Including subjectivity in the teaching of Psychopathology

Current psychopathology studies have often been presented in their descriptive dimension. This perspective is important for teaching because it helps the students to recognize and identify the symptomatology of each psychopathology case. However, subjectivity, the experience of suffering and interpersonal aspects are all lost in this perspective. Coming from another psychopathology tradition - existential anthropology - this paper presents practical psychopathology teaching experience which considers such dimensions as being relevant to the understanding of mental suffering. The features and limitations of such traditions are briefly reviewed to support this teaching experience. Two new modalities of practical teaching, used in the discipline of "Special Psychopathology I" offered by the Department of Psychiatry and Forensic Medicine at the medical school of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro for students of psychology, will be presented according to descriptive case study methodology. With these activities we also expect to change the practice of teaching. Traditionally, interviewing of in-patients by a large group of students who observe passively what is happening is the center of this kind of education. We intend to develop a model of teaching which is closer to the proposal of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform which views mental illness as a complex phenomenon, always involving the relationship that the subject establishes with the world.