Mental Rigidity: a Psychopathology or a Chance for Attaining Transcendence (drawing on K. Jaspers’s Existential Anthropology)

Abstract

This article discusses the idea of the German philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers about a close connection between a psychological disease and unleashing of a human potential. The very psychopathology of a modern man is interpreted as an urge for freedom, that has acquired ugly forms. The author suggests a solution to the problem of mental rigidity. Levels of consciousness development, a psychological triad and its possible manifestations within one’s worldview, as well as positive and negative types of psychodynamic are presented as a plausible paradigm for orientation in the world. The discussed approach can serve as a method of analyzing individual conditioning and a broad range of phenomena of the modern culture.