Karl Jaspers (1883–1969): Was he a psychologist?

Abstract

In 2006 the Royal Institution (London) sponsored a meeting to determine who was the ‘greatest mind to have changed our minds’. Four candidates were proposed and a vote taken. Freud (49 votes) and Eysenck (58) seem plausible candidates. I had not heard of Beck (62) but he turns out to be the founding father of cognitive behaviourism – a currently fashionable method of psycho-therapy. Naturally Beck won. The fourth candidate was Karl Jaspers (12), which surprised me as I had not thought of him as a psychologist.In 1910 Jaspers was commissioned by a publisher to write a new textbook for use in German medical schools.Allgemeine Psychopathologie(General Psychopathology) appeared in 1913 and Jaspers was responsible for several revised editions up to the fourth (1942), which he was not allowed to publish but which almost certainly appeared as the seventh in 1959, which was translated into English in 1962. Jaspers had appalling health and was never able to accept a full-time post in psychiatry. His (1913) work was accepted as Habilitationschrift for a post in the Heidelberg philosophy faculty, where he remained until 1948.This paper asks whether, though still highly regarded as a philosopher and public moralist, he can be regarded as a psychologist as the term is now understood.