Real Persons' Experience of Contamination Obsessions: Hypotheses from a Strausian Analysis (Editorials‪)‬

The last two decades have witnessed a growing interest in the relation between philosophy, psychiatry and psychology (PP&P), to the extent that their kin ship is now widely recognised. Erwin Straus * was a forerunner in this field. As one of the central scholars of the phenomenological approach to psychology and psychiatry in the 20th century, he acutely confronts the major thinkers of classic philosophy as well as his contemporaries. Through a profound reflection on philosophers (mainly Aristotle, Descartes, Husserl, Freud, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty) and an engaged dialogue with the most important psychiatrists in his time (such as Binswanger and Minkowski), Straus came to elaborate an original theory whose fundamental basis is the phenomenological recognition of the inconsistency of Cartesian philosophy, of 'experimental' psychology (as originally described by Pavlov) and of psychoanalysis. As Straus says, the undeniable relation between philosophy, psychiatry and psychology must be rendered explicit in order to understand the origin and development of the leading interpretative paradigms in clinical practice. The following analysis of the world of persons affected by contamination obsessions, inspired by Straus's writings, serves the purpose of a reconstruction of the origins and scope of PP&P and may set the agenda of a methodology for present and future research in clinical phenomenology and its link to the neurosciences.