The Search for Meaning in Neuropsychiatry

The meaning of psychiatric symptoms has long been contested. Neuropsychiatric symptoms are almost always understood to be meaningless signs of underlying cerebral disease. Philosophical theories of meaning likewise often invoke mental disorder as the boundary for where the theory fails to hold. The author interviewed three patients and their carers in depth on their understanding of neuropsychiatric symptoms with reference to themes that arise within philosophical theories of meaning from the tradition of analytic philosophy (Davidson, Dennett, Wittgenstein). Although meaning is shown to falter it does not fail completely, with implications for the clinical approach to patients and their carers.