Abstract
This chapter introduces Jaspers’ understanding of delusion with regard to the question of comprehensibility and incomprehensibility. After a historical introduction, the characteristic feature of derealization is discussed and related to what Bleuler called “double book-keeping.” Then, the methodological relevance of phenomenology and the similarity between delusional states and phenomenological imagination and bracketing (as emphasized by authors such as Blankenburg) are discussed. Different stances taken toward the world already in the realm of the natural attitude can be described within the Schutzian framework of “multiple realities.” This framework is analyzed with regard to the notion of double book-keeping. It shows that some elements of schizophrenic experience can be seen—in Heideggerian terms—to preserve and reveal something about human authenticity.
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- 1.
Jaspers (p. 48) demurred: “It is wrong to call this book ‘the principal text of phenomenology.’ The phenomenological attitude is one point of view and one chapter has been devoted to it …. But the whole book is directed to showing that it is only one point of view among many and holds a subordinate position at that.” The chapter to which Jaspers refers is, however, 100 pages long, and many passages elsewhere in the book bear upon the phenomenological perspective.
For helpful comments on drafts of this article, the author thanks Greg Byrom and Nev Jones.
- 2.
Reimer (2011) mentions three forms of detachment in delusion: from action, emotion, and web of belief.
- 3.
One important difference between the delusional and religious contexts is the idiosyncratic and isolated nature of the former as against the conventional and shared nature of the latter. The religious person may have a special role or relationship with the divine, but not so very special that it would amount to denying the very existence of other consciousnesses or other persons—as may sometimes (but only sometimes) occur in schizophrenia.
- 4.
All subsequent quotations from Sophie are from emails sent to the author in 2010 or 2011. Some are in response to earlier drafts of this article. Sophie is well read in philosophy and psychology. As her reports will make clear, she not only describes her experience with considerable eloquence but is, in a sense, doing phenomenology herself. I am extremely grateful and indebted to Sophie for her crucial contribution to this article.
- 5.
One recent philosopher coins the term “bimagination” (Egan 2009). Some would argue as to whether we should classify delusions as “beliefs” or not (Bortolotti 2009). From a Wittgensteinian as well as phenomenological standpoint, this emphasis on semantics and conceptual analysis can seem somewhat beside the point. The important question is: “What is it like?”
- 6.
Since the translators found these phrases distracting and felt they did “not add to the sense,” they omitted them from the English translation (M p. 26).
- 7.
The psychiatrist Müller-Suur (1950, p. 45) asked his paranoid and schizophrenic patients how certain they were about their delusions. Paranoiacs believed in their basic experience (Grunderlebnis) with a relative certainty, and this certainty increased only gradually with the passage of time. By contrast, his schizophrenia patients claimed to be absolutely certain (100 % certainty; as certain as that 2 × 2 = 4) about their delusions, even when these delusions seemed absurd to the listener. Müller-Suur describes the delusional certainty of schizophrenics as something that is “suffered”—that is, registered passively, akin to feeling a sensation—whereas the paranoid’s was “achieved” or “hard-earned.” (For this reference, I thank Claudia Welz, whose account is paraphrased here.)
- 8.
A passage from the photographer Diane Arbus captures, on a non-psychotic, schizoid level, the sense of actual vulnerability that accompanies all but the most total experiences of derealization: “I have this funny thing which is that I’m never afraid when I’m looking in the round glass [of the camera lens]. This person could be approaching with a gun or something like that and I’d have my eyes glued to the finder and it wasn’t like I was really vulnerable. It just seemed terrific what was happening. I mean I’m sure there are limits. God knows, when the troops start advancing on me, you do approach that stricken feeling where you perfectly well can get killed” (pp. 12–13).
- 9.
From article in The Advocate, statewide newsletter of N.A.M.I.—Oregon, July/August 1998, p. 7.
- 10.
One issue I cannot discuss in detail is the question of motivation or defense: Is delusion something that simply happens to a patient, as a kind of affliction, or something that has a purposive or even purposeful quality? Should it, in any important sense, be understood as an act, albeit an unconscious act whose defensive or compensatory purpose may or may not be consciously recognized by the patient herself? This question is complicated by the diversity of types of delusional experience. The sheer immediacy of classic “delusional percept” might, for example, preclude the prominent compensatory motivations present in the more elaborated, late-stage delusions of a patient who (like Wölfli) finds a kind of psychic equilibrium through withdrawal from the common world. The notion that wish-fulfillment can motivate the occurrence of delusions is an ancient idea. The emphasis has typically been placed more on content than on form. In recent years preservation of self-esteem is often mentioned—as may fit the case of a patient who bolsters his self-esteem by, say, imagining himself a great scientist. Phenomenology would certainly not deny such motivations, which can indeed be important. Its particular contribution, however, is to emphasize formal or structural features of experience. In Psychology of Imagination, for example, Sartre (1950) describes the “morbid dreamer” who is drawn to the delusional world precisely because of its unreality, since this allows escape from the very “form of the real.” The delusional memories of Adolf Wölfli afford excellent examples (Sass 2004b). It is noteworthy as well that in at least some schizophrenic delusions, the unreal or subjective nature of reality (whether delusional or actual) may emerge as the overt theme of the delusion itself, which may express a certain solipsism. This was the case of Wölfli’s “omnipotence horn,” a device whereby he himself created worlds (Sass 2004b). Here, however, we must bear in mind a distinction suggested to me by a man who suffers from schizophrenia: this is between the “triumphant solipsism” expressed by Wölfli, and the mostly “miserable lonely solipsism” that was more typical of himself (email to author, May 2007).
- 11.
For a similar critique, from an eminent psychiatrist, of the emphasis on supposed “inferential failures,” see Berrios (1996, p. 114).
- 12.
Bégout (2005, p. 428) quotes a line from Hölderlin to which Heidegger devoted much attention: “… for the spirit is at home/Not in the beginning, not at the source. He is consumed by the homeland./Colonies loves…” (“nehmlich zu Hauss ist der Geist/Nicht im anfang, nicht an der Quell, Ihn zehret die Heimath./ Kolonien liebt …” (in Melberg 1999 p. 343; Heidegger 1996 p. 126). Hölderlin, the poet Heidegger most admired, suffered from schizophrenia in the final decades of his life; his mental troubles had begun at the time he wrote these lines (1803 or 1805) (Hölderlin 1984, p. 267).
- 13.
Here is another comment Sophie made on reading a draft of this chapter: “Yes, and this is such a struggle in therapy—it would always be so much easier to simply capitulate and agree that such and such is not reasonable, even though one continues to experience it… I often feel like the stereotypical political prisoner in the Gulag undergoing psychological torture who is told again and again to repeat (and evince true belief) that the sky is pink or that 2 + 2 = 5….”
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For helpful comments on drafts of this article, the author thanks Greg Byrom and Nev Jones.
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Sass, L. (2014). Delusion and Double Book-Keeping. In: Fuchs, T., Breyer, T., Mundt, C. (eds) Karl Jaspers’ Philosophy and Psychopathology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8878-1_9
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