Psychiatry in free fall: In pursuit of a semiotic foothold

Umwelt, as elaborated by Jakob von Uexküll, is a model (as developed by Thomas Sebeok), a model of the world, or, better, the worlds, as there are innumerable models constructed by different inhabitants of our planet. Everything has it's own Umwelt adapted to its specific needs (Uexküll 1928). Non-human signs are everywhere, investigated by different branches of semiotics endeavoring to understand stars and rocks, plants and animals (Hoffmeyer 1996; Kull 1998, 2001). However, humans are the only living beings who know that there are signs, i.e. who have the ability to engage in acts of reflection and self-reflection thereby creating a semiosphere of a specific character (Lotman 1984, 1990). As Deely puts it when discussing Peirces's views all thought is in signs (Deely 1998). Ethosemiotics, or teleosemiotics, was proposed by Ponzio & Petrilli (2003) when elaborating upon an earlier idea of the semiotic self (Sebeok, 1979; Sebeok, Petrilli, Ponzio 2001); and autosemiosis was defined as a universal principle of Nature to reflect itself (Seppänan 2003) making biosemiotic space still richer. Is there any relation between semiotics and psychiatry? Is semiotics essential for an understanding of the causes of mental disorders? Psychosemiotics, acknowledged by man