Why Does Mental Illness Exist? Reflections on Human Vulnerability

This chapter investigates more fundamentally the conditions of possibility for humans to become mentally ill in the first place. The fact that persistent mental disorders do not occur in free-living animals speaks for an anthropological vulnerability, i.e. a specific mental endangerment of humans. The paper examines several reasons for this vulnerability and locates it above all in the special openness, variability, but also contradictory nature of the human form of organization and existence. According to Helmuth Plessner (1928), this life form is essentially characterized by the eccentric position, i.e. the ability to see oneself from the outside, through the eyes of others. This creates a fundamental polarity of being-a-body (Leib) and having-a-body (Körper), of centrality and decentration, primary selfhood and role identity, which can lead to different psychological conflicts and finally disorders. Culture-specific forms of socialization contribute significantly to these conflicts. Finally, this disposition to mental illness is interpreted also as an existential vulnerability, namely as a special sensitivity of certain persons to the contradictions and resulting limit situations of human existence.