Self-disorders (SD) designate a pattern of non-psychotic anomalous self-experiences, which specifically aggregate in clinical and subclinical forms of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), including familial high-risk configurations. SD have been corroborated as a valuable, quantitatively tractable, trait phenotype for indexing genetic liability to SSD, and, as a risk phenotype, they offer...
The concept of basic Self-disorders (SD) captures the experiential aspects associated with vulnerability to schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). SD emerge prior to, and constitute the underlying structure for, the emergence of major diagnostic symptoms, including positive psychotic ones. SD are also detectable in populations with familial risk for SSD. This paper proposes a two-stage...
Abstract Purpose Aberrant salience (AS) is conceptualized as a potential predisposing factor for psychotic states of mind. Despite several studies in the general population, research on AS in the early phases of psychosis is still relatively scarce. The aim of this cross-sectional study is (1) to evaluate the AS subjective experience in Ultra-High Risk (UHR) adolescents and young adults...
Anomalies of imagination encompass disturbances of the basic experiential structure of fantasies and imagery that can be explored in a semi-structured way with the Examination of Anomalous Fantasy and Imagination (EAFI). We aimed (1) to examine the distribution of anomalies of imagination among different diagnostic groups and a group of healthy controls, and (2) to examine their relation with...
Recent psychiatric research and treatment initiatives have tended to move away from traditional diagnostic categories and have focused instead on transdiagnostic phenomena, such as hallucinations. However, this emphasis on isolated experiences may artificially limit the definition of such phenomena and ignore the rich, complex, and dynamic changes occurring simultaneously in other domains of...
Trait-like anomalies of subjective experience (aka, Basic Self-disturbance or Self-disorder, SD) have been empirically identified as schizophrenia-specific markers of vulnerability in several clinical and genetic high-risk populations. However, such specificity is still to be tested in developmental years, where emerging psychopathology is less crystallized and diagnostic boundaries more...
Self-disorders are temporally persisting, experiential anomalies of subjective experiences that index liability to schizophrenia. They impact on the temporal unfolding of concomitant, diagnostic symptoms and can be suitably characterized through the Examination of Anomalous Self Ex periences (EASE). Capitalizing on the results of a recent longitudinal study, we explored the relevant patterns of...
The very presence of hallucinations raises puzzling and fascinating questions about reality … However, my real questioning did not fully occur until the voices started, which was once again a gradual process … When the voices occurred, I perceived them as omnipotent and omniscient … To me, auditory-verbal hallucinations are the result of thought processes of which I am unaware. Humpston 2014...
Anomalous subjective experiences involving an alteration of the basic sense of self (ie, Self-disorder [SD]) are emerging as a core marker of schizophrenia spectrum disorders with potential impact on current early detection strategies as well. In this study, we wished to field-test the prevalence of SD in a clinical sample of adolescent/young adult help-seekers at putative risk for psychosis...
Anomalous experiences such as Basic Symptoms (BS) are considered the first subjective manifestation of the neurobiological substrate of schizophrenia. The purpose of this study was to explore whether a low or high emotional motor resonance occurring in Schizophrenia Spectrum (SzSp) patients was related to patients׳ clinical features and to their anomalous subjective experiences as indexed by...
It is a current trend in psychiatry to discard the Kraepelinian dichotomy schizophrenia vs. manic-depressive illness and use the overinclusive label 'psychosis' to broadly indicate the whole spectrum of severe mental disorders. In this paper we show that the characteristics of psychotic symptoms vary across different diagnostic categories. We compare delusions in schizophrenia and major...
Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are complex experiences that occur in the context of various clinical disorders. AVH also occur in individuals from the general population who have no identifiable psychiatric or neurological diagnoses. This article reviews research on AVH in nonclinical individuals and provides a cross-disciplinary view of the clinical relevance of these experiences in...
Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in...
Recent focus on early detection and intervention in psychosis has renewed interest in the psychopathological delineation and assessment of psychotic phenomena.These phenomena express a fundamental qualitative change of the patient's mentality (consciousness, subjectivity) which often surfaces already during the prodromal/at risk mental states and is typically manifested across several...
Despite the avalanche of empirical data on prodromal/"at risk" conditions, the essential aspects of the vulnerability to the schizophrenia spectrum remain largely unaddressed. We report here the results of the Copenhagen Schizophrenia Prodromal Study, a prospective, observational study of first admission patients in putative state of beginning psychosis (N=151) with a follow-up length of 60...
The identification of individuals carrying unexpressed genetic liability to schizophrenia is crucial for both etiological research and clinical risk stratification. Subclinical psychopathological features detectable in the nonpsychotic part of the schizophrenia spectrum could improve the delineation of informative vulnerability phenotypes. Inspired by Meehl's schizotaxia-schizotypy heuristic...
Nonpsychotic anomalies of subjective experience were emphasized in both classic literature and phenomenological psychiatry as essential clinical features of schizophrenia. However, only in recent years, their topicality with respect to the construct validity of the concept of the schizophrenia spectrum has been explicitly acknowledged, mainly as a consequence of the increasing focus on early...
Abnormal neuropsychological and cognitive functions in nonpsychotic relatives of schizophrenics are currently the subject of intense interest, mainly because of attention being focused again on the theoretical construct of schizotaxia. Contextually, in recent years the issues of subjective experiences have once again become central and respectable topics in psychopathological research. Among...
The purpose of this study is to examine the classic psychopathologic notion of depersonalization in the light of the Basic Symptom paradigm. A sample of 57 chronic schizophrenics was cross-sectionally assessed with the Bonn Scale for the Assessment of Basic Symptoms (BSABS) and contextually with specific scales testing positive, negative, depressive and alexithymic dimensions. In order to...