Philosophy and Madness. Radical Turns in the Natural Attitude to Life

Küsters, Wouter

doi:10.1353/ppp.2016.0012

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The former involves a sudden insight, understanding, or realization of a previously incomprehensible or even undetected problem. 1 In case descriptions of the predelusional state one can find many examples of the sudden and unexpected aha experience [38,39,41,[44][45][46]. The aha experience can have both a perceptive and a cognitive dimension.…”

Section: Delusional Moodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Blind Spots of Psychosis: A Wittgensteinian and First-Person Approach

Duppen

Sips

2018

Psychopathology

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Background: Experiences of psychosis are often assumed to be strange, bizarre, or incomprehensible. The aim of this article is to offer a new step towards a better understanding of how the psychotic process affects a prereflective background. Methods: We use concepts from the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to clarify the first-person perspective on psychosis of one of the authors. Results: We describe the early psychotic process as breaking down the “nest of propositions,” shaking the scaffolds of our language games. Hereby, the prereflective background that forms our existential orientation in the world is fundamentally altered. We identify different aspects of this process: a dialectic of aha and anti-aha experiences, the experience of groundlessness, and blind spots. Acknowledging and exploring the depth and impact of this process on a person’s world may be a first step towards resolving their isolation and suffering. Philosophy can facilitate such an exploration, while interpersonal activation may offer structure and trust in the world, helping the patient to find solid ground in action and interaction. Conclusion: This article combines a philosophical approach with a first-person perspective on psychosis to illuminate aspects of psychosis that have not been described or elaborated on before. We argue that psychosis entails an experience of existential groundlessness. Our view has implications for treatment of and recovery from psychosis.

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Section: Delusional Moodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Blind Spots of Psychosis: A Wittgensteinian and First-Person Approach

Duppen

Sips

2018

Psychopathology

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“…There are, moreover, reasons to believe that the most influential results in support of depressive realism cannot be replicated with up-to-date methods and measurement techniques (Dev et al 2022). 34 Since the pioneering works of Blankenburg, the comparison of psychosis with the phenomenologist's bracketing of the "natural attitude" toward the world has given rise to a rich literature that tends to portray people with schizophrenia as "spontaneous philosophers" (Blankenburg 2001, Depraz 2003, Stanghellini 2004; see also Kusters 2016). In this tradition, though, this comparison is not usually construed as a criticism of philosophy but rather, somehow, as praise of psychotics' perspicacity.…”

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confidence: 99%

The psychopathology of metaphysics: Depersonalization and the problem of reality

Billon

2024

Metaphilosophy

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According to a common philosophical intuition, the deep nature of things is hidden from us, and the world as we know it through perception and science is, just like a dream, shadows, or a computer simulation, somehow shallow and lacking in reality. This “intuition of unreality” clashes with a strong, but perhaps more naive, intuition to the effect that the world as we know it seems perfectly real. Shadows, dreams, or informational structures appear too unreal to be identical to the world as we know it! This clash between the two intuitions forms the basis of the “problem of reality.” In the late nineteenth century psychiatrists encountered patients they referred to as “metaphysician doubters” who constantly questioned the reality of the world. This essay draws on studies of these patients in order to reject, and indeed diagnose, the intuition of unreality and recent metaphysical doctrines drawing on it, such as structuralism, digitalism, and virtual realism.

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Natural Reflection, Phenomenological Reflection and Hyperreflexivity

Cai

2018

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

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Philosophy and Madness. Radical Turns in the Natural Attitude to Life

Cited by 5 publications

References 14 publications

Understanding the Blind Spots of Psychosis: A Wittgensteinian and First-Person Approach

Understanding the Blind Spots of Psychosis: A Wittgensteinian and First-Person Approach

The psychopathology of metaphysics: Depersonalization and the problem of reality

Natural Reflection, Phenomenological Reflection and Hyperreflexivity

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