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...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
January 29, 2014
Julie Nordgaard, Josef Parnas
Introduction: Self-disorders (SD) have been described as a core feature of schizophrenia both in classical and recent psychopathological literature. However, the specificity of SD for the schizophrenia spectrum disorders has never been demonstrated in a diagnostically heterogeneous sample, nor has the concurrent validity of SD been examined. Aim: (1) To examine the specificity of Examination 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...
Oxford Medicine Online
July 1, 2013
Josef Parnas
Psychosis is one of the cardinal concepts of psychopathology (Jaspers), with an important descriptive use and frequent but unclear nosological connotations. Despite its central role in clinical psychiatry, it is only inadequately and vaguely addressed and articulated in the contemporary psychodiagnostic manuals. Typically, the descriptive use of this concept—as a ”break with reality”—is always...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
June 24, 2013
Mads G Henriksen, Josef Parnas
Poor insight into illness is considered the primary cause of treatment noncompliance in schizophrenia. In this article, we critically discuss the predominant conceptual accounts of poor insight, which consider it as an ineffective self-reflection, caused either by psychological defenses or impaired metacognition. We argue that these accounts are at odds with the phenomenology of schizophrenia,...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
December 23, 2012
Josef Parnas, Louis Sass, Dan Zahavi
Questions concerning both the ontology and epistemology of the "psychiatric object" (symptoms and signs) should be at the forefront of current concerns of psychiatry as a clinical neuroscience. We argue that neglect of these issues is a crucial source of the stagnation of psychiatric research. In honor of the centenary of Karl Jaspers' book, General Psychopathology, we offer a critique of the...
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
September 23, 2012
Julie Nordgaard, Louis Sass, Josef Parnas
There is a glaring gap in the psychiatric literature concerning the nature of psychiatric symptoms and signs, and a corresponding lack of epistemological discussion of psycho-diagnostic interviewing. Contemporary clinical neuroscience heavily relies on the use of fully structured interviews that are historically rooted in logical positivism and behaviorism. These theoretical approaches marked...
World Psychiatry
October 1, 2011
Josef Parnas, Andrea Raballo, Peter Handest et al.
175 citations
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...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
July 19, 2011
Josef Parnas
This article traces the fundamental descriptive features of schizophrenia described in the European continental literature form Kraepelin and Bleuler, culminating with the creation of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-8 (1974). There was a consensus among the researchers that the specificity and typicality of schizophrenia was anchored to its "fundamental" clinical core (with...
Psychopathology
August 25, 2010
Mads G Henriksen, Borut Škodlar, Louis Sass et al.
Background: Autistic traits and perplexity are considered core features of schizophrenia in phenomenological psychiatry. They express a fundamental disturbance of the self-world relation (including disturbances of self and intersubjectivity). The aim of our study was to examine this disturbance by exploring in detail how autism and perplexity are experienced subjectively. Methods: It is a...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
February 22, 2010
Andrea Raballo, Josef Parnas
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...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
June 15, 2009
Andrea Raballo, Ditte Sæbye, Josef Parnas
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...
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...
Psychopathology
2005
Josef Parnas, Peter Handest, Lennart Jansson et al.
Our research group has for several years conducted philosophically informed, phenomenological-empirical studies of morbid alterations of conscious experience (subjectivity) in schizophrenia (Sz) and its spectrum of disorders. Some of these experiential alterations constitute, in our view, the vulnerability markers to Sz – indicators that are intrinsic to this disorder and which were...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
2003
Louis Sass, Josef Parnas
In recent years, there has been much focus on the apparent heterogeneity of schizophrenic symptoms. By contrast, this article proposes a unifying account emphasizing basic abnormalities of consciousness that underlie and also antecede a disparate assortment of signs and symptoms. Schizophrenia, we argue, is fundamentally a self-disorder or ipseity disturbance (ipse is Latin for "self" or...
Philosophy, psychiatry & psychology
June 1, 2001
Josef Parnas, Louis Arnorsson Sass
204 citations
We propose that typical schizophrenic delusions develop on the background of preexisting anomalies of self-experience. We argue that disorders of the Self represent the experiential core clinical phenomena of schizophrenia, as was already suggested by the founders of the concept of schizophrenia and elaborated in the phenomenological psychiatric tradition. The article provides detailed...