Intersubjectivity and Psychopathology in the Schizophrenia Spectrum: Complicated We, Compensatory Strategies, and Self-Disorders

Recent studies in phenomenological psychopathology emphasize the importance of intersubjectivity for our understanding of schizophrenia. Yet, the central role of the we in social experience and engagement is largely absent from this literature. Our study explores the relation between psychopathology and intersubjectivity in the schizophrenia spectrum through the prism of the we. First, we explore the role of intersubjectivity in the current schizophrenia spectrum definitions and discuss the main contemporary research trends. Second, we recollect some of the classical accounts of schizophrenia, which offer a different perspective on the pervasive and often persistent intersubjective difficulties in these conditions. Third, capitalizing on recent advances in collective intentionality studies, we present and discuss a conceptual framework of the we and of how the we may be disrupted in schizophrenia. Through this framework and with the use of clinical vignettes, we elicit 3 compensatory strategies, which, we suggest, reflect a fragile sense of we in the schizophrenia spectrum, i.e. (i) positive withdrawal, (ii) imposing a goal-oriented, spatiotemporal structure on intersubjective engagement, and (iii) preferring social activities with a clear attribution of social roles and rules. Finally, we discuss the relation between anomalous self-experiences (i.e. self-disorders) and the complicated we. (C) 2017 S. Karger AG, Basel