Doctors of Philosophy: Therapies for a Century of Crisis

What is psychological health? How can it be promoted? And why do modern people seem to lack it? 'Doctors of Philosophy: Therapies for a Century of Crisis' examines the work of German-speaking psychiatrists who attempted to answer such questions over the course of the twentieth century. Despite thinkers such as Carl Jung, Ludwig Binswanger, Karl Jaspers, and Viktor Frankl representing different strands of philosophical and medical thought - among them psychodynamic psychiatry, phenomenology, and existentialism - this thesis explores how they are in fact united by a common critique of the professional mainstream in mental health. Pushing against a mechanistic understanding of the human mind, an oppressively rationalistic approach to wellbeing, and an overestimation of the power of science and technology, the German 'doctors of philosophy' attempt to reshape assumptions about what health is and what the most common pathologies of their day really were. Against mechanism they introduce holism, against strict rationalism they promote a sense of the reasonable, and against scientism they reassert the importance of philosophy (and even theology) as the queen of the sciences. The thesis argues that this intellectual programme was not, however, simply a reaction against the narrow assumptions of their older colleagues such as Emil Kraepelin or Sigmund Freud. It was also a response to what the doctors of philosophy saw as growing causes of neurosis among the wider public: alienation, isolation, and objectification - or, to summarise this nexus of symptoms in a word, the very modern pathology of nihilism. In order to treat this new spiritual malaise, the doctor-philosophers moved beyond the boundaries of conventional medicine. Curing individual patients alone was not enough and was perhaps not even possible without a more ambitious therapeutic programme. Combining medical diagnostics with systematic philosophy and at times more religious speculation, these doctor-philosophers launched a socio-cultural critique of their contemporary societies. Though overlooked and underappreciated by contemporary scholarship, the doctors of philosophy produced profound analyses of modernity to rival much more famous alternatives such as Martin Heidegger or the Frankfurt School. What is more, unlike their contemporaries they did not shy away from the stage beyond deconstruction or succumb to a cynical view of human nature which, as with more politically radical French thinkers, centres on the analysis of power relations. Instead, they took tentative (or, in the case of some, bold) steps towards a vision for a new way of understanding and acting in the world, one which promised to heal both psychological and spiritual wounds.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Spiers, Robbie

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ruehl, Martin

• Existentialism
• Meaning Crisis
• Pathology of Modernity
• Phenomenology
• Psychoanalysis
• Transcendence

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/1d70f7d6-844b-40d4-8d1a-95fedf7b637e/download
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.122713

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/391665