Hermeneutical Perspective in Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis: An Overall View and Its Development Lines

As Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis tend to reduce psychic suffering, they are always related to understanding and the search of meaning. For this reason, they are placed within the hermeneutical field, although the tension with the non-hermeneutical field is constant, regarding body and affects. As regards Psychiatry, a few "key words" shared with hermeneutics are briefly discussed (symbol, language, narration, dialogue) and the peculiarities of the relationship with the psychotic patient are addressed. With reference to Psychoanalysis, some misunderstandings in the assumption of this philosophical orientation (relativism and coherentism) are debated, and then a new perspective based on the enhancement of the not presentable (or not repressed) unconscious is proposed. Both in the psychiatric and psychoanalytic fields, a hermeneutical conception emerges as a bridge between the unrepresentational and the narration.