Inhabiting the Shared World: Phenomenological Considerations on Sensus Communis, Social Space and Schizophrenia

Thoma, Samuel; Fuchs, Thomas

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-73993-9_2

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Again, this is not in the sense of a moral call but as the enactment of a therapeutic principle at the societal level. Finally, this should lead to the creation of "niches of hospitality," where a dialogue between community members on living with mental crises can be established [57]. With these remarks, we would like to finally emphasize that any reflection on person-centeredness in psychiatry must always take into consideration the interpersonal and societal background in which psychiatry (and medicine as a whole) is embedded -and how it might affect it.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Person-Centered Psychiatry as Dialogical Psychiatry: The Significance of the Therapeutic Stance

et al. 2021

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In this article, we present holistic and <i>person-centered</i> perspectives in psychiatry, with the aim of better understanding what a focus on personhood might really mean and what clinical implications it might have. We first introduce classical and philosophical concepts of personhood, in order to then outline person-centered approaches in psychiatry, which mainly focus on the person of the patient. We then argue that, for it to really be person-centered, psychiatry must necessarily also focus on the person of professionals. We thus explore the notion of stance, as the expression of the therapist’s personhood. By unpacking the effects that a professional’s stance can have on patients, we finally turn to a consideration of the interpersonal sphere. More specifically, we propose clinical considerations on a therapeutic stance that strives to support and to help the person of the patient unfold. Such a stance must – we argue – necessarily be a dialogical one. Drawing on these considerations, we thus claim that a truly person-centered approach in psychiatry must necessarily and automatically be <i>interperson-centered</i> and dialogical. In the concluding remarks, we finally discuss broader societal implications and outline future research perspectives.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Person-Centered Psychiatry as Dialogical Psychiatry: The Significance of the Therapeutic Stance

et al. 2021

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“…The perceptual-motor skills that are integrated into social perception at young age allow subjects significant benefits, among them efficiently grasping the context of a situation by following others' gaze and embodied patterns [26][27][28]. Another advantage enabled by a fully operational capacity for social perception is that it usually colors the space with a sense of familiarity and safeness [2], which is crucial for the subject's well-being.…”

Section: The Phenomenal Nature Of Social Perception Anomalies In Asdmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, bodily disorientation can induce and sometimes intensify negative feelings such as confusion and unsafeness. The manifestation of these spatial feelings may cause autistic subjects to have persistent difficulties of bodily inhabiting social space [2].…”

Section: The Constitution Of Social Spaces and Its Relation To Gestal...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Empirical evidence indicates that autistic persons have a diminished ability to fully perceive and integrate the embodied-affective matrix fashioned by the encounter of two or more lived bodies [49]. The alteration in perceiving the array of embodied-affective responses geared by the social encounter martializes as difficulties to establish a holistic perception of social events [37,38] that stand in the way of experiencing the social space as familiar and comprehended [1,2]. Consequently, people with autism may develop feelings of confusion, uncertainty, and unsafeness that considerably amplify in unstable environments.…”

Section: The Constitution Of Social Spaces and Its Relation To Gestal...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gestalt Perception and the Experience of the Social Space in Autism: A Case Study

Bader

Fuchs

2022

Psychopathology

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Phenomenological approaches suggest that the bodily presence of others has a profound influence on the experience of social spaces. This intimate relationship is particularly evident in mental disorders. Investigations into the nature of intersubjectivity in various pathologies indicate that modifications to the capacity for social perception play a key role in determining the manners in which the social space is experienced and felt. This paper aims to examine the interviewing relation of social perception and the experience of space and its consequences in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This is done through a phenomenologically informed analysis of the functioning of social perception in ASD. Our account proposes that the atypical socio-perceptual patterns exhibited by people with autism significantly reduce the capacity to grasp the context of the situation, which facilitates and intensifies negative feelings that are intertwined with the experience of social spaces. This novel understanding draws on the idea that ASD involves a fundamental difficulty to establish a gestalt perception of social scenes. The evidence we discuss suggests that this anomaly in the operation of social perception also modulates the experience of the social space. Failing to perceive the wholeness of the situation means that people with autism often experience the social space as unfamiliar, confusing, uncertain, and unsafe, rather than feeling familiar and understood in the embodied presence of others. As a result, autistic subjects may experience difficulty evaluating the outcomes of hazardous circumstances, which poses a risk to their well-being, particularly in borderline situations. This suggestion is elaborated through the tragic occurrences that led to the killing of Eyad al-Hallaq, a 32-year-old Palestinian with autism.

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“…Although the neurocognitive and phenomenological paradigms respectively build on different ontological foundations, the recent dialogue between phenomenology and cognitive neuroscience, which is sometimes defined as the naturalization of phenomenology, neurophenomenology, the embodied mind, or enactment theories (Gallagher, 2005; Petitot, Varela, Pachoud, & Roy, 1999; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991; Zahavi, 2004) all seem to suggest a possibility for a fundamental dialogue to which the reanimation of sensus communis could be considered a question common to philosophy and psychology. In psychiatry, this interdisciplinary dialogue has recently led to a reanimation of Wolfgang Blankenburg’s notion of a psychopathology of sensus communis linked to the phenomenological notion of minimal self (Mishara, 2001; Stanghellini, 2000; Thoma & Fuchs, 2018a, 2018b).…”

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confidence: 99%

Modalization of movement: The problem of sensus communis and the limits of phenomenology

Levin

Køppe

Roald

2019

Theory & Psychology

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One of the most persistent problems in accounting for the constitution of subjective experience is the question of the unity of consciousness. In the phenomenological tradition this question is often approached through concepts such as ipseity, pre-reflective consciousness, ownership, and first-person perspective. Since Aristotle, the question of unity in an experiencing subject has been associated with the notion of “common sensibles” and the concept of “ sensus communis” as that which joins the proper sense modalities in a single center. In this article it is argued that both the classical and the phenomenological solutions to the problem of unity point to the central challenge of how to account for the experience of movement and it is questioned whether a phenomenology of movement gets us closer to an understanding of sensus communis as a primordial relational force in the body–world formation.

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Inhabiting the Shared World: Phenomenological Considerations on Sensus Communis, Social Space and Schizophrenia

Cited by 17 publications

References 37 publications

Person-Centered Psychiatry as Dialogical Psychiatry: The Significance of the Therapeutic Stance

Person-Centered Psychiatry as Dialogical Psychiatry: The Significance of the Therapeutic Stance

Gestalt Perception and the Experience of the Social Space in Autism: A Case Study

Modalization of movement: The problem of sensus communis and the limits of phenomenology

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