Abstract

VALLE, Rubén; DI NATALE-GUEVARA, Milko  and  CRUZADO, Lizardo. Psychopathology of ipseity and embodiment: apropos of a case of cenesthopathic schizophrenia. Rev Neuropsiquiatr [online]. 2017, vol.80, n.3, pp.206-214. ISSN 0034-8597.  http://dx.doi.org/10.20453/rnp.v80i3.3158.

Phenomenology has conceptually divided the body into the “object-body”, the physical entity that can be perceived by oneself and others, and the “living-body”, that is the immediate experience of the body, tacitly experienced (or lived) in a first-person perspective.The “living-body” originates the pre-reflective experience of life, also ascribable to the minimal self, core self or ipseity, which constitutes the nuclear support of self-consciousness. This body mode implicitly operates in every action that we execute in the world, and allows us to grasp and understand the environment. However, in some morbid processes, the body may lose its quality of “transparency” and become anomalously explicit, as it occurs in schizophrenia. In this disorder, patients suffer a subjective estrangement between mind and body, which is called decorporalization or disembodiment, as a consequence of which, the patients experience a weakness of the basic sense of self, abnormalities of the subject-object relationship and alterations in meaning-bestowing, as well as in the experience of intersubjectivity. Abnormalities of the “living-body” have previously been identified in cases of disorganized, paranoid and catatonic schizophrenia. In this report we analyze how the disorders of “living-body” and ipseity are manifested in a case of cenesthopathic schizophrenia.

Keywords : Schizophrenia; human body; consciousness; psychopathology.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )