Depersonalization as a Disorder of Self-coordination
George Wanjau
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) October 12, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23322010 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Ego dissolution |
| Key points | Argues that depersonalization and derealization reflect a failure of coordination among otherwise intact components of self-experience rather than a deficit in any single faculty, and proposes that DPDR, psychedelic ego dissolution, and general anesthesia should dissociate on a common measure of neural coordination, a prediction the authors offer as falsifiable. |
Abstract
Abstract In depersonalization and derealization (DPDR), patients report that the self and the surrounding world feel unreal, remote, or dreamlike, while memory, reasoning, and perception remain intact on objective testing. This presents a paradox: the components of self-experience appear individually preserved, yet the experience as a whole loses its felt reality. Prevailing accounts localize the deficit to a single faculty, such as attenuated affect, degraded interoceptive signaling, or altered perception. Consequently, they struggle to explain how each component can function while the overall sense of self fails. We hypothesize that ordinary selfhood depends not only on the activity of these components but on their tight coordination into a single whole. DPDR is therefore a disturbance of this coordination rather than a lesion in any single part. This proposal yields a specific, falsifiable prediction: DPDR, psychedelic ego dissolution, and general anesthesia should dissociate on a common measure of neural coordination. Although this paper reports no new data, it specifies the hypothesis, the prediction, the conditions that would refute it, and a testable design utilizing existing methods and openly available datasets.