Affectivity and (inter)corporality in phenomenology and schizophrenia

Abstract

In the last 20 years, the thesis that schizophrenia can be understood as a disturbance of ipseity has been progressively developed. This is the ‘Copenhagen school’. Despite its productivity, this thesis has obscured the importance of bodily and intersubjective aspects that are crucial for a fuller phenomenological understanding of schizophrenia. Although empirical evidence indicating the relevance of the corporeal and intersubjective aspects of the disorder abounds, there is a lack of a philosophical phenomenology that shows how and in which sense ipseity, corporeality, and intersubjectivity are interconnected. The article makes a philosophical analysis of ipseity, affectivity, corporality and intersubjectivity in a phenomenological-philosophical sense. It is argued that subjectivity cannot be conceived as a completely self-sufficient and interior ipseity. Subjectivity is crossed by corporality and therefore by a duality between interiority and exteriority. It is only through this duality of the experience of the body that it is possible to make sense of intersubjectivity. Towards the end, with the conceptual elements worked out in the analysis, a preliminary understanding of schizophrenic corporeality and intersubjectivity is offered.

Keywords: phenomenology, psychopathology, schizophrenia, subjectivity, lived body, intercorporeality.