Letter to the editor: problem gambling in phenomenological psychopathology

Abstract

To the Editor, I would like to thank you for the work that the International Gambling Studies is doing. The interdisciplinary horizons of the research contribute to have new aspects to better understand the phenomenon of gambling. In this regard, I intend to present phenomenological psychopathology to study the problem gambling. This approach, which aims to deepen the links between mental disorders and subjective experiences, helps to make sense of psychic suffering and the relationship that the individual has with the world (Stanghellini et al., 2019). Until now, natural science and psychology have studied substance-related disorders and behavioral addiction as gambling starting from the impulsive stresses that connote the psychophysiological state of addiction. Behavioral addiction has been defined as a behavioral disorder and it was not included among the substance-related disorders, even though it shares some characteristics as the direct activation of the brain reward system (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). This classification emphasized the study of the body as an organism and, thus, the above phenomena were classified under the term addiction. Addiction (Oxford English Dictionary, 2008) derives from the Latin addictus, a term used in ancient Rome to indicate a state of slavery. Thus, for science, the person who exhibits these behaviors is considered mainly as a slave to his impulses. Following the preceding considerations, I intend to combine the natural scientific view with phenomenological psychopathology, which aims to study the body as a lived body (Leib) and not as a mere organism (Körper). In this way, it becomes possible not only to fully explain (Erklären) but also to understand (Verstehen) the behavioral addiction of gambling. In explaining, problem gambling is represented by laws or theories that, like physiology, search for causes, while understanding this phenomenon means searching for the meaning (Bedeutung) (Jaspers, 1964) that the single gambler attributes to it . Phenomenological psychopathology offers psychology a way to broaden its view of gambling. Going beyond what logical empiricism offers, phenomenological psychopathology proposes to investigate, above all, the intentionality of consciousness of a being-in-the-world (Heidegger & Von Herrmann, 1977), that is, of an individual who is constitutively related to the world. This is a crucial point in understanding the shift that takes place from the state of being-thrown (Ge-worfen) to that of being-projected (Entworfen) to make the world inhabitable. In other words, the phenomenological approach emphasizes the importance of the existentials a priori that characterize an individual, i.e. the matrices that represent the possible ways in which the individual relates to the world (Heidegger & Von Herrmann, 1977). This method requests two conditions: 1) to go beyond the subject-object relation INTERNATIONAL GAMBLING STUDIES 2021, VOL. 21, NO. 3, 537–541 https://doi.org/10.1080/14459795.2021.1918209