ABSTRACT
The dichotomy of process and development was followed by a dichotomisation of methods, natural causal explanations of psychoses, on the one hand, and psychological comprehension of neuroses on the other. While the introduction of operationalised diagnosis in psychiatry was once deemed a useful accomplishment, it has subsequently brought to light evidences of its major short-comings. For quite a long period of time psychopathology saw itself as a 'basic science' in the field of psychiatry. The intention governing daseinanalysis was to understand psychiatric symptoms of schizophrenia as the expression of an alteration of the structural components of one's own basic being-in-the-world rather than as an abnormality or a 'defect'. Klaus Conrad was a German neurologist with important contributions to neuropsychology and psychopathology. The psychoanalytical approach can raise the claim to be the one method that can better than any other method provide the theoretical and clinical prerequisites for 'the recognition of the alien'.
