Karl Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher of great importance in the sciences of the mind and great impact on the fields of health during the reconstruction of Germany, considered one of the pioneers of existentialist philosophy, also known for creating the biographical method, commonly used in psychiatry.
Jaspers was born in Oldenburg, Germany, in 1883, studied medicine at the University of his hometown and did his doctorate in the same place in 1909, shortly after starting his psychiatric practice at Heidelberg University Hospital, where he experienced enormous anxiety at seeing in practice how doctors and nurses treat mental illnesses and patients.
“The philosopher is learning to die, and that’s it. “-Karl Jaspers-
Since 1921, Karl Jaspers has become professor of Psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Heidelberg, gradually teaching him all his time and became his greatest interest, and he withdrew from the clinical practice that provoked him so much.
Karl Jaspers was German, but his wife, Gertrud Mayer, was of Jewish descent, so, with the rise of Nazism, he was dismissed from his duties as a professor at the university. World War II was a difficult test for him and his children. family did not go back to teaching until 1946, after the end of the war.
Karl Jaspers has since become an important figure in German reconstruction, he was one of those responsible for restoring the normal development of education, whose main objective was to eliminate all Nazis from German schools.
Unfortunately, he suffered another disappointment. He quickly became unentaught of politics and decided to go to work at the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 1948. Constant disappointments and wars have definitively marked his existentialist perspective on philosophy.
One of Karl Jaspers’ main contributions to psychiatry was the biographical method, which consists essentially of asking the patient to report in writing his personal way of perceiving his symptoms, that is, what happened to him. It was new and provided valuable information about what was going on in the patient’s mind.
Its importance lies in the power given to the patient and the voice of the patient in psychiatry; to this day, this is not usually the case in modern psychiatry; in more biological approaches, the patient’s words are considered the product of brain dysfunction. , on the other hand, strongly values the word even if it produces absurdity. Use this data as an opportunity to understand changes in patient perception.
Karl Jaspers has carried out an in-depth process of writing the biographies of his patients, paying special attention to the description of symptoms, as accurately as possible, seeking in the lives of patients the elements that allow them to understand something. about the disorder they had.
Karl Jaspers also postgraduated the existence of two types of delusions: primary and secondary, the primary delirium is one that occurs for no apparent reason, is autonomous and incomprehensible if observed from a psychological point of view; secondary delirium, on the other hand, appears as an attempt to explain abnormal experiences and is psychologically understandable. This is one of the important elements of the biographical method: it can provide new elements to understand the complicated nature of a delirium that occurs in the context of a disorder.
The findings of his research and reflections have been published in a book entitled “General Psychopathology”. It became a classic of psychiatry and became a basis for the later development of this science.
Jaspers also studied and researched the fields of philosophy and theology with great success. Works such as “Philosophy and Existence”, or “Philosophy and World”, brought great notoriety to the author. Unfortunately, Karl Jaspers’ work is very difficult to access. He is an airtight writer that we can only understand with a lot of effort and reading.
Politics, religion and philosophy have always been among Karl Jaspers’ interests. There are several essays on these topics. One of his most interesting texts was “The Atomic Bomb and the Fate of Man”.
Much of Jaspers’ work shows an absolute unsenchantment with his country, it was precisely this unsenchantment that led him to renounce German citizenship in 1967 and since then he has become a citizen of the Swiss Community, today Switzerland.
Throughout his life he has received numerous awards and distinctions, the most important being the Goethe Prize in 1947 and the Erasmus Prize in 1961, he has also received honorary doctorates from various universities and died as a Swiss citizen in Basel in 1969.