2013 sees the centenary of Jaspers' foundation of psychopathology as a science with the publication of his magnum opus the Allgemeine Psychopathologie (General Psychopathology), Many of the issues concerning methodology and diagnosis are today the subject of much discussion and debate. This volume brings together leading psychiatrists and philosophers to discuss the impact of this volume, its relevance today, and the legacy it left.

One century ago, Karl Jaspers published the first edition of his General Psychopathology which may be considered the most comprehensive account of psychopathology with a lasting influence on the development of psychiatry to date. Methodological and clinical issues such as understanding and incomprehensibility, defining delusions, or self-awareness and its disorders are the core matter of 21st century psychopathology. The renaissance of the philosophy of psychiatry at the turn of the century has lent new strength to Jaspers' project of founding psychiatry on psychopathology. This special issue highlights some of his central concepts from the point of view of modern research in philosophy, psychiatry, and neuroscience with a special focus on methodological questions such as multiperspectivity, understanding and empathy, the psychopathology of schizophrenia, and existential concepts of mental illness and psychotherapy. This edition is of immediate interest for psychiatrists, psychologists, and philosophers who want to know how Jaspers' opus magnum is seen from the point of view of modern philosophy, psychiatry, and neuroscience.

In his most important contribution to the Heidelberg school, a founder of existentialism critiques the scientific aspirations of psychotherapy. In 1910, Karl Jaspers wrote a seminal essay on morbid jealousy in which he laid the foundation for the psychopathological phenomenology that through his work and the work of Hans Gruhle and Kurt Schneider, among others, would become the hallmark of the Heidelberg school of psychiatry. In General Psychopathology, his most important contribution to the Heidelberg school, Jaspers critiques the scientific aspirations of psychotherapy, arguing that in the realm of the human, the explanation of behavior through the observation of regularity and patterns in it (Erklärende Psychologie) must be supplemented by an understanding of the "meaning-relations" experienced by human beings (Verstehende Psychologie).

2013 sees the centenary of Jaspers' foundation of psychopathology as a science with the publication of his magnum opus the 'Allgemeine Psychopathologie' ('General Psychopathology'). Many of the issues concerning methodology and diagnosis are today the subject of much discussion and debate. This volume brings together leading psychiatrists and philosophers to discuss the impact of this volume, its relevance today, and the legacy it left.

This book is based on a congress evaluating Jaspers' basic psychopathological concepts and their anthropological roots in light of modern research paradigms. It provides a definition of delusion, his concept of "limit situation" so much challenged by trauma research, and his methodological debate. We are approaching the anniversary of Jaspers seminal work General Psychopathology in 1913. The Centre of Psychosocial Medicine of the University with its Psychiatric Hospital where Jaspers wrote this influential volume as a 29 year old clinical assistant hosted a number of international experts familiar with his psychiatric and philosophical work. This fruitful interdisciplinary discussion seems particularly important in light of the renewed interest in Jaspers’ work, which will presumably increase towards the anniversary year 2013. This volume is unique in bringing together the knowledge of leading international scholars and combining three dimensions of investigation that are necessary to understand Jaspers in light of contemporary questions: history (section I), methodology (section II) and application (section III).