Al di là del normale e patologico = Beyond the normal and pathological

Abstract

This article presents the debts that the psychopathologies of both Minkowski and Jaspers owe to the idea of the psychophysical unity of the human being as a central intuition of phenomenology and Bergsonism. It is well known that Max Scheler and Henri Bergson sought to give substance to the psychophysical unity of the human being, resisting reductionist temptations. It was precisely this idea that attracted the interest of both Minkowski and Jaspers. Scheler, in fact, attempted to confer psychophysical concreteness to this unity, which extends from the biological to the most sophisticated forms of intelligence and the emotional world, and presents itself at all levels of observation as a temporal flow in which life is configured. Bergson, on the other hand, referred to the immediate data of consciousness understood in their multiplicity and to the fluidity of lived time. In turn, both Minkowski and Jaspers-although in different ways-sought to understand the unity of the person, a unity of meaning in experiences that each time defines a world independently of the preconceived schemas of pathology and normality.