Tra indeterminatezza e arbitrio. Jaspers e l’«arte» di scrivere Krankengeschichten

Faced with the scant interest psychiatry of his time showed in patient's biographical histories, Jaspers draws attention to this important resource of clinical practice and psychopathological investigation. In this context, he makes, over the years, a series of methodological observations on the writing of biographical histories of the sick, dedicating, in General Psychopathology, a specific paragraph to what he calls the «art» of writing Krankengeschichten. In this essay, by retracing some of the cores of Jaspers’s reflection on biographische Krankengeschichte, we will dwell on the critical points that emerge in its realisation and the solutions that Jaspers identifies to overcome them. We will defend the thesis that his indications on how to draw up good and useful Krankengeschichten, rather than aiming at constructing a rigid canon of medical-biographical narration, have the aim of avoiding two specular risks: that of indeterminateness and that of arbitrariness.