Chapter 18 - Can we study subjective experiences objectively? First-person perspective approaches and impaired subjective states of awareness in schizophrenia

Summary

This chapter argues that the concepts and methods needed to study some subjective experiences objectively are already available. It shows how results from studies exploring conscious awareness in schizophrenia using first- and third-person perspective approaches provide new evidence for the validity of using first-person perspective approaches. A set of studies using the remember/know procedure to assess subjective states of awareness in patients with schizophrenia showed that autonoetic awareness is impaired. In conclusion, and it explores some outstanding questions that first-person perspective approaches have opened up in the research field of psychiatry and clinical psychology. Realism and idealism lead to diametrically opposed views of psychopathological manifestations, as illustrated by hallucinations. According to realism, hallucinations are false perceptions that arise in the absence of an external object or event. According to transcendental idealism, both normal perceptions and hallucinations are subjective experiences subserved by the same internal process.