Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences Crossing Dialogues ORIGINAL ARTICLE Association The roots of psychopathological understanding: Karl Jaspers’ Verstehen and the infl uence of Moritz Geiger’s empathy Crossing Dialogues Association, Rome (Italy) M This paper presents the main contents of Geiger’s 1910 lecture on empathy and focuses on its possible infl uence on Jaspers’ General Psychopathology. In particular, some key methodological distinctions traced by Jaspers (explaining vs. understanding, static vs. genetic understanding, understandability vs. non-understandability) are compared to Geiger’s similar concepts. Geiger’s role in shaping Jaspers’ concept of understanding (and non-understandability) is still neglected and it is time to recognize it. In particular, Geiger’s distinction between the direct empathy for the other’s expressions at one side, and the ‘reliving after the event’ of the ‘inner correlation of the psyche’ on the other side had a major role in shaping Jaspers’ similar distinction between static and genetic understanding. Keywords: psychopathology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, history of psychiatry, Einfühlung. DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2016; 9(2): 36-42 INTRODUCTION Understanding (Verstehen) is a crucial issue the psychological ground: in hermeneutics since Schleiermacher’s claim “a sensuous object distinct from me ‘expresses’ that its task is “to understand the discourse [ausdruckt] something interior or soul-like” (Lipps, just as well and even better than its creator” 1906, p.1). (Schleiermacher, 1819/1978, p.9). Empathy was the instrument humans have Through the epistemological debate that took in order to grasp the psychological level, and place in the second half of the nineteenth century according to Lipps there was a projection (known as the Methodenstreit), the following of the observer’s feelings onto the observed distinctions were fi nally imported into Karl Jaspers’ expressions. For example, in the case of an General Psychopathology (Jaspers, 1913): a) acrobat on a tight rope, the perception of his the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) vs. movements activated an internal resonance in the human sciences (Geisteswissenshaften); the observer that he projected onto him (Lipps, and b) the explanation of causal connections 1903). (Erklären) vs. the understanding of meaningful In 1910 Moritz Geiger presented a lecture at connections (Verstehen). It is still disputed the the IV Congress of Experimental Psychology in relative importance of authors like Husserl, Innsbruck (Geiger, 1911, now available in English Weber, Dilthey, and Simmel, in the shaping of translation: Geiger 1910/2015a, 1910/2015b). It Jaspers’ own conceptualizations (e.g., Berrios was the occasion for a comprehensive review 1993; Brücher, 2012; Kumazaki, 2013a, 2013b; of the literature on empathy of his time. In Leoni, 2013; Rosini et al., 2013). Less known is this contribution on the essence and meaning the possible infl uence of another scholar, Moritz of empathy, Geiger reviewed psychological, Geiger, who was a sui generis phenomenologist philosophical, and aesthetic contributions to trained by the psychologist Theodor Lipps (cp. the debate and discussed their applicability Gödel, 2015; Aragona, 2016). to experimental psychology. In doing so, he Lipps had borrowed the concept of empathy scrutinized the relevant literature, discussing (Einfühlung) from aesthetics and had made it a methodological fl aws and tracing essential key concept of his psychology. In his view, the conceptual distinctions. Geiger painstakingly aesthetic object was an expression (Ausdruck) of disentangled the various meanings of empathy www.crossingdialogues.com/journal.htm 36 Aragona, 2016 and the diff erent explanatory theories behind Second, how the expression of the body and them, assuming that the spiritual life we see in it are related? Is it an “more than one controversy would dissolve readily associative relationship or something else? by pointing out that with their claims the discussants Regarding the fi rst point, Geiger contrasts the were taking positions on diff erent questions” (Geiger, “view of imagination” to the “view of actuality”. 1910/2015a, p.20). The former conceives empathy as an imaginative This article presents a brief sketch of Geiger’s act. In other words, what is experienced by the main ideas on the matter and then discusses the other person is not directly perceived but just possible relation between Geiger’s empathy and imagined, it is inferred starting from external Jaspers’ understanding. appearance. On the contrary, the latter suggests that in empathy we not only see the expression GEIGER’S EMPATHY of anger in the other person but fully experience The aim of Moritz Geiger’s lecture was to that anger, i.e. we really share [mit-erleben] the clarify the concept of empathy to avoid possible experience of the other. misunderstandings arising from the use of the Exploring the view of imagination (e.g. same term to mean either diff erent phenomena or Witasek, 1901), Geiger stresses that it contains diff erent aspects of the phenomenon in question. three diff erent assertions: First, the “question of fact”: what experiences a) The other’s feeling is something external to are in my consciousness, when I’m aware of me, an object I can observe; facing an external Ego? In his view this level b) It is not given in me, because I’m not angry was purely descriptive. with and within the foreign person; The second question was about the c) It can be given to me as an evident “psychological function” involved in the imagination. knowledge of external personalities: what are Based on these premises, Geiger comments the psychological processes in us, whenever we that a scholar following this view could believe ourselves facing external personalities? not genuinely talk of empathic experience And fi nally, the “question of the origins”: how [Einfühlungserlebnis]. is the understanding of the external Ego achieved On the contrary, the view of actuality (e.g. in the course of individual development? Lipps, 1903) maintains that when we experience These questions were critically reviewed the other’s anger, it is not objectively facing us elsewhere (Aragona, 2016). Here we will focus but “we are in it”. It is a really experienced anger, on the fi rst one because it is a phenomenological not an imagined one; we: question that may be important for a possible relationship with Jaspers’ phenomenological “live in this anger, it fully gives itself [Selbstgegebenheit], the anger ourselves are used to psychopathology. have, although for other reasons it has not the same Geiger starts from a concrete example: eff ectiveness [Wirkungsfähigkeit] like the anger in daily “I see a man angry or sad, happy or disappointed. life” (Geiger, 2015, p.22). What kind of awareness [do] we fi nd here?” (Geiger, It was recently stressed (Aragona, 2016, p.6) 1910/2015a, p.20). that on this respect Geiger, Stein, and Scheler Geiger then underlines that this question agreed on the critique of Lipps’ empathy as requires a diff erent answer depending on the complete identifi cation but they diverge in diff erent cases. In empathy, together with the the consequences they derived from it. In fact, sensuous data coming from the other’s body, it Geiger distinguishes between the experience is given: of empathy as being one [Einssein], which “a particular spiritual life, feelings and emotions and corresponds to Lipps’ view of actuality, and acts of will, a foreign animated personality that for me lays in that forms of the body”. (Geiger, 1910/2015a subsequent refl ection, which “makes eff ective p.20) the separation between me and the foreign This question can be divided in two diff erent beings” (Geiger, 1910/2015a, p.22). parts. Hence, a temporal development is introduced First, such an external spiritual life, which is between the fi rst moment in which the feeling given for me, is it experienced or imagined? is experienced in oneself, without self-other 37 DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2016; 9(2): 36-42 distinction, and a subsequent moment of the crying and the happiness beyond laughing. refl ection that locates the experienced feeling However, although each of the movements we in the other person. Something similar will be see can be understood as expression of a psyche, elaborated in a philosophical system only many “I do not have any idea of the inner correlation years later, when Heidegger (1927) will consider of the psyche”. In other words, he admits that in the “being-together” [Mit-Dasein] as the original such a case he would not know how it happens phenomenon, and the separation between subject that one feeling follows the opposite one without and object (in this case, the other being) as a apparent reason. derivative position. The second case shows the same phenomenon Regarding the second point, namely the but with the possibility of understanding: I question of the relationship between the sensuous know that someone believes he has committed appearance of the foreign body and the psychic a crime. Consequently, I understand not only entity appearing in it, Geiger discusses whether his sad miens as sad and his fl eeing movements this is simply an association or something else. as fl eeing movements, but I also understand the He supports Volkelt’s argument that here we have correlations of his singular acts, the correlations not a simple association (like the association of his mental experiences. between seeing soldiers and thinking to Napoleon, The third case is similar. I see a child reaching with the two ideas being just juxtaposed). for an apple on a tree and as it cannot manage Following Volkelt and Lipps, in the case of to grasp the apple, he starts crying. Then I empathy a mental entity [ein Seelisches] takes understand not only the two isolated facts (the place in a sensuous entity [ein Sinnliches]. The grasping for the apple and the crying), but also sensuous entity (e.g. a gesture) is the expression their inner correlation: the child is sad because it of a mental one, it is experienced as emerging could not get the apple.