ABSTRACT

This chapter explains to a specific kind of disorder of self-experience occurring selectively in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. It presents the summary of the empirical research, the clinical picture of self-disorders and a theoretical conceptualization of self-disorder. The psychiatrist's acquaintance with the phenomenon of non-specific specificity is, crucial in the context of early diagnostic assessment. The introspective data constitutes a fraction of what is at stake in a phenomenological assessment. The patient's comportment to and experience of his world, objects, meanings and social life usually constitute the core of the phenomenological investigation. The chapter presents specific disturbances of self-experience as an important experiential phenotype of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. In this particular context, the phenomenological notion of a disorder of the self, itemized into its empirical aspects in the EASE scale, permits a more focused, targeted, and explicitly articulated investigation and description of the psychopathological aspects of schizophrenia.