© 2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Explication or Explanation? Giovanni Stanghellini and Mario Rossi Monti Keywords: explanation, explication, interpretation, phenomenology, psychopathology M ike Martin’s paper raises questions about the process and the effectiveness of psychotherapy in the case of an Iraq war veteran, Colin, described by Dr. Bailey in his essay “A Painful Lack of Wounds”: does psycho- therapy succeed? If so, why does it succeed? How far is and should psychotherapy be value free? The clinical phenomenon discussed in this paper is defined as a serious but not severe depression occurring upon returning from the Iraq war. The impression, from the vantage point of a psycho- therapist, is that too many details are lacking from the account that is provided and that the case is hurriedly explained away invoking a naturalistic evolutionary model. The psychotherapeutic, as well as the clinical (Stanghellini 2007) and the research (Stanghellini and Ballerini 2008), interview is a quest for mean- ing. Its first concern is an accurate unfolding of subjective experiences and the organization of these experiences according to a pattern of sense that is immanent to the experiences themselves; the interpretation or the explanation of these experiences according to a model that is not im- manent in the clinical material itself may come as a later step. The first step may be called the explication of a case material. It consists in bringing out the raw feelings of the patient’s experiences and the personal meanings that the patient attributes to his experiences. Here is a list a questions that a clinician would (tactfully) address to Dr. Bailey’s patient to enrich the clinical explication of this case (a great deal of questions, of course, can be found also in Martin’s [2009] commentary): What are the phenomenal features of Colin’s “depression”? Which thoughts and emotions are involved? Anxi- ety? Anguish? Fear? Frustration? Anger? Irritabil- ity? Sadness? Apathy? Guilt? Shame? Which other experiences are involved, for example, physical pains or somatic symptoms? What is it like for Colin not to have proven his “manhood” in Iraq? What does it mean for him to be a “man”? Why does he want to be a man? How does it look like his “ideal” man? How does he exactly feel and what does he mean by “being a wimp”? We also need to illuminate the internal relations of dependence between these experiences: are these phenomena each one independent form the others, or can we find a meaning organizer among them (Rossi Monti and Stanghellini 1996), for instance a core emotion that let us understand the manifold of symptoms as a unitary structure? Does Colin feel angry for not being assigned to a combat duty? Or guilty because he did not object to this? Or does he feel ashamed because he was judged not suitable for a combat duty? Apparently, there is a “basic” wound here, maybe a narcissistic one— the epicenter of a story that reminds us of Ajax’s “madness” when the Greek generals did not offer