Alienation and the Sciences of Mind: Understanding Schizophrenia Without Cognitivist Theory (original) (raw)
Schizophrenia and the epistemology of self-knowledge
European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 2010
Extant philosophical accounts of schizophrenic alien thought neglect three clinically signifi cant features of the phenomenon. First, not only thoughts, but also impulses and feelings, are experienced as alien. Second, only a select array of thoughts, impulses, and feelings are experienced as alien. ird, empathy with experiences of alienation is possible. I provide an account of disownership that does justice to these features by drawing on recent work on delusions and selfknowledge. e key idea is that disownership occurs when there is a failure of rational control over one's mind. is produces a clash between the deliverances of introspection and practical enquiry as ways of knowing one's mind. is explanation places disownership on a continuum with more common aspects of our psychological life, such as addiction, akrasia, obsessional thinking, and immoral, selfi sh or shameful thoughts. I conclude by addressing objections, and exploring the relevance of my account to questions in the philosophy of psychiatry concerning the validity of our current taxonomy of symptoms, and the nature of psychiatric classifi cation
Phenomenology, Schizophrenia, and the Varieties of Understanding
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 2022
This is a commentary on Humpston, C. S. (2022). “Isolated by Oneself: Ontologically Impossible Experiences in Schizophrenia.” Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 29(1), 5–15. It is published with an additional commentary by H. Green and Humpston’s response.
The inside/outside distinction and the issue of boundaries, 2004
Patients with schizophrenia demonstrate an inability to distinguish internal from external sources of some experiences. Although there are numerous models, the causes and neural substrates are largely unknown. In schizophrenia, the commonsensical overlapping oppositions of internal/external, self/other, active/passive, mind/body, voluntary/involuntary become disentangled. Due to the loss of common sense, the imprecise coincidence of these oppositions inner and self, outer and other, mind and body lose their obviousness to the patient. Once the nexus of oppositions is unraveled, the patient tries to recover order by keeping the oppositions clear and separate in delusional interpretations of reality. The patient counters with delusional schemes that artificially keep these oppositions from merging. However, this web of proximate and overlapping oppositions lost to the patient not only inform the way we describe our everyday experience but also implicitly guide our conceptual models in psychology and neuroscience. Their source is a resilient but also protective common sense. Phenomenological method brackets the oppositions of common sense to study the otherwise concealed structures of consciousness. However, when applied to schizophrenia as a disorder of consciousness, phenomenology is burdened by controversy between two approaches: the Apollonian and Dionysian. Both traditions propose that the loss of common sense (in which the paradoxes and contradictions implicit to everyday experience are "overlooked" (von Weizsaecker)) is core to schizophrenia. Experience no longer rests on what is assumed to be probable (Blankenburg), but only proceeds in staccato, what must be, or delusional certainty. The Apollonian approach (Minkowski, Sass, Cutting) claims that the destruction of common sense in schizophrenia comes from above, melting under the scrutiny of an intact but too intense "hyperreflection." The Dionysian approach (Binswanger, Blankenburg, von Weizsaecker) attributes the erosion of common sense, coming from below, to a disruption of pre-attentive, automatic processing. The patient attempts to piece together experience by means of delusions in terms of the remaining fragments. However, both traditions have not been directly studied experimentally. The Apollonian model is hard
Schizophrenia and the Scaffolded Self
Topoi, 2020
A family of recent externalist approaches in philosophy of mind argues that our psychological capacities are synchronically and diachronically “scaffolded” by external (i.e., beyond-the-brain) resources. I consider how these “scaffolded” approaches might inform debates in phenomenological psychopathology. I first introduce the idea of “affective scaffolding” and make some taxonomic distinctions. Next, I use schizophrenia as a case study to argue — along with others in phenomenological psychopathology — that schizophrenia is fundamentally a self-disturbance. However, I offer a subtle reconfiguration of these approaches. I argue that schizophrenia is not simply a disruption of ipseity or minimal self-consciousness but rather a disruption of the scaffolded self, established and regulated via its ongoing engagement with the world and others. I conclude by considering how this scaffolded framework indicates the need to consider new forms of intervention and treatment.
The core gestalt of schizophrenia
The recent debate in World Psychiatry on prototypes versus operational criteria (1) invites a prototypical reassessment of the clinical-phenomenological presentation of schizophrenia, especially in the light of recent developments in phenomenological psychopathology (2).
Theory & Psychology, 2012
This work presents affinities existing between the phenomenological view of schizophrenia and recent cognitive research on this disorder. We postulate that the core abnormality in schizophrenia is a particular kind of disturbance of the sense of self, which has two main aspects, an enhanced sense of awareness or hyperreflexivity, and diminished self-affection. Noticeable parallels are shown between "hyperreflexivity" and some cognitive models and research that concentrate on attentional processes in schizophrenia patients. It is also argued that "diminished self-affection" may be related to certain factors recently dealt with in cognitive research, such as "beliefs about superstition and responsibility related to one's own thoughts" and "dissociation." Furthermore, certain points which, in our opinion, could be of mutual enrichment to both viewpoints are briefly analyzed. Finally, several limitations and problems that such mutual sharing may have are also described, and some possible lines of future research are suggested.
ABSTRACT: The present paper clarifies key issues in phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology (especially of schizophrenia) through a critique of a recent article that addresses these topics. Topics include: 1, Phenomenology’s role in clarifying issues not amenable to purely empirical methods. 2, The relationship between a phenomenological approach (focusing on the subjective life of the patient) and empirical science, including neuroscience. 3, The nature of self-experience, especially in its pre-reflective form (“ipseity”—involving “operative intentionality”), and its possible disturbance in schizophrenia (“hyperreflexivity” and “diminished self-affection”). 4, The relationship between self disturbance in schizophrenia and disorders of both temporality and (what Husserl termed) “passive syntheses.” 5, The role of intentional or quasi-volitional processes in the perceptual (and other) disorders in schizophrenia. 6, The nature and diversity of phenomenology’s potential contribution to the enterprise of “explanation.” 7, The meaning of several concepts: “hermeneutic” or “existential” approach; phenomenological “reflection”; “negative symptoms.”
poor insight' into illness. We propose that poor insight into schizophrenia is not simply a problem of insufficient selfreflection due to psychological defenses or impaired metacognition, but rather that it is intrinsically expressive of the severity and nature of self-disorders. The instabilities of the first-person perspective throw the patient into a different, often quasisolipsistic, ontological-existential framework. We argue that interventions seeking to optimize the patients' compliance might prove more efficient if they take the alterations of the patients' ontological-existential framework into account.
The paper discusses two recent approaches to schizophrenia, a phenomenological and a neuroscientific approach, illustrating how new directions in philosophy and cognitive science can elaborate accounts of psychopathologies of the self. It is argued that the notion of the minimal and bodily self underlying these approaches is still limited since it downplays the relevance of social interactions and relations for the formation of a coherent sense of self. These approaches also illustrate that we still lack an account of how 1st and 3rd person observations can fruitfully go together in an embodied account of disorders of the self. Two concepts from enactive cognitive science are introduced, the notions of autonomy and sense-making. Based on these, a new proposal for an enactive approach to psychopathologies of the self is outlined that integrates 1st and 3rd person perspectives, while strongly emphasising the role of social interactions in the formation of self. It is shown how the enactive framework might serve as a basis for an alternative understanding of disorders of the self such as schizophrenia, as a particular form of socially constituted self-organisation
Schizophrenia, Consciousness, and the Self
Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2003
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 "itself) that is characterized by complementary distortions of the act of awareness: hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection. Hyperreflexivity refers to forms of exaggerated selfconsciousness in which aspects of oneself are experienced as akin to external objects. Diminished selfaffection or self-presence refers to a weakened sense of existing as a vital and self-coinciding source of awareness and action. This article integrates recent psychiatric research and European phenomenological psychiatry with some current work in cognitive science and phenomenological philosophy. After introducing the phenomenological approach along with a theoretical account of normal consciousness and self-awareness, we turn to a variety of schizophrenic syndromes. We examine positive, then negative, and finally disorganization symptoms-attempting in each case to illuminate shared distortions of consciousness and the sense of self. We conclude by discussing the possible relevance of this approach for identifying early schizophrenic symptoms.
The purpose of this article is to develop a phenomenological understanding of schizophrenia and to affirm the existence of a corporeal Self that is necessary for our " being-in-the-world " and for our common sense. This corporeal sense of Self could be lost in specific psychiatric disorders. In fact, adopting an embodied approach and applying phenomenological concepts to neuroscientific, psychiatric and medical studies allows us to fully understand the complexity of the human being, a being completely rooted in his/her body and in the world. After briefly describing the role of Leib in the phenomenological tradition, I will compare the typical symptoms of schizophrenia and those of melancholic depression. Then, I will show that the symptoms that characterize schizophrenia, such as the weakness of the sense of Self, the disruption of corporeal functions and the isolation of the subject from the world, could be synonymous with a disorder of an embodied self, something that psychiatrists like Thomas Fuchs and Giovanni Stanghellini have defined as a " disembodiment ". This progressive alienation of the self involves structural loss in the most important perceptual, cognitive and affective fields of human life: for this reason, a phenomenological analysis seems to be useful to the scientific approach in order to clarify how this tacit bodily structure of the self is lost and how our bodily self is central to our common understanding of reality.
“The Delirious Illusion of Being in the World”: Toward a Phenomenology of Schizophrenia
Founding Psychoanalysis Phenomenologically: Phenomenological Theory of Subjectivity and the Psychoanalytic Experience. Eds: D Lohmar and J Brudzinska. Phaenomenologica, 2012, Volume 199, 269-281, 2011
Our title is an excerpt from a statement by Antonin Artaud, the poet, playwright, and actor, who was almost certainly schizophrenic. Born in Marseilles in 1896, Artaud died in Paris in 1948. In 1937 on a boat to Ireland, he had to be placed in a straightjacket after threatening to harm himself. Eight of his fifty-two years he spent in mental institutions in Rouen, Paris, and Rodez, 6). Artaud was one of those relatively rare individuals who succeeded in harnessing certain aspects of his schizophrenia to serving a revolutionary creativity. Most people afflicted with schizophrenia remain incapable of creative breakthroughs. As we shall see, however, with the onset of schizophrenia the individual is liberated from the structures and norms that powerfully govern normal human experience. In this condition even the most basic formations of the world-taken-for-granted, the lifeworld, are shaken. In the place of these previously habitual structures, new visions emerge. If the individual can somehow manage to control and shape these novel images, genius – in most cases an initially bewildering genius – may perhaps flourish. Here we shall not examine the creativity that may – albeit rarely – issue from schizophrenic mental life. We shall rather analyze the more common forms of schizophrenia, forms that bring on only severe suffering and hardship without the compensation of greater originality. We shall approach these more common components from the point of view of phenomenological-anthropological psychiatry. We shall first provide a brief introduction to the phenomenological-anthropological perspective. This introduction will paint the background for our own explication of basic phenomenological concepts, namely, intentionality, synthesis, constitution, automatic and active mental life, and the ego. We shall then address schizophrenic mental life as a whole, claiming that the transformation of experience that it entails affects even the most basic ontological constituents of the world, namely, space, time, causality, and the nature of objects. This phenomenological discussion will allow us to adapt a set of concepts from philosophical anthropology and apply it to schizophrenia, namely, the concept of “world openness” and the need to reduce that openness. We shall focus on one of the more puzzling aspects of schizophrenia, what psychiatrists call “thought insertion." We shall then all-too-briefly indicate the difference between an early stage of schizophrenia and a later one.
Generating Sense: Schizophrenia and Phenomenological Praxis
Schutzian Research 3 (2011): 121-132
The aim of phenomenology is to provide a critical account of the origins and genesis of the world. This implies that the standpoint of the phenomenological reduction is properly extramundane. But it remains an outstanding task to formulate a credible account of the reduction that would be adequate to this seemingly impossible methodological condition. This paper contributes to rethinking the reduction accordingly. Building on efforts to thematize its intersubjective and corporeal aspects, the reduction is approached as a kind of transcendental practice in the context of generativity. Foregrounding the psychotherapeutic encounter with persons suffering schizophrenic delusion as paradigmatic of the emergence of shared meaning, it is argued that this is where we may best come to terms with the methodological exigencies of phenomenology’s transcendental aim. It follows that phenomenologists across all disciplines may have something important to learn from how phenomenology has been put into practice in the psychotherapeutic domain.
The Unlimited Realm of the Limit: Objectivity and Schizophrenia
Witte de With Review, 2014
If James Tilly Matthews can be cited as the very first historical case of schizophrenia, it's owing to the fact that his madness was embedded in an unprecedented stratification of scientific, political, and technological layers that led to the meticulous recording of his symptoms and the careful archiving of his correspondence, until, decades after his death, these elements made the clinical identification and the 'epistemological conviction' of his condition possible. The image attached to this text, made by Matthews' own hands, depicts the object of his hallucinations, an 'influencing machine' that he called the Air Loom. Its secret and shadowy mechanism, its analogy with contemporary scientific events, and its hyperbolical connection with political events of the time, incite interpretation to focus on its hazy edges, to understand its workings in light of the order of knowledge that shaped its context of apparition: it opens a space for the projection of a vertical gaze onto the constitution of the rationalist boundaries that animated the enlightened 'space of Reason'. Indeed, the layers in which Matthews's schizophrenia were inscribed pertain to the divides, limits, and borders by which Western modernity has worked at stabilizing its structure of production and the representation of truth. The Air Loom, with its alliance of Euclidean geometry and paranoia, of obscure chemistry and conspiracy, of mechanics and psychiatry, of repressed science and politics, seems to provide a distorting mirror to scientific modernity, to inhabit a paradoxical space in which epistemic divides are all at once put to work, torn apart more sharply, and relaunched further. The Air Loom, understood as a world-making image that exteriorizes the interiority of a subject (however delusional), can thus be said to navigate a modern border, a frontier between an object of scientific attention (madness) and the technology by which this attention produces factual truth (the clinic): the boundary that both pulls apart and connects objectivity and schizophrenia.
Not Being Oneself: A Critical Perspective on ‘Inauthenticity’ in Schizophrenia
Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 2017
The task of being oneself lies at the heart of human existence and entails the possibility of not being oneself. In the case of schizophrenia, this possibility may come to the fore in a disturbing way. Patients often report that they feel alienated from themselves. Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that schizophrenia sometimes has been described with the heideggerian notion of inauthenticity. The aim of this paper is to explore if this description is adequate. We discuss two phenomenological accounts of schizophrenia: Binswanger’s account of schizophrenia as a form of inauthenticity and Blankenburg’s account of schizophrenia as a loss of common sense, which seems construable as a loss of inauthenticity. We argue that the accounts are highlighting aspects of the same underlying phenomenon, viz. schizophrenic autism. Moreover, we argue that Binswanger’s description of schizophrenia as a form of inauthenticity is inadequate and we discuss experiences of self-alienation in schizophr...
Vries (2008)- Schizophrenia lacks validity
Validity is lacking in mainstream psychiatry's classification of schizophrenia or "pathological madness". In this essay I argue that this is effected by two interrelated causes: first, mainstream psychiatry ignores "alienating experiences and actions" as a characteristic conceptual given in this reality domain; second, mainstream psychiatry judges the validity of classificatory judgements only from the third person perspective ("outside" persons), ignoring the first person perspective ("inside" persons) and the second person perspective ("between" persons). I propose that the conjunction of these three perspectives forms a fundament for improving validity, and that the basic entity for psychiatric classification is the "human person", not the "mind" or the "brain". The inclusion of two phenomenological concepts, "praecox feeling" and "breakdown of common sense", is a good start for fulfilling these requirements. They deserve a central place in a new and valid classification.