ABSTRACT
An established theory in the phenomenological tradition is that a key feature of schizophrenia is a `crisis of commonsense', that is, a loss of the meaning and signi®cance that we usually attach without conscious re¯ection to everyday objects and situations. In an extensive study on 405 persons with schizophrenia, Blankenburg (1971) pointed out that these persons can no longer typify their experiences along commonsense categories. For them, the rootedness that accompanies us in our everyday life is absent. They seem to ignore, or sometimes to refuse, commonsense categories to typify their everyday experiences with ± so that they are sometimes puzzled by ordinary situations and unable to think or act according to what is commonly expected. For Blankenburg, the fundamental character of schizophrenic abnormal experiences is the loss of natural evidence of commonsensical everyday reality.
