`Phenomenology; as it came to the fore in psychiatry between 1900 and about 1925, is, methodically speaking, little else than a modified continuation of the (`phenomenological') anti-reductionism, such as, from the beginnings of clinical psychiatry (late 18th century), was implied in the so-called primacy of clinical experience. This not only accounts for psychiatry's structural susceptibility to (forms of) phenomenology in general, but it also makes understandable that, and why (between 1900 and 1925) `classical' phenomenology in the sense of Husserl c.s. was scarcely adopted in psychiatry. The interest in Husserlian phenomenology was restricted by the demand of clinical relevance, as implied in the clinical-medical, symptomatological view-point.