Positive and Negative Valences of the Human Body in Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study of Emotional Narrative Regarding the Front and Back (original) (raw)

People with schizophrenia have marked emotional and relational difficulties, such as those with eye contact where there is a markedly strong tendency to avoid looking frontally at others appears when occupying a shared space with strangers. A prominent feature of emotional dysregulation in schizophrenia is clinically evident in blunted affect, often observed as reduced emotional expressivity alongside the individual's report of normal or heightened emotional experience. This study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to explore a crucial, largely unexamined, aspect of the embodied experience of emotions: the front-back axis of the body image in its association with positive or negative emotional words (e. g., Joy, Pleasure, Tenderness, Anger, Anxiety, Fear, and so on). We demonstrate that this spatial axis (front-back) of the body image constitutes two principal emotional narratives. One views the front of the body as conflictual and dangerous, and the other apprehends the back as more reassuring, pleasurable and calming. This kind of emotional narrative, conceptualized within Conceptual Metaphor Theory, explains the findings. Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Narrative, Emotions, Schizophrenia, Mixed Methods, Body.