PhenoLab – an experience of encounter

 

The PhenoLab, A Theoretical Laboratory in Phenomenology and Mental Health is born out of an encounter between an Academic, Prof. Francesca Brencio, and a physician, Dr. Prisca Bauer. Both have a deep interest in mental health and bring different, yet complementary, ways of investigating and understanding experiences.   

 

With the support of Prof. Stefan Schmidt, Head of the Systemic Research and Psychotherapy Section at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Freiburg Medical Centre (Germany) Prof. Brencio founded a small group in November 2019. This group brings together physicians, medical students, psychologists and scientists who work in the field of mind-brain theories and share an interest in understanding the phenomenological method in the field of mental health.

 

Once a week Prof. Brencio lectured this growing group of people on the history of phenomenology and on seminal psychiatrists. This helped them to learn about some fundamental concepts which were able to give a new perspective on their clinical work. The purpose of those sessions was not to scrutinise phenomenology in the same way that would be done in a Faculty of Philosophy, but to offer clinicians a different view on mental suffering. 

 

In one year, the interest for the activities of the PhenoLab grew: people from outside Germany, actively joined the group. The online format, imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, is an opportunity to bring people together who are interested by these questions.

 

The fact that the PhenoLab is born in Freiburg, the "hometown" of Phenomenology, is a glimmer of hope for a future for this group and possible other developments. 

 

The goals of the PhenoLab are:

- to bridge the gap between clinicians and philosophers who work in  health care;

- to overcome the reductionistic and dualistic approach to mental health;

- to shed new light on clinical practices;

- to improve social and clinical practices in the meaning-making process;

- to put in dialogue the phenomenological tradition with the neuroscience;

- to facilitate the interdisciplinary dialogue at an educational level.

 

This blog is a space to keep you updated on the activities of the group and its members, to promote the interdisciplinary dialogue between phenomenology and mental health and to highlight the overlap with psychosomatic medicine.

W. Kandinsky, Farbstudie - Quadrate und konzentrische Ringe (1913)