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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

179081

Autism in schizophrenia

a phenomenological study

Massimo Ballerini

pp. 281-300

Abstract

The notion of autism, as depicted by continental psychopathology, describes the essential feature of schizophrenia: an impressive private world far from the intersubjective horizon of life. A clinical case is here analyzed. Five analytical categories were selected to account for the structure of autism in schizophrenia: the cognitive categorization processes, the system of values, the social attunement, the Self setting-up process and the lived space experience. Each category represents a facet of Common Sense, the basic link that bonds each individual to the shared social system. Schizophrenic disturbance of common sense results in a semantic drift, an epistemic eccentricity, a crisis of attunement, a spatial derailment, and finally an ontological instability; there is a circular relationship between all these categories; disorder of embodiment (dis-embodiment) may be considered the common, generative root determining the dramatic corrosion of the pre-reflective basic structures of subjectivity (lived body, self and temporalization, the pre-reflective attunement with others, the indwelling in the world) inducing also the morbid arrangement of the higher-order structures of subjectivity (i.e., identity, the symbolization processes and the system of values).

Publication details

Published in:

Stanghellini Giovanni, Aragona Massimiliano (2016) An experiential approach to psychopathology: what is it like to suffer from mental disorders?. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 281-300

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-29945-7_15

Full citation:

Ballerini Massimo (2016) „Autism in schizophrenia: a phenomenological study“, In: G. Stanghellini & M. Aragona (eds.), An experiential approach to psychopathology, Dordrecht, Springer, 281–300.