The notion of embodiment is central to the phenomenological approach to schizophrenia. This paper argues that fundamental concepts for the understanding of schizophrenia have a bodily dimension. We present 2 single cases of first-onset schizophrenic patients and analyze the reports of their experiences. Problems such as loss of self, loss of common sense, and intentionality disorders reveal a disconnectedness that can be traced back to a detachment from the lived body. Hyperreflectivity and hyperautomaticity are used as coping mechanisms, but reflect the same problem of the split between body and mind. It is argued that the sole focus on cognitive impairments leads to a distorted image of schizophrenia, and that the acknowledgment of its fundamental bodily roots enables one to see the coherence between the diverse symptoms. As for the practical implications of the phenomenological approach, further research is needed to investigate if and how body- and movement-oriented therapies might strengthen the embodiment of schizophrenic patients.

Key words: Schizophrenia, embodiment, phenomenology, hyperreflectivity, hyperautomaticity

Underlying the recent focus on embodied and interactive aspects of social understanding are several intuitions about what roles the body, interaction processes, and interpersonal experience play. In this paper, we introduce a systematic, hands-on method for investigating the experience of interacting and its role in intersubjectivity. Special about this method is that it starts from the idea that researchers of social understanding are themselves one of the best tools for their own investigations. The method provides ways for researchers to calibrate and to trust themselves as sophisticated instruments to help generate novel insights into human interactive experience. We present the basics of the method, and two empirical studies. The first is a video-study on autism, which shows greater refinement in the way people with autism embody their social interactions than previously thought. The second is a study of thinking in live interactions, which provides insight into the common feeling that too much thinking can hamper interaction, and into how this kind of interactional awkwardness might be unblocked.

Key words: experience of interacting, first-person methods, second-person methods, embodied methodology, embodiment, enaction, researcher as instrument, practical phenomenology, autism interacting and thinking, participatory sense-making.

This article focuses on an artificial life approach to some important problems in machine learning such as statistical discrimination, curve approximation, and pattern recognition. We describe a family of models, collectively referred to as semi-algebraic networks (SAN). These models are strongly inspired by two complementary lines of thought: the biological concept of autopoiesis and morphodynamical notions in mathematics. Mathematically defined as semi-algebraic sets, SANs involve geometric components that are submitted to two coupled processes: (a) the adjustment of the components (under the action of the learning examples), and (b) the regeneration of new components. Several examples of SANs are described, using different types of components. The geometric nature of SANs gives new possibilities for solving the bias/variance dilemma in discrimination or curve approximation problems. The question of building multilevel semi-algebraic networks is also addressed, as they are related to cognitive problems such as memory and morphological categorization. We describe an example of such multilevel models.

There is a growing realization in cognitive science that a theory of embodied intersubjectivity is needed to better account for social cognition. We highlight some challenges that must be addressed by attempts to interpret ‘simulation theory’ in terms of embodiment, and argue for an alternative approach that integrates phenomenology and dynamical systems theory in a mutually informing manner. Instead of ‘simulation’ we put forward the concept of the ‘extended body’, an enactive and phenomenological notion that emphasizes the socially mediated nature of embodiment. To illustrate the explanatory potential of this approach, we replicate an agent-based model of embodied social interaction. An analysis of the model demonstrates that the extended body can be explained in terms of mutual dynamical entanglement: inter-bodily resonance between individuals can give rise to self-sustaining interaction patterns that go beyond the behavioral capacities of isolated individuals by modulating their intra-bodily conditions of behavior generation.

Key words: Enaction, Embodied intersubjectivity, Dynamical systems theory, Social cognition

In traditional psychoanalysis the unconscious was conceived as a ­primary intra-psychic reality, hidden ‘below consciousness’ and only accessible to a ‘depth psychology’ based on metapsychological premises and concepts. In contrast to this vertical conception, the present paper presents a phenomenological approach to the unconscious as a horizontal dimension of the lived body, lived space and intercorporeality. This approach is based on a phenomenology of body memory which is defined as the totality of implicit dispositions of perception and behavior mediated by the body and sedimented in the course of earlier experiences. What belongs to body memory, therefore, is what perseveres, not in the form of an explicit memory, but as a “style of existence” (Merleau-Ponty) This corporeal and intercorporeal unconscious “… is not to be sought in our innermost [psyche] behind the back of our ‘consciousness’, but before us, as the structure of our field” (Merleau-Ponty) Unconscious fixations are like restrictions in the spatial potentiality of a person, caused by a past which is implicit in the present and resists the progress of life; this includes traumatic experiences in particular. Their traces are not hidden in an interior psychic world, but manifest themselves – as in a figure-background relationship – in the form of “blind spots” or “empty spaces” in ­day-to-day living. They manifest themselves in behavior patterns into which a ­person repeatedly blunders, in actions that she avoids without being aware of it or in the opportunities offered by life which she does not dare to take or even to see. The unconscious of body memory is thus characterized by the absence of forgotten or repressed experiences, and at the same time by their corporeal and intercorporeal presence in the lived space and in the day-to-day life of a person.

Current theories of social cognition are mainly based on a representationalist view. Moreover, they focus on a rather sophisticated and limited aspect of understanding others, i.e. on how we predict and explain others’ behaviours through representing their mental states. Research into the ‘social brain’ has also favoured a third-person paradigm of social cognition as a passive observation of others’ behaviour, attributing it to an inferential, simulative or projective process in the individual brain. In this paper, we present a concept of social understanding as an ongoing, dynamical process of participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation. This process may be described (1) from a dynamical agentive systems point of view as an interaction and coordination of two embodied agents; (2) from a phenomenological approach as a mutual incorporation, i.e. a process in which the lived bodies of both participants extend and form a common intercorporality. Intersubjectivity, it is argued, is not a solitary task of deciphering or simulating the movements of others but means entering a process of embodied interaction and generating common meaning through it. This approach will be further illustrated by an analysis of primary dyadic interaction in early childhood.

Current phenomenological approaches consider schizophrenia as a fundamental disturbance of the embodied self, or a disembodiment. This includes (1) a weakening of the basic sense of self, (2) a disruption of implicit bodily functioning, and (3) a disconnection from the intercorporeality with others. As a result of this disembodiment, the pre-reflective, practical immersion of the self in the shared world is lost. Instead, the relationship of self and world is in constant need of being reconstructed by deliberate efforts, leading to the growing perplexity and hyperreflexive ruminations that are found in schizophrenia patients. The paper distinguishes different levels of self-experience and relates them to the psychopathology of schizophrenia, taking particularly into account disturbances of self-awareness, perception, action, and intersubjectivity. On this basis, psychotherapeutic approaches based on body awareness and movement techniques are outlined that are suited to foster self-management and enable patients to re-establish a more stable and coherent sense of self.

Purpose of review To survey recent developments in phenomenological psychopathology. Recent findings We present the concept of embodiment as a key paradigm of recent interdisciplinary approaches from the areas of philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience. This requires a short overview on the phenomenological concept of embodiment; in particular, on the distinction of subject and object body. A psychopathology of embodiment may be based on these and other distinctions, in particular on a polarity of disembodiment and hyperembodiment, which is illustrated by the examples of schizophrenia and depression. Recent contributions to phenomenological accounts of these disorders are presented. Finally, the study discusses the relationship of phenomenological and neuropsychiatric perspectives on embodiment. Summary A phenomenology of embodiment may be combined with enactive approaches to cognitive neuroscience in order to overcome dualist concepts of the mind as an inner realm of representations that mirror the outside world. Phenomenological and ecological concepts of embodiment should also be conjoined to enable a new, advanced understanding of mental illness.

Key words: depression, embodiment, enactive cognitive science, phenomenology, psychopathology, schizophrenia

Excerpt: Here we have brought together philosophical, neurophysiological, psychological, psychiatric, sociological, anthropological, and evolutionary studies of the interplay of embodiment, enaction, and culture. The constitution of the shared world is understood in terms of participatory and broader collective sense-making processes manifested in dynamic forms of intercorporeality, collective body memory, artifacts, affordances, scaffolding, use of symbols, and so on. The contributors investigate how preconscious and conscious accomplishments work together in empathy, interaffectivity, identifications of oneself with others through emotions such as shame, we-intentionality, and hermeneutical understanding of the thoughts of others. The shared world is seen as something constituted by intersubjective understanding that discloses things in the shared significance they have for the members of a culture. Special emphasis is put on phenomenological approaches to cognition and culture and their relation to other approaches. Our introduction explicates the key concepts, relates them to relevant empirical research, raises guiding questions, and explains the structure of the book. Starting with a phenomenological approach to the intertwinement of mind, body, and the cultural world, we continue with an exploration of the concepts of intercorporeality and interaffectivity. The ideas underlying these concepts are put in dialogue with central tenets of enactivism. We then consider further cultural conditions, such as those of cognitive scaffolding, and explain how these cultural conditions in turn depend on the embodied interaction of human beings. Finally, we outline the book’s structure and introduce the individual chapters.