Commentary Is minimal self preserved in schizophrenia? A subcomponents view q Aaron L. Mishara * Department of Psychiatry, Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit, Yale University School of Medicine, CMHC 333-A, 34 Park Street, New Haven, CT 06519, USA The self is one of the most important, but also, one of the most elusive concepts in the study of neu- ropsychiatric disorders. Cermolacce, Naudin and Parnas (this volume) have provided a thoughtful analysis of self in schizophrenia by applying phenomenological concepts to two case histories. Following the con- ceptual model developed by one of its authors (Sass & Parnas, 2003), they interpret the first case (Maria) as exhibiting a reduced sense of being a self (i.e., what they call ‘‘ipseity’’) 1 and the second (Thomas) as exhibiting ‘‘an excessive tendency to monitor, and thereby objectify his own experiences and actions, ... or hyper-reflectivity.’’ In their conceptual model, Sass and Parnas (2003) observe that these two tendencies are related: ‘‘exaggerated self-consciousness [is] associated with diminished self-affection and disturbed ipseity.’’ Critical for this commentary, however, is Cermolacce et al.’s brief mention of still another tradition in phenomenological psychiatry. 2 This tradition leads to fundamentally different conclusions about the disruption of self-experience in schizophrenia. I briefly present the alternative model and how it leads to different conclusions. Cermolacce et al. (this volume) propose that disrupted self-experience in schizophrenia is the reflection of a reduced (but preserved) minimal self (i.e., a pre-reflective bodily self-awareness). In this commentary, I propose that it involves dysfunctional pre-attentive binding between subcomponents of self (e.g., ‘‘I,’’ ‘‘me’’ and ‘‘mine,’’ so far as these are captured in language) prior to the emergence of self as a unitary experience in awareness. Due to a weakening in binding, these components appear as separate, disjointed moments in the conscious experience of neuropsychiatric patients, including patients with schizophrenia, and anomalous conscious states (e.g., out of body experiences (Blanke, Ortigue, Landis, & Seeck, 2002)), dissociative states in trauma-related mental disor- ders, 3 delusional misidentification syndromes, autoscopy (Mishara, 2005), acute psychosis, dreaming and the 1053-8100/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.07.009 q Commentary on Cermolacce, M., Naudin, J., & Parnas, J. (2007). The ‘‘minimal self’’ in psychopathology: Re-examining the self- disorders in the schizophrenia spectrum. Consciousness and Cognition, 16, 703–714. * Fax: +1 203 974 7662. E-mail address: Aaron.Mishara@Yale.edu 1 From the Latin for self, or itself, ipse. 2 In their footnote # 10, Cermolacce et al. (this volume) write: ‘‘Schwartz and Wiggins (1992) are of the opinion that the basic disorder in schizophrenia is at the level of ‘‘passive syntheses’’ (a Husserlian term denoting automatic, associative-self-organizing, pre-egoic processes, preceding the articulation of a full fledged ego relationship).’’ This approach, which examines the deformation of Gestalt perception and the resulting disruption of self-experience (in terms of Husserl’s concept of ‘‘passive synthesis’’), arises from an entirely different tradition in phenomenological psychopathology than the ‘‘hyperreflexive’’ approach emphasized by Cermolacce et al. 3 For example, rape victims sometimes report dissociative experiences, ‘‘such as the sense of watching the rape from outside their bodies’’ (Foa & Riggs, 1993, p. 281). Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 715–721 Consciousness and Cognition www.elsevier.com/locate/concog