Giving thickness to the minimal self: coenesthetic depth and the materiality of consciousness

Abstract

Contemporary phenomenological psychopathology has raised questions concerning selfhood and its possible alterations in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Although the notion of the self is central to several accounts of anomalies, it remains a question how exactly the radically minimal experiential features of selfhood can be altered. Indeed, the risk is to reduce the notion of selfhood so drastically, that it can no longer account for alterations of experience. Here we propose to give thickness to the minimal self. To do this we first discuss Sartre’s phenomenological definition of coenesthesia as the translucent matter of consciousness articulating it with the notion of existential feelings. We then draw on the historical research on coenesthesia to dig deeper in this translucent materiality identified as the element of the body. We show that selfhood, even in its most minimal level, must be conceived of with a specific elemental thickness, corresponding to a phenomenological materiality of embodiment. We argue that a phenomenological reading of coenesthesia as the bodily element of ipseity can shed a new light on the anomalies of self-experience.