scholarly journals The Detached Self: Investigating the Effect of Depersonalisation on Self-Bias in the Visual Remapping of Touch

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Harry Farmer ◽  
Antonio Cataldo ◽  
Nagela Adel ◽  
Emma Wignall ◽  
Vittorio Gallese ◽  
...  

Abstract There is a growing consensus that our most fundamental sense of self is structured by the ongoing integration of sensory and motor information related to our own body. Depersonalisation (DP) is an intriguing form of altered subjective experience in which people report feelings of unreality and detachment from their sense of self. The current study used the visual remapping of touch (VRT) paradigm to explore self-bias in visual–tactile integration in non-clinical participants reporting high and low levels of depersonalisation experiences. We found that the high-DP group showed an increased overall VRT effect but a no-self-face bias, instead showing a greater VRT effect when observing the face of another person. In addition, across all participants, self-bias was negatively predicted by the occurrence of anomalous body experiences. These results indicate disrupted integration of tactile and visual representations of the bodily self in those experiencing high levels of DP and provide greater understanding of how disruptions in multisensory perception of the self may underlie the phenomenology of depersonalisation.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Farmer ◽  
Antonio Cataldo ◽  
Nagela Adel ◽  
Emma Wignall ◽  
Vittorio Gallese ◽  
...  

The sense of self lies at the heart of conscious experience, anchoring our disparate perceptions, emotions, thoughts and actions into a unitary whole. There is a growing consensus that sensory information about the body plays a central role in structuring this basic sense of self. Depersonalisation (DP) is an intriguing form of altered subjective experience in which people report feelings of unreality and detachment from their sense of self. Previous studies in healthy adults have showed a self-bias effect, namely a greater enhancement of accuracy in detecting touch applied to one’s own face when viewing touch on the self versus other’s face. The current study used the Visual Remapping of Touch (VRT) paradigm to explore self-bias in visual tactile integration in non-clinical participants reporting high and low levels of depersonalisation experiences. Participants observed images of their own face, the face of another person or a ball being touched or not touched either unilaterally or bilaterally while being asked to detect unilateral or bilateral tactile stimulation on their own cheeks. The current study revealed that participants high in DP showed an increased overall VRT effect but a no self-face bias, instead showing a greater VRT effect when observing the face of another person. In addition, across all participants, self-bias was negatively predicted by the occurrence of anomalous body experiences suggesting that this effect was specifically linked to disruptions in the perception of the bodily self. These results provide evidence for disrupted integration of tactile and visual representations of the bodily self in those experiencing high DP and provide greater understanding of how disruptions in multisensory perception of the self may underlie the phenomenology of depersonalisation.


Author(s):  
Patricia Moran

This chapter explores the two main interpretative frameworks White adopted to conceptualise a sense of self in the face of her recurrent psychic distress and inexplicable behaviour. White’s entrance into psychoanalytic treatment coincided with a moment in psychoanalytic history in which the thinking about female sexuality centred upon the ‘female castration complex’. White’s diary provides unmistakeable evidence that she developed an explanation for her illness that was heavily influenced by the ideas of Karl Abraham, who initiated this line of psychoanalytic theorising and who profoundly shaped British psychoanalysis. The recurrence of symptoms following her supposed ‘cure’ impelled White to reconvert to Catholicism at the end of 1940. White’s letters and diary show how she superimposes Catholic doctrine on that of psychoanalysis. Together these interpretative frameworks worked to affirm the centrality of father-daughter eroticism in White’s identity narrative.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (s1) ◽  
pp. 55-56
Author(s):  
Agnes Meave Otieno

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: This study considered how threat appraisal and religious social support associate with subjective well-being and subjective experience of pain. Appraisal in this study refers to the individual’s perception and interpretation of the significance of learning of his/her HIV status. The study incorporated the stress-buffering model to propose that the beneficial effects of religious social support will modify the association between threat appraisal and well-being for PLHIV in a palliative care setting. Well-being was assessed both as the participant’s subjective report of their well-being, and their subjective report of their experience with bodily pain. Participants’ subjective report of well-being was hypothesized to be inversely associated with threat appraisal, and positively associated with religious social support. Subjective experience with bodily pain was hypothesized to be directly associated with threat appraisal, and inversely associated with religious social support. It was further also hypothesized that religious social support modifies the impact of threat-appraisal on well-being such that higher levels of religious social support reduce the observed effect of threat appraisal. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: This was a cross-sectional study using baseline data from a randomized clinical trial–the FACE palliative care study in Washington, DC (FACE: FAmily CEntered Advance Care Planning). Participants were PLHIV who received their HIV care from 5 Washington, DC hospital-based HIV-specialty clinics. The FACE 3000 study paired participants into dyads of patient and surrogate decision-maker. The patient is a PLHIV for whom the advanced care planning care study is geared. The surrogate decision-maker is considered the patient’s healthcare proxy who agrees to honor and advocate for the patient’s treatment preferences, if the patient were unable to communicate with the health care team directly. Some surrogates are HIV positive, however due to their role as the patient’s healthcare proxy, some of their surveys contain different content from those of the patient’s. Potentially eligible participants in the FACE study received a secondary screening to determine eligibility to ensure competency to participate in end-of-life decision making. For this analysis, only the patient data was used. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Subjective well-being showed significant associations with total threat appraisal, and four threat appraisal sub-constructs. Those with lower threat appraisals reported higher values of well-being compared to those with higher threat appraisals. Results from the regression analysis indicated that only one of the threat appraisal sub-constructs was significantly associated with a participant’s subjective experience of pain. Overall, religious social support did not seem to buffer the effect of threat appraisal on well-being or subjective experience of pain. Findings from this study suggest that subjective well-being is associated with cognitive threat appraisal and this finding could assist PLHIV and their caregivers in understanding the coping processes of HIV-infected people. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Due to stigmatization, an HIV diagnosis can influence a person’s physical, behavioral, psychological, and even spiritual health (McIntosh & Rosselli, 2012). As a stressor, it can compromise immune function to worsen the effects of the infection, while mentally depressing an individual and contributing to adverse coping mechanisms (e.g. alcohol consumption, drug use) (McIntosh & Rosselli, 2012). How someone copes with stress (threat appraisal) may contribute to health-promoting or health-damaging behaviors (Fife, Scott, Fineberg, & Zwickl, 2008). Hence, the quality of life of those managing HIV/AIDS remains a pressing concern. Findings from this study suggest that Lazarus and Folkman’s theoretical framework on the cognitive appraisal of threat could assist PLHIV and their caregivers in understanding the coping processes in PLHIV. For service providers, recognizing early threat appraisals and damaging coping mechanisms can be useful, especially for patients receiving an initial HIV diagnosis. For example, an understanding of the patient’s HIV appraisal can provide insight into the barriers to optimal care and adherence to ART and, potentially, help to reduce these barriers (Anderson, 1995). Furthermore, with the advancements of HIV medication, living with HIV has become a chronic condition, though as a stressor, it also poses long-term effects on the psychopathology of an individual living with HIV(McIntosh & Rosselli, 2012). Studies such as this study can help illuminate interventions aimed at reducing the psychological impact of HIV on a person’s life. For example, support groups have been developed and structured to provide social support and have been demonstrated to increase the perceived well-being among PLHIV (Hyde, Appleby, Weiss, Bailey, & Morgan, 2005). This has further expanded into the consideration of online-based support groups for PLHIV (Blackstock, Shah, Haughton, & Horvath, 2015). In another light, but still within psychosocial interventions for managing HIV infection, mindfulness meditation has been used pervasively in studies assessing its use as an intervention to reduce depression and perceived stress in people living with HIV in order to increase both physical and psychological health (Moskowitz etal., 2015). Interventions, such as mindful meditation, have risen as we understand more about appraisal pathways and coping strategies (such as seeking social support), and how they influence both physiological and psychological responses (Moskowitz etal., 2015) to affect the health of a person. Therefore, longitudinal research aimed toward management of the psychological and social consequences of HIV is central to promoting an accurate understanding of the quality of life for PLWH (Anderson, 1995).


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S483-S483
Author(s):  
D. McGuinness ◽  
A. Higgins ◽  
B. Hallahan ◽  
E. Bainbridge ◽  
C. McDonald ◽  
...  

IntroductionThe Mental Health Act 2001 provides a legal framework for the involuntary admission and treatment of individuals deemed to have a mental disorder to psychiatric units. The perspectives of people who have been detained are relatively poorly understood.ObjectiveTo develop a theoretical understanding of individual's experiences throughout the trajectory of their detention and to understand the psychological and social processes that individuals use to cope before, during and after detention.MethodsFifty individuals subject to detention across three psychiatric units consented to be interviewed three months after their detention. Using a semi-structured interview people recounted their experiences. Interviews were analysed using the principles underpinning Grounded Theory.ResultsThe theory ‘Preserving Control’ encapsulates individuals’ experiences and consists of three related themes: ‘Losing Control’, ‘Regaining Control’ and ‘Maintaining Control’. ‘Losing Control’ describes individuals’ experiences of losing their autonomy and liberty thought the process of detention and hospitalisation. ‘Regaining Control describes, the strategies individuals used in an attempted to restore their loss of autonomy and control. ‘Maintaining Control’ describes how individuals lived with the consequences of detention and contended with impact on discharge.ConclusionsWhilst a large variation existed in relation to the subjective experience of being detained, the characteristic process that individuals tend to experience related to identifiable phases of preserving control in the face of this loss of autonomy. Findings from this study highlight the importance of more sensitive interactions support and information during and after the detention process.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. e89823 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Michal ◽  
Bettina Reuchlein ◽  
Julia Adler ◽  
Iris Reiner ◽  
Manfred E. Beutel ◽  
...  

2002 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Davidson

AbstractIn response to criticisms of phenomenology as being a solipsistic approach to psychological research and theory, this paper examines the interplay of both the creative/active and receptive/passive constituents of subjective experience identified in Husserl's exposition of intentional analysis. By delineating the ways in which intentional constitution requires passive as well as active processes, we come to see in the first part of this paper how experience and personal identity are as much formed and informed by the social and historical world as they are created by individual subjects. Once we have established the non-solipsistic nature of phenomenology, we then apply it in the second part of this paper to open a window onto the disorder of self long considered to be integral to schizophrenia. Through an exploration of the constitution of sense of self in the experiences of two people with schizophrenia, we see how cognitive disruptions, auditory hallucinations, and delusional ideation may be related to fundamental peculiarities in a person's experiences of intentionality and his/her resulting sense of agency and identity. In conclusion, we suggest that while phenomenology may not be able to provide a complete account of psychosis, it may be used to shed valuable, descriptive light on subjective aspects that provide a conceptual base for the consideration of other factors.


Sincronía ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol XXV (79) ◽  
pp. 71-95
Author(s):  
Carlos Alberto Navarro Fuentes ◽  

The objective of the essay is to follow the tracks of silence philosophically, as multiplicity not reducible to unity; there are instances of silence, not silence, neither objectively nor subjectively considered; it is not an 'object' or a 'subjective experience'. Recognize the relevance of silence based on its apparent irrelevance, and, nevertheless, point out the importance that it can have in the attempt to lead to philosophical reflection and to philosophize in general what is essential in it: THINKING. The proposed path requires LISTENING to language, rather than taking for granted the immediate disposition and transparency with which the world appears to us. To do this, we will reflect on excerpts from works written by three thinkers who lived 'war' up close: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929). This work proceeds peripathetically, alone, reflections emerge in the middle of a world that crumbles between the complexity and destruction that technique and modernity have brought. It is undertaken by welcoming resonances, sensations, representations, images, verses and musings, reflecting in the midst of daily daze. Is there a logical-grammatical silence or an ethicalmystical-liturgical silence? Is silence equivalent to an impossibility of saying or is it the result of an impossibility of saying itself, which does not say when what it most wants to say? Silence of existence or silence in the face of events that threaten to overwhelm us? Is silence silent or is being silent?


Author(s):  
Roger Smith

There is intense contemporary public as well as professional psychological interest in bodily movement, gesture, and the subjective experience of movement. This has a background in knowledge that movements and the sensing of movements alike express the life of the whole person, whether in the arts, sports, and the pursuit of well-being, or in physiotherapies and psychotherapies of many kinds. The background of the numerous and varied areas of scientific research that contribute to this area has a long history in philosophy and cultural practices as well as in relations between different psychological and physiological topics. The significance of the sense of self-movement, kinesthesia, as opposed to the perception of moving objects, has not until recently been a central focus for research. To explain rising contemporary interest it is necessary to elucidate the usage of current terms—kinesthesia, proprioception, and haptic sense. This in turn leads to discussion of the historical background to modern research on kinesthesia and motor imagery, on phenomenology and sensed movement, on practice centered on kinesthetic appreciation, and on agency. All this is part of the field of inquiry into the psychology of performing and of appreciating dance.


Author(s):  
Jon Piccini

Modern societies function through a variety of interconnected myths. Stories of who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going next are necessitated by mass society. This chapter contends that Australia myth-making can be helpfully analysed by separately exploring its colonial, nationalist, and modern forms. The first section pieces together how perceptions of Terra Australis as a wild and uncivilized land mass and the myth of a peaceful conquest informed early mythologizing. The expansion of pastoralism in the face of wild nature also informed the birth of Australia’s first national ‘type’, the ‘bushman’. The chapter then turns to twentieth-century myth-making, exploring how the acronym for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps quickly became a noun after the landings at Gallipoli in 1915 were reinterpreted from bloody calamity into a story of national birth. The landings also inaugurated the masculinist mythology of the ‘digger’, which denied the significant role and achievements of women in pre-war politics and society. Egalitarianism, the concept that no man is better than his mate, also became central to Australia’s sense of self in the early twentieth century. The chapter concludes by considering how Australia’s myths have morphed or fossilized as the nation has been dragged into a globalized world and a deregulated economy. It considers Australia’s new-found status as a ‘multicultural success story’, asking just how dead and buried the White Australia policy is, whether concepts of egalitarianism, mateship, and the ‘fair go’ are truly universal, and what, if any, effects the extinguishment of terra nullius has had on the polity.


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