Schizophrenia as a self disorder: new directions

In this paper, I adopt a phenomenological approach to compare the unusual ways in which language can be experienced by individuals with schizophrenia or severe mood disorders, specifically mania and melancholia (psychotic depression). After considering some superficial similarities in the experience of language in these conditions (e.g., interpersonal alienation in both schizophrenia and severe depression), I explore more subtle, qualitative differences. These involve: 1, interpersonal orientation (less concern with the needs of the listener in schizophrenia), 2, forms of attention and context-relevance (e.g., manic distractibility versus schizophrenic loss of orientation), 3, underlying mutations of experience (e.g., sadness/emptiness in melancholia versus disturbances of basic selfhood in schizophrenia), and especially 4, meta-attitudes toward language (i.e., greater alienation from language-as-such in schizophrenia). An understanding of such distinctions may assist with difficult cases of differential diagnosis, while also contributing to a better understanding of suffering persons and of psychological factors underlying their disorders.