AS22-03 - the Self in Schizophrenia: Jaspers, Schneider and Beyond

Abstract

The concept of self-disorders has always played a major role for the psychopathology of the psychoses. In his General Psychopathology, Jaspers distinguished what he called ego-consciousness from object-consciousness and characterized it by the sense of activity, unity, identity and ego-demarcation. On this basis, Kurt Schneider later coined the term “Ich-Störungen” (ego-disorders) for the schizophrenic experience of one's thoughts, actions, feelings or bodily sensations being influenced or manipulated by others. In contrast, in ICD 10 or DSM IV these symptoms are regarded as bizarre delusions, commonly referred to as delusions of control or of passivity.

In my paper, I will give a short historical introduction into the problem of self-disorders. Then I will analyse the possible connection of ego-disorders with more basic disorders of self-awareness. I will argue that full-blown delusional convictions of alien control are based on a disturbance of the intentionality of thinking, feeling and acting. This disturbance of intentionality, for its part, may be traced back to a lack of prereflective self-awareness which has been emphasized by more recent phenomenological approaches to schizophrenia.