Self-experience in Schizophrenia: Metacognition as a Construct to Advance Understanding

摘要

In our original piece (Hamm et al. 2015), we suggested that contemporary phenomenologi-cal models of schizophrenia such as the ipseity-disturbance model emphasize perceptual and cognitive elements of self-disturbances, potentially neglecting the presence and central importance of painful affect in the experience of schizophrenia. We concluded that integrating affect within developing phenomenological models would offer not only a theoretical advance but also a possible path to more effective recovery-oriented treatment. In response, Phillips (2015) agrees there is incontrovertible evidence of painful affect central to the experience of schizophrenia. He expresses concerns though about a danger in falsely reducing schizophrenia to one cardinal essence and, in the tradition of Jaspers's claims of ununderstandability (1963), challenges the view that the experience of schizophrenia ''''can be understood and described" (Phillips 2015, 210).