Discussion Training and Psychopathology

In his “Observations on Hillman's Statements regarding Training in Zürich”, Plaut remarks (p. 24), “I notice that psychopathology is among the subjects on which regular lectures are given and on which knowledge is demanded. It would appear that psychopathology is a separate subject which can be taught.” As I had been lecturing in both German and English on a subject called by this name for ten years at the Zürich Institute before I was called to the Middle East by the World Health Organization, and was led by this to write a book about it, which was reviewed in the Journal (5, 1, p. 83), I have the impression that it is, and can. Therefore it seems to a certain degree incumbent on me to reply to this portion of Plaut's “Observations”.

In the teaching of psychopathology I am no hardy pioneer, nor has the Zürich Institute embarked upon a novel venture. For well over half a century, and probably longer, psychopathology has been a well-defined and established subject in the curricula of such European medical faculties as stand under the influence of German psychiatric thought, i.e. of practically all Western European countries except the French-speaking ones. In the mental sciences it corresponds to general pathology, as opposed to special pathology, in somatic medicine. It is the science of pathological psychic phenomena without specific regard to so-called disease entities, first descriptive, later classificatory, and in recent times more and more explanatory. In the “Introduction” to my textbook I wrote: “Psychopathology is a mediator between the psychology of the normal and psychiatry, two sisters that often live at odds and go their ways indifferent to the family relation.” So far as I have been able to discover, Anglo-American science in general has provided no place for psychopathology as a relatively distinct, though certainly not wholly independent, discipline. Books that carry the word in their titles usually cover rather the matter that is taught at the Zürich