ABSTRACT
Theory of Mind (ToM) approaches play a prevalent role in today’s understanding of schizophrenia and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This is particularly true for what concerns the patients’ difficulties to engage in satisfactory social contact. In general terms, it is assumed that having a “theory of mind” entails a twofold inferential or quasi-inferential capacity: (1) that of recognizing that all people act on the basis of mental states, and (2) that of attributing these states to oneself and to others in order to predict their behavior. After presenting the main claims and arguments defended in ToM approaches to social cognition and its disturbances, this chapter discusses the limits of applying these approaches to the social disturbances in schizophrenia and autism. Finally, it proposes an alternative interpretation of such disturbances, based on a phenomenological account of intersubjectivity. On the basis of this phenomenological analysis it will be shown that, contrary to what ToM approaches suggest, schizophrenia and autism affect the domain of social experience in two crucially different ways, both irreducible to grossly identifying characterizations as ToM disabilities.
