Karl Jaspers is an icon in psychiatry, not least, because of his classical and masterly text General Psychopathology. I still find it a surprise that Jaspers was only 30 years old when General Psychopathology was first published, in 1913, yet it continues to be influential text over a century afterwards. Hans Joas in his Introduction to this collection of essays on Karl Jaspers states: ‘There is no doubt that Karl Jaspers was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century.’ This statement emphasises the fact that Jaspers’ contributions extend well beyond psychiatry, and most psychiatrists would not be aware of much of Jaspers’ oeuvre that is covered in this book – the more reason to welcome it, as it brings together the many and varied aspects of Jaspers’ scholarship: his contributions to social science, his relationship to Max Weber and Wilhelm Dilthey’s approaches to historicism, his contributions to psychiatry, his criticism of psychoanalysis, his letters and discussions with Hannah Arendt and their relevance for political theory, his thoughts on religion and theology and his views on what is termed the ‘Axial Age’.

Thomas Fuchs’ chapter ‘Karl Jaspers as psychiatrist’ is probably the most relevant for psychiatrists. Fuchs remarks that ‘this psychopathologist had received little training in clinical psychiatry, as a psychology professor he had never studied psychology, and as a holder of a chair in philosophy he had no studies in philosophy under his belt’. He concludes, ‘This is striking testimony to Jaspers’ unique auto-didactic ability to master a field, give it shape and enrich it with his inimitable ideas’ (page 76). Fuchs discusses Jaspers’ use of the terms ‘understanding’ and ‘explanation’ and examines the most controversial of Jaspers’ ideas, the ‘limits of understanding’ when we encounter psychosis. Jaspers’ use of the notion of ‘limit situations’ is a profitable description of the roles of unavoidable guilt, inescapable struggle, the inevitability of freedom and decision-making, the randomness of life, the vulnerability of one’s own body and the finitude of existence in human affairs.

Matthias Bormuth’s chapter ‘Karl Jaspers and His criticism of psychoanalysis’ points to the fundamental issues that Jaspers objected to in psychoanalysis, namely that the set of psychoanalytic beliefs resembles the beliefs of a sect and that the self-examination promoted by psychoanalysis had been degraded to the search and discovery of sexual longing. Furthermore, Jaspers dismisses the notion of progress insofar as it emanates from the idea that the amicable rapprochement between the conscious and the unconscious will lead to the universalisation of a healthy mind and body so that all will be satisfied in a perfected life. Needless to say, Jaspers believed that humankind and the world exist in a ‘residual sum of imperfection’.

This book is not directly about psychiatry or psychopathology but it deepened my appreciation of Jaspers’ psychopathology. It also brought into focus the context from which Jaspers’ psychopathology emerged. It will be of interest to phenomenologists, psychopathologists and philosophers.