This chapter argues that the extreme variability of schizophrenic phenotypes is a paradigmatic case study for explicating the dialectics between uncanny feelings of depersonalization/derealization and the attitude of the person who experiences them. Why do persons who suffer from these kinds of anomalous self-, body-, and world-experiences develop either a delusional form of schizophrenia or a ‘pauci-symptomatic’ type of this illness, or a schizotypal personality disorder? Why do delusions in people with schizophrenia take on so many different themes, and not only ontological ones, but also, for example, persecutory, hypochondriac, of reference, of agnition (filiation), external influence, etc.? If we subscribe to the ‘one root–many branches’ conceptualization of the manifold of schizophrenia, then we must be able to explain why, arising from the common root of self-disorders, schizophrenic phenotypes take on so many different features. A plausible answer is that self-disorder, being at the core of the vulnerability to schizophrenia, is refracted through the prism of the person’s background of values and beliefs that determine what things and events in the world mean for them. This personal background is a pre-reflective context of meaning and significance within which and against which persons understand themselves, others, and their world.
Relation of the Common Root Maggot (Pegomyia Fusciceps Zett.) to Certain Crops in Louisiana