• Dr. med. Felix Thiele, M.Sc. 

19.–6.2008:

On 19th June 2008 the colloquium “Research Methodologies in Psychiatry – Philosophical Considerations” took place at the Universitätsclub Bonn. Participants were Jean-Claude Dupont, D.E.A. (Collège de France), Professor Dr. Anne Fagot-Largeault (Collège de France), Professor Dr. Alain Leplège (Université Paris 7 (Denis Diderot)), Professor Dr. phil. Michael Quante (Universität zu Köln), Katja Stoppenbrink, LL.M., M.A. (Europäische Akademie), and Dr. med. Felix Thiele (Europäische Akademie).
Quante spoke on “Psychic Disorders and Biographical Identity” and explored the “limits of personhood” along the following lines: (i) The notion of person cannot be used in contexts where the normal standard conditions for its use are not present. (ii) In case studies the limits of personhood could be explored in non-standard cases. (iii) Our ethical and legal intuitions on the one hand and our descriptive intuitions on the other hand should be sorted out properly in order to avoid the traps described above. Afterwards Leplège presented a talk on “Clashes of perspectives in outcome evaluation in psychiatry”. He focused on the question whether and how it is possible to make outcome evaluation in psychiatry, notably in psychotherapies following a psychoanalytical approach.
Finally, Thiele spoke on “Action Theory & Psychiatric Research”. He argued that the clarification of basic concepts relevant for psychiatry, e.g. ‘action’ and ‘autonomy’, needs to be done prior to setting up a research programme and is not a matter of interpreting the results of psychiatric research.