Measuring?the?soul:?psychotherapy?between?phenomenology?and?neuroscience

Abstract

In recent years, psychotherapists have been increasingly faced with novel challenges and controversies; while, until recently, there were discussions between the competing schools themselves or with the health authorities about the accreditation of their methods as a scientific practice and the proof of efficacy or there were problems of competitiveness and distribution in the face of an organ-based psychiatry that collaborated with the powerful pharmaceutical industry, lately the neurosciences have tried to unravel the mystery of consciousness and the mental processes in general by virtue of their science-based means. The neuronal occurrences are, however, by no means devoid of theories, nor do they represent “objective" descriptions of reality, but rest upon certain ontological and epistemological assumptions; eliminating the subjective perspective entails opting for a reified ontology of events. The psychotherapeutic domain, however, operates on a linguistic symbolical ground, following its semantic and syntactic rules while encompassing various levels of attributing meaning. It is a linguistic operation in that it interprets texts and translates organ-based language and bodily expressions.

Keywords Hermeneutics; Neuroscience; Phenomenology; Mental reality; Subjectivity