The article intends to contribute to the discussion on the specificity of psychiatry. It stresses the point of view that psychiatry is fundamentally a practice oriented discipline. On the basis of this presupposition it discusses

• the possibility of scientific knowledge relating to the individual
• the relevance of the hermeneutical method
• the impact of normative and anthropological themes on psychiatry.

The second part of the article indicates how the same three questions received already a lot of attention in the so called anthropological psychiatry. It advocates also continuing, systematical and historical, study of the anthropological dimension of psychiatry.