Hermeneutical injustice and unworlding in Psychopathology

Abstract

The rich literature in phenomenological psychopathology regards the communicative difficulties accompanying psy chiatric illness as a product of ‘unworlding‘: the experience of a drastic change in one’s habitual field of experience. This paper argues that the relationship between speech expres sion and unworlding in psychiatric illness is more complex than previously assumed. Not only does unworlding cause a breakdown in speech expression, but a breakdown in speech expression can perpetuate, and even exacerbate, the experience of unworlding characteristic of psychiatric illness. In other words, I identify a two-way relationship between unworlding and the communication breakdown in psychiatric illness. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of speech expression is drawn upon to demonstrate how her meneutical injustice in psychiatric healthcare can elicit unworlding for the person with a psychiatric illness