Abstract

Clinical semiology involves interpreting verbal descriptions to understand clinical features (‘sense-making’). In psychiatry, semiology is challenged by non-specific verbal accounts and the absence of suggestive signs and confirmatory tests. I explore 2 methodologies in psychiatric practice: Descriptive Psychopathology, emphasizing empathy, and Quantitative Psychopathology, emphasizing measurement. Neither of these fully tackles the fundamental issue of personal and positional invariance in clinical sense-making. I propose using chatbots as semiotic tools to generate symptom labels objectively, utilizing a lower level of human-like sense-making ability while still being empathetic. This introduces a trans-positional clinical comprehension, thus addressing a key requirement for person-centered psychiatry