1

Phenomenology, Psychotherapy, Psychosis and

Normality:
The Work of Eva Syristova1.
The crisis first appears to the eye as a loss of the meaning of science for life; science
has nothing more to say to us about the difficulties and anxieties of our existence. It is,
precisely, an 'objective', impartial science of pure facts; and purely fact-minded sciences make
for purely factminded people.2 Jan Patocka.

Edward. S Gardner
Abstract
This paper highlights the work of the Czech Psychotherapist and Philosopher Eva Syristova. Little of her innovative work
psychosis in the context of Phenomenological, Existential and Hermeneutic philosophy is available in English. However
some English translations of her papers are available which were presented in Analecta Husserliana: The Year Book of
Phenomenological Research as conference proceedings of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological
Research. This paper gives a descriptive account and summary of her work with relation to psychosis and her
phenomenological orientation.
Keywords: Eva Syristova, Psychosis, Czech Phenomenology, Psychotherapy, Analecta Husserliana, Zenoian Syndrome,
Life World, Lebenswelt, Psychopathology, Psychotherapy of Psychosis.

Biographical Note.3
Eva Syristova is a Czech

clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and

philosopher who was born in 1928. She is professor emeritus of psychopathology

and psychotherapy holding a PhD from Charles University, Prague since 1951.
Syristova was a philosophy student of the Czech phenomenologist, Jan Patocka.
Her involvement with the discipline of philosophy subsequently led to her
marginalization by the Czech totalitarian regime and she was only later able to
engage in her vocation as a psychotherapist and pursue the integration of
phenomenological existential and hermeneutical approaches to psychology and
psychotherapy.
In developing the significance of philosophical perspectives within
1 Correspondence: Edward S Gardner, Heaton Hypnosis. Newcastle Upon Tyne, Email: ipnoetic@gmail.com
2 See Patocka. J. (2015:17-28).
3 For more biographical detail see Syristova.E. (2002:668-669).

psychology and psychotherapy Syristova engaged in research work on the

psychoses promoting a critique of naturalistic and biological approaches to
schizophrenic and depressive psychoses. In this respect her research focused on
the importance of 'the subjective experience and self reflection of patients' in the
context of a phenomenological anthropology. (2002:668) Her research investigated
the hermeneutical understanding of the self experience of threats to living in
psychoses. Also, significantly Syristova highlighted the creative and humanistic
qualities experienced by people with psychoses. In drawing attention to the inner
life-world of her patients Syristova has emphasised the constructive possibilities in
mental distress such as artistic and literary creativity. This is expressed practically
in her foundation of the White Raven Association in Prague which promotes artistic
and literary works of art by non-professional artists who have experienced
psychotic distress.
The main influences of her phenomenological anthropology can be said to
be the works of Jan Patocka, Binswanger, Boss, Wyrsch, Zutt and W. Blankenberg.
In the phenomenological context she has also written on the problems of
psychopathology in relation contemporary culture and how such culture

views

concepts of normality and madness.

Psychoses and the Paradox of Zeno of Elea.
Syristova in her analysis of psychotic experience characterises several
aspects of psychotic phenomena. In particular the significance of cognitive styles of
thinking, self reflection and problematic social situations. Syristova utilizes the
paradox of Zeno to extrapolate on the nature of psychotic processes. Generally,
Zeno claims that if movement is made up of an infinite series of movements then
there can exist no true form of motion as each instance of a series cannot itself be
completed. (1998:291)
Syristova then relates the Zenoian paradox to the experience of psychosis in
which there is no capability 'of setting a limit in the processes of thought, decisionmaking and action.' (1998:291) Thus definitive conclusions are not available to
consciousness in the infinite flow of other possibilities. So 'limit and a structure in

the semantic field' is lacking and hence the ability to create a stable structuration to
experience. In psychosis the ability to generalise is impaired due to the lack of
structure and limit. Syristova likens such a description as having affinities 'with the
analyses of Matte-Blanco and Kasanin which show the schizophrenic to regard all
possibilities as being simultaneous and relations being symmetric which makes the
solving of a problem impossible.'(1998:291) Clearly such a perspective impacts on
the personal experience of time and temporality which in a discrete manner is
necessary for the initiation and completion of projects in living. In this sense,
Syristova draws attention not only to the structural and cognitive aspects of
experience but also to the problematic relation of a person in psychotic distress to
the life-world.
Positive Features of Zenoian Syndrome.
Whilst outlining the negative aspects of the disrupted experience of cognition
and the temporal series of chaotic instances Syristova also points to some positive
and resourceful notions beyond a simple psychopathological account. As a
phenomenologist she is acutely aware that our phenomenological apprehension of
the world is mostly a matter of non-reflective engagement and as such 'is
reproductive in nature and which is regulated by ready made rules without much
creative intervention.' (1998:292)
Creativity, Life-World and Psychosis.
In 'The Creative Explosion of the Life-world in Schizophrenic Psychosis: Its
Import for Psychotherapy' (1989:603-612) Syristova wants to stress the creative
potentials which many people with schizophrenia can achieve and express. Moving
beyond 'deficiencies in creative ability and the deformation of its forces' there can
arise 'auto-sanative' activities.' (603) In this argument Syristova moves beyond
mechanistic approaches of pharmacology and psychotherapy which has a
tendency to restrictively pathologise those suffering. She argues that there can be a
psychical richness which is afford in psychosis which is ignored by generalised
notions of normality. It is in the therapeutic process which these generative and
creative aspects can come to the fore. For Syristova she emphasises the

teleological nature of self transcendence in her statement :

Man is usually able to overcome any stress or threatening situation without
any serious injury if he has the possibility of creating and communicating his
experience to others. (604)
Clearly, this statement has reference to the phenomenological notion of
communicative intersubjectivity between persons and how such intersubjective
communication and disclosure can have therapeutic significance.
The distinctions between so called normal personality and insanity needs to
be questioned. This is particularly seen in the creative aspects which occur in the
incipient early stages of psychosis 'in the phase of extremely graduated anxious
excitement, sustained attention, or feverish expectation, of stupefaction and
suddenly unintelligible pictures of the universe.'(603) In these early stages when
there is a breakdown in the regular experience of the world conventional ways of
being in the world become 'incomprehensible and phantasmal.' Here Syristova is
making reference to the phenomena of de-personalization, de-realization and
general alienation and anxiety. There is a 'reversal' in which the subjective
imagination is real and the objective world unreal.
At this point in the trajectory of psychosis there is an attempt to find a new
manner of orientation to the experience of the self and the world. Here there are
commonalities with those who create art. There is a need to create a new nonconventional understanding in order to integrate what is incomprehensible into a
mode of understanding. This reaction is common to creative artists and also
present in scientific discovery.
From a phenomenological point of view it is noted that the normal everyday
experience of consciousness is not in a sense creative but just habitually given with
the every day perception of the world. However, in psychosis due the the
'graduated tension' and expressive arousal there is the need to 'formulate an
uncapturable situation.' (605) This is where the borderlands of creativity in art and
literary creation with psychosis share a parallel territory. 'Psychotic and artistic
perceptions of the world seem to lie on 'the same perception and experience

continuum.'(605) It is this borderland which signifies that there is much unused

potential in psychosis. (607) Syristova here notes that the work of Prinzhorn and
Morgenthaler raised the question of whether psychiatry looks for psychopathology
'at all costs' at the exclusion of what is essentially human phenomena. What is in
question here for Syristova is an attempt to challenge 'the sclerosed psychiatric
attitude toward schizophrenic psychosis and traditional artistic structures and
aesthetic criteria as well.' (607) Moreover this challenges the radical distinction
between psychotic art and the art of normality. For Syristova psychotic creativity
reminds us of the dangers of foreclosure and literalism which bedevils the
naturalistic standpoint.
Thus 'schizophrenic creative production represents often an invasion, the
opening of unexpected possibilities; it is in its essence a certain hypertrophy of
transcendence of all closed forms, shapes, expressions, of all only apparent
finished things, of all habitual guarantees.' (608) Syristova notes that commonly in
artistic creations there appears primitive forms which arise from experiences of
disintegration and again have a commonality

which moves from 'habitual

phenomena towards the unknown substance itself of all apparent finished forms
and denotations.' (608)4 As in modern art there is questioning of simple formalistic
representation so also in psychosis and artistic creation there is a questioning of
traditional / conventional forms of expression. She states:
This activity constitutes an extraordinarily sensitive though unintentional and
unconscious seismograph, revealing the living tune of a man who carries
inside extreme anxiety and rebellion against the dehumanization of the
contemporary world of over-technicized and over-rationalised consumer
society, as well as extreme anxiety over the monstrous atrophying of human
relations and our reduction to things.
Here her critique refers to the perennial phenomenological concern
regarding the mathematization of our relation to the world. So schizophrenia can be
a mirroring of our 'unravelling world.....even consciousness of any dehumanized
and dissolving way of life.' (608-609) Those people who experienced psychosis
4 Archeypes

have always been pushed to the periphery of society as a response to the

'hypertrophy of transcendence' in bringing to the fore the limited nature of security
in the world in threatening the 'guarantees of conventional, and mostly consumer
standards'. Such excess of transcendence questions naturalism and the
conventional imagination.
There are two polarities which present themselves, - hypersensitivity , intense
experience, hyper-vigilance in consciousness and the other is 'hypotony'. The
monotony of hypotony becomes that standardized, the statistical norm which resists
any excessive phenomena which threatens its stability.
'Infinite reflection in the field of thinking; the need for and ability for the
symbolic condensation of meanings; the internal, up to and including hallucinatory,
perception of reality; the condensation of or interference with psychic process; a
tendency to improbable fascination . with something, on which current thinking
places no value...' are placed outside of the therapeutic arena and thus sources of
therapeutic renewal and health are elided or avoided as having no place in the
scientism of psychology, psychiatry and empirical psychotherapies. (609)
Following the concerns of Husserl in the Krisis and other philosophers such
as Patocka, technocratic, consumer and 'anti-cultural society' are antipathetic to
creative fantasy.5 So where as such a form of social organization requires general
adaptability to norm and convention the operations of imagination and the search
for meaning are negated.
In terms of the therapeutic import of the creative perspective supporting those
with psychosis there is a need to focus on the non-utilitarian and on meaning in
relation considerations of human loneliness, in the establishment of self relation,
and being in a human community along with the promotion of self acceptance and
to being valued on ones own terms. This involves finding a personal space for
human creativity beyond the formalism of convention. In the unconditional
5 .It is interesting to note the methodological importance of creative imagination in
phenomenology in the use of imaginative variations or what is more properly called Eidetic
Intuition. For a clear elaboration of Eidetic Intuition see Robert Sokolowski (2002:177-184)
Sokolowski not only outlines the use of Eidetic Intuition for identifying the essences
of empirical things but also that the imaginative use of Eidetic intuition is of itself a creative
experience of both free fantasy and the disclosure of limits. On a psychotherapeutic point it is
interesting to note that there may be a similarity between Eidetic Intuition in phenomenology
and certain analytic methods such as imaginal work in hypnosis, Freud's Free Association rule
and Active Imagination in the Analytical Psychology of C. G .Jung.

acceptance of the patient by the therapist the attempt is made to find a 'landmark' in
which to ground and situate creative and possible potential. In this context there
can arise an experience of understanding in the therapeutic dialogue whereby
existence can be experienced as intelligible and moving beyond senselessness. In
identify a landmark amongst the confusion of the patient's dreamy territory there
can be a beginning point to 'aid modelling and discovering the patient's self portrait
and his picture of the world' (610) Rather than follow a regressive understanding of
psychosis Syristova sees the schizophrenic person in a process of 'multivalent
logic' which involves the failure to structure 'the semantic field for the innumerable
choices before him.' (610)
In terms of the psychotic experience of time it seems to elide the series of
acts and its situation in spatiality, the horizons of time are 'hypertrophied', confused,
and unstable which impedes future possibility. However as Syristova states this is
not simply to be understood as a 'pathological deficit' (611) but in contradistinction
to the cultural thematization of time as imitation, the reproduction of social patterns
and senseless repetition. The Zenoian perspective raises a constructive challenge.
This syndrome involves at one and the same time casting doubt upon all
given and know phenomena, and the transcending of all limits in a
hypertrophic temporal and significant experience. It involves jumping into a
non- dimensional world.
This opens up a realm of possibility in the curative practices of psychotherapy
whereby a patient can move from confusion between 'innumerable accidental
possibilities....and the creation of his own self and world.
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