Epistemic Trust: a Keyword for Contemporary Clinical Practice and Psychopathology.

Abstract

The increasing integration of eclectic knowledge from fields not directly related to clinical psychology is coherent with a current tendency to employ alternative ideas to investigate psychopathology in the light of a more phenomenological perspective. The concept of epistemic trust may provide the gateway to alternative causal models for personality psychopathology that links poor mentalizing environment to a more general lack of social support. People who have been denied the ability to trust the information circulating in their more proximate environment may showcase a remarkable disadvantage in terms of social adjustment that relate to early insecure attachment experiences. Research assumes that patients who have been suffering an epistemic deficient environment in infancy could be trapped into a vicious cycle of suffering, loneliness and inability to seek or accept help. Although most contributes cited in this brief article deal with epistemic trust as potential tool for social learning from a theoretical point of view, the recent introduction of systematic measures of epistemic trust as a dimensional personality variable outlines a likely future increase in the use of new questionnaires and protocols for clinical assessment and treatment monitoring expressively focused on epistemic trust. The benefits of adopting such a holistic etiological paradigm in personality pathology are outlined, as proposed by the many works that advocate a more equitable clinical practice that assume individual development in the context of an unequal social world, that is believed to determine the child's evolutionary trajectory from the very first stages of life. In the same vein, the importance of fostering an authentic relationship of trust between patient and therapist as a fundamental element of the therapeutic alliance, as well as a driving force for salutogenesis at the community level, is vividly highlighted.