Symptom as cypher

This chapter argues that the symptom-as-aletheia concept can be better explained in the light of Jaspers’ concept of ‘cypher’. Cyphers show what without them would remain implicit for us. Symptoms are a special category of cyphers: through them alterity, that is, the hidden yet operative (and perplexing) dimension of our existence, is made manifest. Like symptoms, cyphers are the contingent opportunity of recognition, of a possible encounter between the person and the encompassing dimension of her existence. The cypher must keep on an inexhaustible signification with which no definite interpretation is commensurate. Symptoms in the phenomenological–hermeneutic paradigm are anomalies, but not abnormal phenomena in a strict sense. Rather, they are what awakens one’s care for oneself. The symptom reflects and reveals alterity in oneself—in it, alterity becomes conspicuous. From the vantage offered by the symptom one can see oneself from another, often radically different and new, perspective.