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Dialogues at the Edge of American Psychological Discourse pp 49–88Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Madness, Modernism, and Interpretation: A Conversation with Louis Sass

(Interviewed by Mark Freeman, College of the Holy Cross)

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Abstract

In this conversation, Louis Sass discusses phenomenological and hermeneutic themes as they have applied to his work with psychopathology, specifically schizophrenia. Sass has consistently argued for a phenomenological approach to the study of self, subjectivity, and mental disorder. He asserts that these phenomenological approaches to psychopathology can be explanatory as well as descriptive.

In the interview Sass describes the itinerary of his own career in psychology. He also discusses various theoretical issues, which include the following: the importance of Heidegger’s emphasis on the ontological dimension of human experience; the self-contradictions of postmodernist skepticism and also the valuable contributions of various poststructuralist perspectives; hermeneutics and relativism; the relevance of Wittgenstein for understanding abnormal states of mind; how to escape the dispiriting effects of exaggerated irony and self-consciousness in contemporary culture; the relationship of phenomenology to neurobiology; the ipseity-disturbance or self-disorder model of schizophrenia.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Heidegger (1927/1996) describes the “ontological difference” (p. 72) as the difference between “being and beings.” He directs the phenomenologist’s attention not to any particular object or ‘ontic’ entity (or “being”), but to what he calls the ‘theme of ontology,’ which is the overall way in which everything shows up, especially regarding its felt quality of reality or the lack thereof.…It is this most general ontological dimension—call it the world’s form or manner of presence (its “Being”)—that is, for Heidegger, the very heart of our existence as subjective creatures yet that is so readily forgotten, ignored, or distorted by reification and other distortions that seem to come as naturally to us as breathing. (from Sass 2014a, p. 329, slightly altered).

  2. 2.

    In Sass (2014c, p. 6), these concepts are defined as follows:

    The self or ipseity disturbance in schizophrenia is hypothesized to have two main aspects that may seem mutually contradictory but are in fact interdependent. “Hyper-reflexivity” refers to an exaggerated self-consciousness, a tendency (fundamentally non-volitional) for focal attention to be directed toward processes and phenomena that would normally be “inhabited” or experienced (tacitly) as part of oneself. “Diminished self-affection” [a.k.a. as “diminished self-presence”) refers to a decline in the (passively or automatically) experienced sense of existing as a subject of awareness or agent of action.…It is difficult to determine whether hyper-reflexivity and diminished self-affection are best conceived as complementary facets or tightly interacting processes; perhaps both conceptions are needed.

    A third, interrelated aspect is a concomitant disturbance of the field of awareness labeled “disturbed hold” or “grip” on the world. Disturbances of spatiotemporal structuring of the world, and of such crucial experiential distinctions as perceived-vs-remembered-vs-imagined, are grounded in abnormalities of the embodied, vital, experiencing self.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Louis Sass

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  1. Louis Sass
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Correspondence to Louis Sass .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Heather Macdonald

  2. Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA

    David Goodman

  3. Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Brian Becker

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Sass, L. (2017). Madness, Modernism, and Interpretation: A Conversation with Louis Sass. In: Macdonald, H., Goodman, D., Becker, B. (eds) Dialogues at the Edge of American Psychological Discourse. Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59096-1_3

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