Is the Psychiatrist a Good or Evil Genius for her Patient According to Hegel?

In this paper, I claim that to understand Hegel’s theory of psychiatric treatment, we must frame the relation between the psychiatrist and her patient using Hegel’s concept of genius as developed in the Anthropology section of the Encyclopedia (§405). As I argue, this notion of genius is both complex and ambiguous, since Hegel presents examples both of good and evil geniuses. What is interesting is that the psychiatrist can potentially correspond to both figures, which reveals what is perhaps Hegel’s greatest contribution to contemporary psychiatry as a practice: the imperative for the practitioner to reflect on its own motivation in the treatment, its own role of authority and, conversely, the condition of its patients.