Images for Psychiatry: From the Conceptual Description of Symptoms and ‘Clinical Forms’, Through the Search for Structural Units of Meaningful ‘Forms of Life’, to Images as ‘Forms of Pathos’

Abstract In this chapter, I argue in favour of the usefulness of images beyond concepts for understanding psychopathological forms of life. After succinctly reviewing the epistemological principles of the work of Emil Kraepelin, the founder of contemporary psychiatric nosography, I analyse the structural turn in psychopathology achieved by clinical phenomenology by examining the magisterium of Wolfgang Blankenburg and his search for an organising principle of paucisymptomatic schizophrenia. Later, in the central part of my paper, taking as my mentor Ludwig Binswanger and his essay Three Forms of Miscarried Existence , I argue in favour of using images, instead of concepts, for the representation and understanding of psychopathological conditions. Images, and especially poetic images, can help us appropriate and make sense of the ‘pathic forms’ that our patients endure, helping us to transcend our third-person perspective (supported by a conceptual and ultimately distancing vocabulary) and even to resonate with our patients’ bodies and finally attune with the patients’ perspective.