Papers by Giovanni Stanghellini
Actas Espanolas De Psiquiatria, 2015
Evolution Psychiatrique, 1993
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2013
ABSTRACT Persons with borderline personality disorder are often described as affected by extreme ... more ABSTRACT Persons with borderline personality disorder are often described as affected by extreme emotional fluctuations and by the sudden emergence of uncontrollable and disproportionate emotional reactions. Borderline persons frequently experience their own self as dim and fuzzy, are deprived of a stable sense of identity and unable to be steadily involved in a given life project. We will interpret these typical features as fluctuations between a clearly normative emotion such as anger and the more diffuse and confusing background of bad moods like dysphoria. Our main focus will be on dysphoria. The intentional structure that characterizes much of human emotional experience, we shall argue, is absent in dysphoria. If we imagine emotions as fluxes of intentionality that innervate the body and connect it to the world, dysphoria is empty intentionality, so to speak, devoid of the moderating power of language and representation. Dysphoria exerts a centrifugal force which fragments the borderline person's representations of herself and of others, inducing a painful experience of incoherence and inner emptiness, a feeling of uncertainty and inauthenticity in interpersonal relationships, and an excruciating sense of futility and inanity of life. But it also entails a sense of vitality, although a disorganized, aimless, and explosive one -- a desperate vitality.
Journal of Affective Disorders, Jun 30, 2007
Background: Both the melancholic type of personality (TM) and the concept of temperament offer pr... more Background: Both the melancholic type of personality (TM) and the concept of temperament offer promising insights for the phenotypic characterization of mood-spectrum vulnerability. This research challenges the theoretical hiatus between the two psychopathological paradigmsthe phenomenological and the neo-Kraepelinianby means of an empirically-based approach. Method: Temperamental features were assessed through the Semi-structured Affective Temperament Interview (TEMPS-I) in an outpatient population of 116 clinically stable, euthymic subjects who suffered from a DSM IV major depressive disorder, previously enrolled for a study on the characteristics of major/unipolar depressive episode. The sample was subsequently evaluated and dichotomized according to the Criteria for Typus Melancholicus (CTM). Results: The TM subjects exhibited statistically significant differences in the temperamental profile as compared to non-TMs (NTM). A specific association between TM and hyperthymic temperament (HT) was confirmed by binary logistic regression analysis, suggesting that the phenomenological distinction TM vs. NTM is supported by different predisposing Kraepelinian "fundamental states". Limitation and conclusions: Although it is uncertain whether the findings would generalize outside the Italian culture, they nonetheless delineate a strong aggregation between TM and hyperthymic temperament, indicating that (1) an integrative neo-Kraepelinian/phenomenological cooperative model is warranted to tap the complexity of the phenotypic diathesis for mooddisorders, and (2) the hyperthymic-melancholic type of personality rests on the margins of the bipolar spectrum.
Actas Espanolas De Psiquiatria, 2011
... El Typus melancholicus de Tellenbach en la actualidad: una revisión sobre la personalidad pre... more ... El Typus melancholicus de Tellenbach en la actualidad: una revisión sobre la personalidad premórbida vulnerable a la melancolía Alessandra Ambrosini, et ... En palabras de la paciente de Tellenbach: soy muy orde-nada, necesito mucho tiempo, siempre he sido así; esto era ...
South African Journal of Psychiatry, Aug 1, 2007
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 2011
... Giovanni Stanghellini Giovanni Stanghellini is Professor of Dynamic Psychology and Psychopath... more ... Giovanni Stanghellini Giovanni Stanghellini is Professor of Dynamic Psychology and Psychopathology at Chieti University (Italy). ... Republished in Au-delà du rationalisme morbid. Paris: L'Harmattan. Mullen, R. 2011. Psychopathology divergent: Phenomenology and empiricism. ...
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 2009
... Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 16, no. 3:267271. Damasio, AR 2003. Looking for Spi... more ... Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 16, no. 3:267271. Damasio, AR 2003. Looking for Spinoza.Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain. New York: Harcourt. Dennett, DC 1991. Consciousness explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Company Farah, MJ, and AS Heberlein. 2007. ...
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 2009
In this paper, we consider the nature of two aspects of human emotional experience-moods and affe... more In this paper, we consider the nature of two aspects of human emotional experience-moods and affects-in their relation to the concept of the person. We argue for the importance of the concept of the person in an approach to human emotional experience. This paper differentiates between the concepts of minimal self, extended self, and person. Furthermore, it offers a phenomenological proposal to understand the feeling dimension of moods and affects as critical for the differentiation of human emotional experience, and hence an understanding of that experience. By way of conclusion, we opt for a narrative approach to the question of the normative dimension of emotional experience to clarify the intricate relationship between mood and personhood.
World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 2015
L'évolution psychiatrique, 2015
Objectifs. -Notre objectif est de réaliser une étude phénoménologique croisée de l'état mélancoli... more Objectifs. -Notre objectif est de réaliser une étude phénoménologique croisée de l'état mélancolique et de la crise maniaque. Pour ce faire, nous analysons le rapport qu'entretiennent ces deux états psychopathologiques avec les notions d'identité narrative, d'intentionnalité ainsi que les spécificités des conduites territoriales. Méthode. -À partir de cas cliniques et en nous référant à différents modèles théoriques issus de la psychopathologie phénoménologique, nous discutons des proximités et différences qui existent entre ces deux psychopathologies que sont la manie et la mélancolie.
Exploring Fragility - Making Sense of Vulnerability, 2013
Actas españolas de psiquiatría
We discuss the case of a person with schizophrenia who is unable to maintain the upright posture ... more We discuss the case of a person with schizophrenia who is unable to maintain the upright posture and to stand the other’s look and whose subjectivity in not accessible by means of standard methods of interview. To make sense of the patient’s otherwise odd and incomprehensible behavior, we analyze by means of the phenomenological method the clinician’s subjective experiences during the encounter with him. We also contrast the patient’s behaviour with classic essays is phenomenological psychopathology. During the encounter with this patient, a current of forces is produced, not physical but physiognomic. What takes place is a dynamics, involving the lived body of the patient as well as that of the clinician, that jeopardizes the patient’s capacity to maintain the upright posture in front of the other and makes the clinician feel that he overwhelms the patient. The look plays a major importance in this dynamics. Human beings in the upright posture distance...
The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, 2014
We argue that psychopathology, as the discipline that assesses and makes sense of abnormal human ... more We argue that psychopathology, as the discipline that assesses and makes sense of abnormal human subjectivity, should be at the heart of psychiatry. It should be a basic educational prerequisite in the curriculum for mental health professionals and a key element of the shared intellectual identity of clinicians and researchers in this field.
Transcultural psychiatry, 2013
Ethnography and hermeneutics help us think of the clinical encounter as a meeting of cultures. In... more Ethnography and hermeneutics help us think of the clinical encounter as a meeting of cultures. In this paper, we examine Ernesto De Martino's concept of critical ethnocentrism and its relevance for psychiatry, arguing for the necessity of a cultural self-assessment on the part of the clinician as a means of optimizing analyses of the patient's culture. Conceptualizing the clinician as an "ethnologist," we argue that clinicians should be able to describe and acknowledge patients' cultural backgrounds, while remaining aware of their own culturally rooted prejudices. Focusing on the case of persons affected by schizophrenia, we suggest that De Martino's work invites an openness to hermeneutic dialogue that aims for the coconstruction of shared narratives by clinician and patient.
American journal of psychotherapy, 2007
Phenomenological analyses suggest that persons with schizophrenia have profound difficulties with... more Phenomenological analyses suggest that persons with schizophrenia have profound difficulties with meaningfully engaging the world and situating a sense of self intersubjectively, which leads to the experience of self as absent. In this paper we explore the implications of this view for understanding the workings and potential of individual psychotherapy. Following an examination of individual psychotherapy transcripts for over 60 persons with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders we offer four principles for psychotherapy and provide clinical vignettes to exemplify these points. We suggest that the psychotherapy of persons with schizophrenia may be conceptualised as a "dialogical prosthesis" that helps individuals recover past selves then kindle internal and external dialogue, which partially enables a sense of the self to emerge. The therapeutic process consists of assisting persons to move towards recovery by providing an intersubjective space where they can evolve the first-...
World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 2002
... and repeatable measurements, but it does not enable us to reach the patient's subjective... more ... and repeatable measurements, but it does not enable us to reach the patient's subjectiveexperience and to ... patterns that are generally judged as adequate - ie organised systems ofparticipation of an ... as the ability to adopt the rules of a context, placing the subjective world of ...
World Psychiatry, Jan 1, 2004
Transcultural psychiatry, 2005
A prototypical feature of schizophrenic consciousness is that it undergoes a solidification of th... more A prototypical feature of schizophrenic consciousness is that it undergoes a solidification of the imaginary space in which mental events take place. The bipartition between images and 'real' things is jeopardized and imagination is transformed into 'physical' forms. Parallel to this solidification of imaginary space in schizophrenic consciousness, more generally the rigid tripartite separation of things, images and words upon which the spatial order of consciousness is founded starts to erode. I explore different spiritual and philosophical traditions which shed light on and make more understandable the schizophrenic consciousness that call into question this separatedness. I argue that these traditions indicate that our current commonsensical approach to the separatedness between things, images and words is historically and culturally determined.
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Papers by Giovanni Stanghellini