Comprehending the Whole Person: On Expanding Jaspers’ Notion of Empathy In: Phenomenological Neuropsychiatry

concepts that are central to his account of phe- nomenological psychiatry: empathy and incom- prehensibility. Empathy, in contemporary psychiatric practice, is often conceived as a way of gaining trust or achieving rapport with a patient, helping them feel comfortable enough to divulge the information needed to properly understand their illness. Jaspers, however, devel- ops a more robust account of empathy in which the clinician feels into or takes on the perspec- tive of the patient to fully comprehend their ill- ness. This empathic method is taken as a necessary foundation for psychiatric practice because psychiatrists are often confronted with patients who at first seem incomprehensible. Jaspers believed that many of these seemingly incomprehensible cases could in fact be compre- hended if clinicians cultivated their ability to empathically understand, or feel, the situation of the other. This empathic understanding does, however, have its limits [1]. Jaspers believed that some patients, including those in the midst of a psychotic episode, live in a world fundamentally different from our own, creating a chasm that cannot be bridged. The experiences of these patients were, according to Jaspers, forever incomprehensible.