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This book offers an alternative to operational diagnostic manuals and manuals for structured interviewing as the only sources of theoretical and clinical knowledge. It provides an exposition of psychiatric interviewing that is theoretically and clinically well founded and supplies the reader with a coherent framework for performance of a thorough psychiatric examination. The goal is not to come up with yet another interview scheme but to facilitate an understanding of the basic (but, today, completely neglected) tenets of psychopathology and phenomenology. This exposition targets the disorders of subjectivity (consciousness), the second-person processes involved in converting subjective, first-person and observable data into a third person, diagnostically useful, format. In addition, the most pertinent clinical descriptions concerning the major diagnostic groups are presented and discussed.

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Phenomenology of psychiatric interviewing.- The nature of the psychiatric object: Symptoms and signs.- Prototype and Gestalt.- Consciousness.- Experience, Expression, and Language.- Conducting the psychiatric interview.- The goal of interviewing.- Conversational approach.- Semistructured approach.- Mental State Examination.- The difficult interview.- Psychopathology: Navigating between the spectra: organic, schizophrenia, affective, personality, situational problems.- Considering organic pathology.- Indicators of psychosis.- Varieties of depression-like mental states.- Varieties of anxiety.- Acute psychosis and bipolar disorder.- Detecting disordered personality pattern.- Thinking adult in adolescent psychiatry.

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"This book focuses on the broadening decline of psychiatric clinical knowledge and the framework for diagnostic interviews. ... The purpose is to fill a gap in the psychiatric literature on the clinical interview. ... The book primarily targets clinical psychiatrists and psychologists, in addition to researchers, to help them refine their diagnostic skills and psychopathological definitions. It also will be helpful to students and psychiatric residents who wish to better understand symptom presentation and differential diagnosis." (Michael Easton, Doody´s Book Reviews, December, 2016)

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