Impaired social functioning of a mentally ill: consideration from the standpoint of phenomenology and Wittgensteinian theory of social action

Abstract

The article examines the problem that was posed in the phenomenological psychiatry - the possibility to explain certain mental disorders as the impairments of the capacity to participate in social life and to follow rules and prescriptions shared with other people. The author infers that within the framework of phenomenology some questions cannot be resolved; moreover, basic aim of the research is replaced. The author makes an effort to rethink the problem in the terms of Wittgensteinian theory of social action. That enables to resolve some questions that remained unclear in phenomenology, but the factual description of the very ‘impaired sociality’ of a mentally ill becomes impossible.