Real persons' experience of contamination obsession: Hypothese from a Strausian analysis

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a growing interest in the relation between philosophy, psychiatry and psychology (PP&P), to the extent that their kinship is now widely recognised. Erwin Straus* was a forerunner in this field. As one of the central scholars of the phenomenological approach to psychology and psychiatry in the 20th century, he acutely confronts the major thinkers of classic philosophy as well as his contemporaries. Through a profound reflection on philosophers (mainly Aristotle, Descartes, Husserl, Freud, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty) and an engaged dialogue with the most important psychiatrists in his time (such as Binswanger and Minkowski), Straus came to elaborate an original theory whose fundamental basis is the phenomenological recognition of the inconsistency of Cartesian philosophy, of ‘experimental’ psychology (as originally described by Pavlov) and of psychoanalysis.