Kerrin Artemis Jacobs

I am a practical philosopher specialized in philosophy of medicine/psychiatry. 

Research projects:

1. Loneliness Studies/Phenomenology:

The Phenomenology and Psychopathology of Loneliness

This study started in 2013 and since then has been an ongoing interdisciplinary research project that unites a philosophical with a psychiatric-phenomenological perspective. It has also become a central topic of the practice group “Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Medical Ethics”. The habilitation project aims at a systematization of this complex human experience by critically considering different research paradigms from philosophy, psycho(patho)logy, and the social sciences. In the first project stages the focus was mainly on developing a fine-grained systematization of loneliness experiences to enrich basic philosophical-phenomenological research to provide a differentiated and cross-culturally sensitive conceptualization of loneliness phenomena, which considers its pathogentic and salutogenetic dimensions. While from a philosophical-conceptual perspective the aspects of loneliness are elaborated in terms of conceptual analysis and the history of ideas that shape our understanding of loneliness (e.g. as involving changes of meaningful relatedness towards self, others, and the world), for the psychiatric domain, these changes are grasped dimensionally with a second model that addresses the complex functional roles loneliness plays in specific pathologies, including those phenomena that have been addressed by Critical Theory as so-called “social” pathologies. In the last years, particularly the spiritual, as well as the “digital” dimension of loneliness (e.g. loneliness management and AI “solutions”) have been critically examined to further specify the changes of meaningful relatedness from the viewpoint of philosophical theories of social recognition and (applied) ethics.

2. Intuition:

“The role of intuition in narratives of spiritual awakening”

This project focusses on the role of intuition in spiritual-religious experience. A preliminary study focused on the specific role that intuitive knowledge plays in expert knowledge (e.g. in medical diagnostics) and the follow up study builds on this with a (patho)phenomenological approach on religiosity and spirituality as catalyst for intra-, inter-, and transpersonal transformation processes in people´s lives. This is examined with a particular view to the risks of a pathologization of intuitive experiences on the one hand, and/or a misrecognition of pathology in spiritual contexts on the other. The focus lies on both, the respective (social) embedded conditions as well as on the (patho)phenomenology of (spiritual) intuition itself. Particular attention is paid to narratives that have (so far) been read primarily as an expression of pathologically altered mental conditions in contrast to narratives that are understood in the respective (subcultural, institutional) spiritual or religious contexts without any critical reflection on psychopathology. Moreover, this study contributes to the discourse of immanent critique of life-forms: by adopting a philosophical-critical stance on narratives of spiritual awakening, thus prototypical meta-narratives and beliefs (such as beliefs in spiritual ascension and self-enhancement, etc.), the specific intra-, inter-, and transpersonal process dynamics (of changes) of meaningful self-and-world-relatedness are discussed, respectively. This project has been supported by the EMMAUS project/CJ Nymphenburg.

3. Transpersonal Pathology

“Agents on the moral edge”

If one aims to explain the phenomena of social pathologies (e.g. reification, exploitation, and harassment) from an organizational perspective, such expressions of distorted moral agency must become thematized not (only) as transgressions of rules from an intra-or interpersonal level, but as transpersonal phenomena of organizational, i.e. systemic ethical failure. This is obtained by methodologically bridging the gap between different theoretical explanations from institutional ethics, meta-ethics, and social psychology to assess certain types of moral irresponsibility of and within larger social entities from a systemic perspective. We expand the diagnostic heuristics of institutional failure with a multi-criterial account of moral (in)capacity to apply it for the assessment of those underlying (dys-)functions that cause non-trivial problems and/or harms of and within larger social entities. The hypothesis is that social pathologies do often stem from a systemic-induced insensitivity for those factors that tacitly “work in the background” of an organization (such as scripts of interpersonal rules of conduct, algorithms, and institutional organization structures). Consequently, we are not only dealing with a mere lack of moral competence of individuals or groups, but rather focus on the underlying organizational dynamics and embedded conditions that cause biases and practical incapacities to effectively preserve, maintain and sustainably establish good ethical practice. This project aims to determine how to defend the normative reach of claims that refer to “harm”, particularly by taking the plurality of life-forms, the diversity of normative orientation, and different theories of ethics and morality into account. Comprehensive claims about justified crisis intervention for (corporate) agents “on the moral edge” must address the defense and resilience strategies of (corporate) agents and must critically discusses typical intervention strategies in ethics management that have been designed to increase or regain opportunities for institutional changes.

4. Practice Network: Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Medical Ethics

The PPME group has been founded 2021 to support an interdisciplinary practice group of medical professionals and philosophers that follow the Witten ideal of a humane medicine with “hand and heart”. It is a network of practical philosophers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists for joint research and the supervision of young researchers, as well as aspiring philosophers of philosophy of psychiatry and medical students. Synergies can form with a view to generating empirical data, teaching the philosophical foundations of psychiatry and psychotherapy in a practical way, and providing a space for clinical ethical case discussion. This group is a collaboration of researchers from the Institute of First-Person Research at University of Witten/Herdecke, the Division of Medical Psychology, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy of the Medical University of Graz (link: https://psychologie.medunigraz.at/en/), and the IBAM Witten (link: https://ibam.uni-wh.de).

The objectives of the PPME network are:

(1) providing basic knowledge of the following areas: clinical medical ethics and the work of ethics committees, reflection on one's own profession (as a prospective nurse, physician or psychotherapist) with the opportunity for guided peer supervision; further development of case-centered ethical decision-making skills and understanding of psychiatric diagnosis.

(2) discussion of intercultural issues in (social) psychiatric care work and psychotherapy.

(3) discussion of own research that is practically informed and/or aims to contribute to knowledge transfer between the social psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, and philosophical sectors; and

(4) creation and site-specific implementation of joint projects (studies; patient surveys; publications) with a focus on topics that will be particularly pressing health policy issues in future clinical practice.

Since 2013 I have been teaching as a guest lecturer at the Studium Fundamentale at the University of Witten/Herdecke.

From September 2021 to February 2024, I have been an Associate Professor of Practical Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities (Graduate School) and a core member of CHAIN (Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience) at the University of Hokkaido in Japan.

Before that, I have been a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück and a lecturer at the Philosophical Seminar at the University of Göttingen and have worked as course coordinator of the applied master’s program in Medical Ethics at the Institute for History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine at the University of Mainz.

During my tertiary education I have worked as a care assistant in social psychiatric care facilities, and I am a clinical ethics consultant. Currently, I am working on the topics of intuition and insight, and on transpersonal pathology.

My habilitation project is on the pathology and phenomenality of loneliness and supervised by the Centre of Psychosocial Medicine at the University of Heidelberg.