The implications of the specificity concept for the treatment of psychosomatic patients

Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and its impact on the theory of psychopathology

The philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) wrote in 1929: 'For what it [the philosophy of symbolic forms] is seeking is not so much common factors in being as common factors in meaning. Hence we must strive to bring the teachings of pathology, which cannot be ignored, into the more universal context of the philosophy of culture' (Cassirer, 1955: 275). This statement summarizes his approach in shifting the focus on psychopathological theory from the brain and its localizations to the living interaction between the self and his/her social environment. The present article looks at the impact of symbol theory on psychopathology - pre- and post-Cassirer's main oeuvre Philosophie der symbolischen Formen - and whether his concept still has a role to play in an ontology of psychopathology.