Phenomenology often looks at psychosis as a defined pathological state. In this paper, psychosis is not seen as a (pathological) state but as a way to respond in extreme stress. It is psychological functioning of the embodied and relational mind, and psychotic experience can be seen as one form of affective arousal among any other affects. Taken the point of views of Emmanuel Levinas and...
Recently, there has been renewed interest in Schneider's first-rank symptoms (FRS) of schizophrenia, thanks in part to a meta-analysis of their diagnostic accuracy, which deserves much credit for its methodological rigor. Conceptualising FRS as a diagnostic test whose performance can be measured in terms of sensitivity and specificity involves some issues that require reflection. First, the...
This paper offers a hermeneutic-phenomenological perspective on three dangers relevant to the psychotherapy of an underserved and often poorly understood population: persons with schizophrenia and other psychotic conditions. The discussion offered relies on analyses offered by Heidegger (on the "forgetting of the ontological difference"), Husserl (on the nature and importance of...
Disturbances in first person experience is a broadly noted feature of schizophrenia, which cannot be reduced to the expression of psychopathology. Yet, though categorically linked with profound suffering, these disturbances are often ignored by most contemporary treatment models. In this paper, we present a model, which suggests that deficits in metacognition and their later resolution...
The aim of this paper is to provide arguments for a phenomenologically informed clinical approach to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including a plea for clinical attention to the self in ASD. Central concepts of continental phenomenology, phenomenological psychopathology, and the phenomenological interview are presented, with an emphasis on the potential unifying qualities of an approach which...
Aims: We investigated default mode network (DMN) electroencephalography (EEG) functional connectivity differences between individuals with self-reported high mentalization capability and low psychopathological symptoms, versus participants with mentalization impairments and high psychopathological symptoms. Methods: Forty-nine students (35 women) with a mean age of 22.92 ± 2.53 years were...
BACKGROUND: Experiences of psychosis are often assumed to be strange, bizarre, or incomprehensible. The aim of this article is to offer a new step towards a better understanding of how the psychotic process affects a prereflective background. METHODS: We use concepts from the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to clarify the first-person perspective on psychosis of one of the authors. RESULTS:...
Despite the development and widespread diffusion of modern nosographic systems, the diagnosis of schizophrenia continues to raise several epistemological issues. To address these issues, a number of researchers are currently pursuing the possibility of an integration between reliable, objective approaches and the intersubjective perspective in the clinical encounter. In the present article, we...
Basic self-disturbance (BSD) is proposed to constitute the clinical core of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, including prodromal states and schizotypy. Anomalous self-experiences (ASEs) are suggested as phenotypic variants of BSD, representing markers of schizophrenia vulnerability. However, ASEs are not restricted to the schizophrenia spectrum, but may also occur in non-psychotic states like...
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...
Anomalous self-experiences (ASEs), presumably involving alterations in "core" or "minimal self," have been studied as manifest in schizophrenia and its spectrum, in contrast with mood disorder and personality disorder samples. This is the first study to examine ASEs in panic disorder (PD), beginning the exploration of these disturbances of subjectivity in anxiety disorders. We aimed to clarify...
According to Karl Jaspers, psychopathology requires a comprehensive method, understood as a systematic exploration of the first-person perspective of the patient's experience. At the same time, however, schizophrenia for Jaspers is characterized by its radical incomprehensibility. In addition, Rümke's so-called "praecox feeling" paradoxically combines the incomprehensibility of schizophrenic...
"Atmospheric" alterations are key aspects of altered subjectivity in mental disorder. Karl Jaspers famously described the "delusional mood": a sense of uncanny salience and ominousness that often precedes the onset of schizophrenic psychosis or of delusions. Such experiences, he writes, involve "a transformation in our total awareness of reality" that often verges on ineffability. In...
BACKGROUND: Phenomenological psychopathology, through theoretical and idiographic studies, conceptualizes major depressive disorder (MDD) as a disorder of time experience. Investigations on abnormal time experience (ATE) in MDD adopting methodologies requested by the standards of empirical sciences are still lacking. Our study aimed to provide a qualitative analysis, on an empirical ground and...
Background: Schizophrenia is characterized by positive and negative symptoms, but recently anomalous self-experiences, e.g. exaggerated self-consciousness (hyperreflectivity), receive more attention as an important symptom domain in schizophrenia patients. The semi-structured interview, the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE) [Psychopathology 2005;38:236-258], examines experiences...
While the concept of disorders of basic self-experience as the clinical core of schizophrenia spectrum disorders has gained increasing significance and empirical support, several questions remain still unresolved. One major problem is to understand how the basic and prodromal self-disturbances are related to Schneider's first rank symptoms, in particular to the so-called 'ego disorders' found...
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...
Depersonalization disorder (DPD) entails distressing alterations in self-experiencing. However, it has long been recognized that depersonalisation symptoms occur in other disorders, particularly anxiety and panic. One strand of research proposes that depersonalization phenomenology arises through altered autonomic arousal in response to stress. We sought to examine profiles of anxiety symptoms...
In the present paper, we review the recent empirical evidence on the neurobiological basis of a minimal notion of the self, the bodily self. We show the relationship between the body, its motor potentialities and the notion of minimal self. We argue that this approach can shed new light onto self-disturbances and social deficits characterizing schizophrenia. We discuss our approach with other...
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...
Pseudohallucinations are poorly understood, with clinicians continuing to rely on historical contributions to inform their views. There have been a number of recent attempts to develop a phenomenologically adequate theory of psychotic symptoms, yet the reciprocal dependence between the structure of such theories and the understanding of pseudohallucinations remains unexploited. This paper seeks...
Alcohol and drug abuse is frequent among performers and pop musicians. Many of them hope that alcohol and drugs will enhance their creativity. Scientific studies are scarce and conclusions limited for methodological reasons. Furthermore, extraordinary creativity can hardly be grasped by empirical-statistical methods. Thus, ideographic studies are necessary to learn from extraordinarily creative...
Philosophers, psychiatrists and neuroscientists have all expressed interest in and formulated hypotheses on the nature of hallucinations, but no sufficient integration of these models exists to this date. The objective of this article is to present a neurophilosophical model of psychosis linking the neurobiology with the phenomenology of hallucinations and delusions. It is proposed that...
Henri Ey suggested that all hallucinations occur against the background of depersonalization, which is an alteration in experience that people find hard to describe, where the subject feels a strangeness pervading the world and her/his own body, emotions and thoughts. Embracing Ey’s proposal, this paper draws a comparison between depersonalization in hallucinations and depersonalization in some...