La  normalidad: entre formación y terapéutica —En los 50 años de “Problemas filosóficos selectos de la  psicopatología y la normalidad”—

Germán Vargas Guillén; Lina Marcela Gil Congote

doi:10.15448/1984-6746.2026.1.49750

Authors

Germán Vargas Guillén National Pedagogical University, Faculty of Humanities, Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6156-799X
Lina Marcela Gil Congote University of Antioquia, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2851-1422

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2026.1.49750

Keywords:

Normality, Norm, Formation, Psychopathology, Phenomenology

Abstract

This article examines the seminar Vybrané filosofické problémy psychopathologie a normality (1975-1976) as a decisive site for understanding the passage between phenomenology, psychopathology, therapeutics, and the critique of norm in the work of Jan Patočka, Petr Rezek, and Jiří Němec. First, it reconstructs the distinction between norm and normality, arguing that the former refers to a measure to be assumed within singular existence, whereas the latter designates the ontological dimension within which a life may orient itself, lose itself, or reappropriate itself. Secondly, it analyses the dialogue with Medard Boss’s Daseinsanalysis and the treatment of animality, symptom, vertigo, schizophrenia, and the dark pre-foundation as indices of the limits of human openness to the world. Finally, it proposes understanding formation as a therapeutics of the soul, linked to the Platonic care of the soul, to the existential value of truth, to sacrifice as a response to the truth of the moment, and to three levels of reduction — psychological, transcendental, and existential. The article argues that normality does not amount to adaptation, but to the possibility of a responsible life, open to meaning and capable of critically inhabiting its world.

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Author Biographies

Germán Vargas Guillén, National Pedagogical University, Faculty of Humanities, Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy.

Full Professor at the National Pedagogical University (Bogotá, Colombia). Philosopher (University of San Buenaventura); Master in Latin American Philosophy (Santo Tomás University); PhD in Education—specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Processes—(National Pedagogical University); Postdoctoral research in Phenomenology (Arlington, Texas). His most recent books include: *Phenomenology of the Strange: Migration and Migrants* (2025); *The Psychological Path: Phenomenology and Artificial Intelligence* (2025, co-authored with Lina Marcela Gil); *Care of the Soul: Rising Up, Being Moved—From Patočka to Comenius* (2024); *Patočka as a Reader of Comenius: Philosophy of Education* (co-editor with Eliska Krausova, 2023); and *Jan Patočka and Our Phenomenology: The Horizon of the Secularization of Culture* (co-editor with Eliska Krausova, 2023). Co-founder of the *Colombian Yearbook of Phenomenology*. Director of the *Phenomenology and Hermeneutics* book series (Aula de Humanidades). Memberships: Colombian Philosophical Society, Latin American Phenomenology Circle (CLAFEN), and the Husserl Circle.

Lina Marcela Gil Congote, University of Antioquia, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia). Psychologist (UdeA); she earned her doctorate with a thesis on psychology, individuation, and career trajectories from the perspective of G. Simondon. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship (Phenomenological Psychology of Individuation) at the National Pedagogical University. She is the author of the books *La Vía psicológica: Fenomenología e inteligencia artificial* (2025, co-authored with Germán Vargas Guillén), *Psicología de la individuación* (2019), and *Psicología, trabajo e individuación* (2016); and editor of the books *Individuación, tecnología y formación —Simondon: en debate—* (2020) and *Individuación: Fenomenología y psicología* (2019). She also edited the book *Filosofía de la educación: individuación (subjetivación) y formación* (2021). She directs the "Individuación" collection for the publishing house Aula de Humanidades and is a member of CLAFEN (Latin American Phenomenology Circle) and RELÉS (Latin American Network of Simondonian Studies).

References

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