Gesamtausgabe I/3

Karl Jaspers is considered one of the founding figures of psychopathology, one of the foundational sciences of psychiatry. In this context, his systematic textbook, "General Psychopathology" from 1913, is commonly referenced. However, Jaspers already established the essential features of his methodology and the subject of the new science in the works collected here, which were published between 1909 and 1913: His critique of the dominant reductionism and the then-nascent psychoanalysis is already clearly articulated in these texts, as is – not least – the dichotomy between explanation and understanding. In addition to the dissertation "Homesickness and Crime," this volume includes, among other things, the groundbreaking and influential essay "The Phenomenological Research Direction in Psychiatry," as well as the still controversially discussed treatise "Causal and Understandable Connections between Fate and Psychosis in Dementia Praecox (Schizophrenia)." The commentary situates the individual contributions within both the history of science and the history of the works.