Gaspare Vella

 

The art of the clinical encounter requires general categories allowing a clear understanding of what is going on in the dialogical flux. This brief contribution describes the basic categories of thinking guiding a phenomenal analysis of the way patients live and present to the interviewer their vital themes.

A distinction is made of the different way the themes are experienced and presented in psycho-organic, endogenous and psychogenic syndromes. Finally, useful ideas for the psychopharmacologists are suggested, based on the way drugs change the phenomenal picture.