Graham Henriksen Mads).- The role of empathic knowledge in the psychiatric interview (Giovanni Stanghellini).- Phenomenology of the clinician's reasoning: intuition, typification, feeling (Michael A, Schwartz, Osborne P. Wiggins).- Embodiment, intersubjectivity, and clinical reasoning: a focus on the psychiatric diagnostic process (Shaun Gallagher).- The clinician's feelings in psychiatric diagnosis: an historical excursus (Mario Rossi Monti).- The Praecox Gefuhl: a reappraisal (Mauro Pallagrosi, Laura Fonzi, Angelo Picardi, Massimo Biondi).- The diagnostic use of countertransference in psychodynamic practice (Vittorio Lingiardi (alternatively: Laura Fonzi, Massimiliano Sommantico).- A cognitive therapy perspective on therapist's feelings and interpersonal processes (Paola Gaetano, Angelo Picardi, Antonino Carcione).- A new approach to the intersubjective dimension of the clinical encounter: the Assessment of Clinician's Subjective Experience (ACSE) (Mauro Pallagrosi, Laura Fonzi, Angelo Picardi, Massimo Biondi).- Mental illness as a pathology of intersubjectivity (Gilberto Di Petta).- The therapeutic implications of an intersubjective view of mental illness: the case of schizophrenia (Zeno Van Duppen).- A phenomenological account of impaired intersubjectivity in depression (Matthew Ratcliffe)