2023/01/21 by Lucienne Spencer · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Mental Health and Psychiatry #Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications #Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09515089.2023.2166821
openalex publication_date 2023/01/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The rich literature in phenomenological psychopathology regards the communicative difficulties accompanying psychiatric illness as a product of 'unworlding': the experience of a drastic change in one's habitual field of experience. This paper argues that the relationship between speech expression and unworlding in psychiatric illness is more complex than previously assumed. Not only does unworlding cause a breakdown in speech expression, but a breakdown in speech expression can perpetuate, and even exacerbate, the experience of unworlding characteristic of psychiatric illness. In other words, I identify a two-way relationship between unworlding and the communication breakdown in psychiatric illness. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of speech expression is drawn upon to demonstrate how hermeneutical injustice in psychiatric healthcare can elicit unworlding for the person with a psychiatric illness.