[The contributions of Professor Armando Roa to Chilean psychiatry]

Professor Armando Roa had an original conception of the clinical-phenomenological method of investigation in clinical psychiatry, differing from that applied in European clinical studies. Considering that the psychiatrist must rely on clinical facts, the generic features of symptoms must be studied and the way a symptom is lived must be specified. In this way, Professor Roa made five descriptions of normal and pathological anxiety, obsessions, phobias, autism, larvate psychical forms of epilepsy, primitive perception of reference, psychopathy and anorexia nervosa. He created the concepts of communicative and indicative language, destroyed thinking and unwillingness in schizophrenics, notifying language in neurotics and awareness and notion of disease. He also made a new classification of alcoholics. He has published 28 books and 120 articles in journals. He performs outstanding undergraduate teaching and has powerfully influenced contemporary and younger psychiatrists. In summary, he is a prominent Chilean intellectual.