European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
April 1, 2026
Lars Siersbæk Nilsson, Julie Nordgaard, Mads Gram Henriksen et al.
5 citations
Poor insight is a core feature of schizophrenia and empirical studies have demonstrated associations with important symptom domains, cognitive functions, and clinical outcomes. While recent explanatory accounts mostly focus on neuro-, social-, or meta-cognitive deficits, a complementary model from phenomenological psychopathology suggests that impaired insight in schizophrenia is tied to...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
August 1, 2025
Vera A Barata, Suzie Lavoie, Łukasz Gawęda et al.
3 citations
IntroductionWe previously proposed a neurophenomenological model of schizophrenia, linking basic self-disturbance with neural deficits of source monitoring and aberrant salience. Baseline comparisons in ultra-high risk (UHR) and first-episode psychosis (FEP) samples indicated a relationship between basic self-disturbance and source monitoring deficits, but not aberrant salience. The current...
L'Encephale
August 1, 2025
Andreas Rosén Rasmussen, Helene Stephensen, Julie Nordgaard et al.
This paper is a French translation of the Examination of Anomalous Fantasy and Imagination (EAFI), an instrument for a semi-structured, phenomenological exploration of psychopathology of imagination, particularly within the schizophrenia-spectrum. In this paper, we provide a French translation of the EAFI together with an introduction about the phenomenology of imagination and its experiential...
Psychopathology
June 30, 2025
Stephan Lechner, Karl Erik Sandsten, Dusan Hirjak et al.
7 citations
The psychopathology of schizophrenia is a complex amalgamation of features that span across different dimensions. These dimensions range from the experience of altered time and space through self-disorders to perceptual, positive, and negative symptoms. The relationship between these different psychopathological dimensions remains unclear. Addressing this gap was the aim of our study. We...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
May 25, 2025
Andrea Raballo, Mads Gram Henriksen, Michele Poletti et al.
9 citations
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...
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
September 1, 2024
Helene Stephensen, Annick Urfer-Parnas, Josef Parnas
28 citations
Double bookkeeping is a term introduced by Eugen Bleuler to describe a fundamental feature of schizophrenia where psychotic reality can exist side by side with shared reality even when these realities seem mutually exclusive. Despite increasing theoretical interest in this phenomenon over the recent years, there are no empirical studies addressing this issue. We have, therefore, conducted a...
Schizophrenia Research
August 1, 2024
Josef Parnas, Karl Erik Sandsten
17 citations
Schizophrenia continues its resistance to the pathogenetic understanding. We believe that one of the reasons is an oblivion of schizophrenia's characteristic Gestalt expressive of its psychopathological structure. In this article we argue for a crucial role of disorders of selfhood in the constitution of this Gestalt. First, we present a phenomenological account of the self. This is followed by...
Schizophrenia Research
March 1, 2024
Josef Parnas, Janne-Elin Yttri, Annick Urfer-Parnas
28 citations
This study presents phenomenological features of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in schizophrenia and associated anomalies of experience. The purpose is to compare the lived experience of AVH to the official definition of hallucinations as a perception without object. Furthermore, we wish to explore the clinical and research implication of the phenomenological approach to AVH. Our...
Psychopathology
2024
Helene Stephensen, Annick Urfer-Parnas, Josef Parnas
4 citations
In this paper, we wish to elucidate alterations of basic existential and intersubjective configurations in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) through the phenomenon of Anderssein ("feeling different"). Anderssein is an important yet neglected notion from German psychiatry, referring to a specific sense of feeling profoundly different from others occurring in SSD. Although...
Early Intervention in Psychiatry
July 2, 2023
Marija Krcmar, Cassandra Wannan, Suzie Lavoie et al.
6 citations
AIM: Basic self disturbance is a putative core vulnerability marker of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The primary aims of the Self, Neuroscience and Psychosis (SNAP) study are to: (1) empirically test a previously described neurophenomenological self-disturbance model of psychosis by examining the relationship between specific clinical, neurocognitive, and neurophysiological variables in UHR...
Schizophrenia Research
May 1, 2022
Andreas Rosén Rasmussen, Josef Parnas
Obsessive-compulsive symptoms are frequent in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and often cause differential diagnostic challenges, especially in first-contact patients. Drawing upon phenomenology of cognition, we critically review classic and contemporary psychopathological notions of obsessive-compulsive phenomena and discuss their relevance for differential diagnosis between...
Psychopathology
2022
Karl Erik Sandsten, Dan Zahavi, Josef Parnas
42 citations
The concept of schizophrenia (SCZ) was originally associated with a disorder of formal strata of the self. During the last two decades, empirical studies have demonstrated a selective hyper-aggregation of self-disorders in the SCZ spectrum. As with other scientific research areas, the role of self-disturbances in SCZ has been up for debate in various disciplines including cognitive sciences,...
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
December 1, 2021
Josef Parnas, Annick Urfer-Parnas, Helene Stephensen
59 citations
Eugen Bleuler, the founder of the concept of schizophrenia, pointed out that psychotic patients were able to live in two disjoint worlds (namely, the social, intersubjective world and the delusional world). He termed this phenomenon "double bookkeeping," but did not provide any conceptual elaboration of this phenomenon or its possible mechanisms. Double bookkeeping has been neglected in...
Psychopathology
2021
Julie Nordgaard, Mads Gram Henriksen, Lennart Jansson et al.
52 citations
Disordered selfhood in schizophrenia was rediscovered at the turn of the millennium. In 2005, Psychopathology published the psychometric instrument, the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE). In this article, we summarize the historical background of the creation of the EASE, explicate the notion of the disorder of basic or minimal self with the help of phenomenological philosophy,...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
2021
Andreas Rosén Rasmussen, Andrea Raballo, Antonio Preti et al.
21 citations
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...
Research at the University of Copenhagen
May 22, 2020
Mads Gram Henriksen, Josef Parnas
3 citations
In contemporary consciousness studies, a central question concerns the nature of the most primitive and fundamental features of phenomenal consciousness. Some authors (e.g., Zahavi) have argued that for-me-ness (or minimal selfhood) is a fundamental and necessary feature of phenomenal consciousness. The concept of for-me-ness articulates that experiences are first-personally manifest, i.e. they...
Schizophrenia Research
April 1, 2020
Karl Erik Sandsten, Julie Nordgaard, Troels Wesenberg Kjaer et al.
45 citations
Self-alienation is a common characterization of various disturbing experiences in patients with schizophrenia. A vivid example comes from patient reports of not recognizing themselves when inspecting their specular image in the mirror. By applying the multisensory paradigm of the Enfacement Illusion, this study empirically addresses the specular Self-Other discrimination in patients with...
Conscious Cogn
November 1, 2019
Barnaby Nelson, Suzie Lavoie, Łukasz Gawęda et al.
99 citations
BackgroundThe integration of various domains or levels of analysis (clinical, neurobiological, genetic, etc.) has been a challenge in schizophrenia research. A promising approach is to use the core phenomenological features of the disorder as an organising principle for other levels of analysis. Minimal self-disturbance (fragility in implicit first-person perspective, presence and agency) is...
Consciousness and Cognition
September 1, 2019
Mads Gram Henriksen, Josef Parnas, Dan Zahavi
82 citations
In contemporary consciousness research, we have defended a position of experiential minimalism, arguing that for-me-ness (or minimal selfhood) is a necessary, universal feature of phenomenal consciousness. The concept of for-me-ness refers to the fact that experiences are given first-personally to the subject of experience. To challenge the universality of for-me-ness, several authors have...
Consciousness and Cognition
July 1, 2016
Josef Parnas, Mads Gram Henriksen
128 citations
Mysticism and schizophrenia are different categories of human existence and experience. Nonetheless, they exhibit important phenomenological affinities, which, however, remain largely unaddressed. In this study, we explore structural analogies between key features of mysticism and major clinical-phenomenological aspects of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders-i.e. attitudes, the nature of...
Psychopathology
2015
Andreas Rosén Rasmussen, Josef Parnas
22 citations
Vivid mental imagery occurs frequently in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs). Overlapping phenomena, such as obsessions or ruminations, are also frequent in other psychiatric disorders, raising significant diagnostic challenges. Unfortunately, contemporary operational psychopathology lacks the epistemological and phenomenological framework to address such questions. Using the resources of...
Psychopathology
2014
V.v. Vodušek, Josef Parnas, M. Tomori et al.
30 citations
Background: Although it has been suggested that disturbances in emotion experience and regulation play a central role in the aetiology and psychopathology of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, the phenomenology of emotion experience in schizophrenia remains under-researched. Sampling and Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted twice with each of the 20 participants (firstly at admission and...
September 1, 2007
Jean Naudin, Michel René Joseph Cermolacce, Josef Parnas
The notion of minimal, basic, pre-reflective or core self is currently debated in the philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences and developmental psychology. However, it is not clear which experiential features such a self is believed to possess. Studying the schizophrenic experience may help exploring the following aspects of the minimal self: the notion of perspective and first person...