Phenomenology in a Different Key: Narrative, Meaning, and Madness
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childhood adversity, existentialism, hearing voices, hermeneutics, narrative, phenomenology, recovery
Henriksen et al. (2015) use phenomenology as a tool to clarify the status of what they regard as the abnormal experiences of the condition called schizophrenia. This reveals phenomenology as a method of detailed scrutiny of these experiences to establish a theory about them in terms of the “dissolution of certain structures of self-consciousness” (p. 165, elaborated as “pathological changes in the experience of space” (p. 165) and “morbid objectification of inner speech” (p. 165). Our commentary is in two parts. In the first, we set out a contrasting view of phenomenology, and its use in madness.1 In the second, we exemplify this use of phenomenology and the meaningful nature of voices through evidence that links madness with childhood adversity, trauma and abuse. Our position is that recovery from madness becomes possible once the person is able to organize her experiences within a narrative framework.
Although we broadly concur with some aspects of Henriksen et al.’s (2015) view of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, we disagree fundamentally with their argument that “pathological changes in the experience of space in schizophrenia result from disturbances or instabilities in the most fundamental relation to space, namely the primordial presence in the world” (p. 173). This statement and what follows is at conflict with the spirit of the work of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. Both philosophers regarded our pre-reflective immersion in the world and sense of self as inseparable. We disagree that the separation they describe between the two is a prodrome, and argue instead that it is an artefact of the use of phenomenology as a tool to analyze experience, which fragments experience to explain it through the methods of science. We are not arguing that the experiences of madness are not fragmented. Many who experience madness do indeed have terrifying and frightening experiences that may be described in terms of fragmentation and dissolution, but a different view of phenomenology opens up the possibility of narrative understanding of such experiences within the life history of the person. Indeed, another way of looking at this is that these fragments are part of chaos narratives (Frank 1995).
Although Henriksen et al. (2015) do not refer to it, the presence of Karl Jaspers is in the background of their piece. In General Psychopathology, Jaspers (1963) sees phenomenology as providing precise [End Page 187] and accurate descriptions of the signs and symptoms of mental illness. Right from the outset he is clear about the scientific, and thus ultimately Cartesian, basis of phenomenology:
The first step towards a scientific knowledge of the psyche is the selection, delimitation, differentiation and description of particular phenomena of experience which then, through the use of the allotted term, become defined and capable of identification time and again.
(Jaspers 1963, 25, emphasis in the original)
and
Phenomenology presents us with a series of isolated fragments broken out from a person’s total psychic experience.
(ibid, 27, emphasis in the original)
In this view, phenomenology is not concerned with weaving fragments into a meaningful whole. This is precisely what we encounter in Henriksen et al.’s paper.
The work of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger questions such an approach to human experience, and it is pertinent that Henriksen et al. (2015) make no reference to the most important element of these philosophers’ work, being-in-the-world.2 Merleau-Ponty (1962) begins Phenomenology of Perception by examining scientific accounts of sensation and perception from neurology and psychology. It is not possible, he argues, for such theories to generate a complete account of these phenomena. In part this is because scientific modes of thought are derivative of pre-objective experience, that is to say our experience of the world as it is already present before us. It follows that the starting point for any account of sensation and perception is not our theories about these phenomena, but the phenomena themselves. Scientific inquiry is a product of human experience and history, one that involves a particular approach to the world. This is apparent in Henriksen et...
