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The disruption of the ‘sense of self’ in schizophrenia: Potential links with disturbances of information processing
Author(s) -
Hemsley David R.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
british journal of medical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.102
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 2044-8341
pISSN - 0007-1129
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8341.1998.tb01373.x
Subject(s) - psychology , psychology of self , action (physics) , identification (biology) , disturbance (geology) , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , sense (electronics) , cognitive psychology , information processing , identity (music) , cognition , moment (physics) , personal identity , self , social psychology , neuroscience , botany , physics , quantum mechanics , psychiatry , acoustics , electrical engineering , biology , engineering , paleontology , classical mechanics
It is argued in this paper that the disruption of one aspect of the ‘sense of self’ in schizophrenia, that relating to the continuity of conscious experience and the organization of action, may be linked to current models of the information‐processing disturbance prominent in the disorder. The ‘sense of self’ in normal persons in part results from the consistent manner in which contextually appropriate stored material operates on sensory input. If, as has been proposed, there is in schizophrenia a disruption in the moment‐by‐moment integration of these sources of information, then a disturbance in the ‘sense of self’ is implicit in the cognitive model. A consideration of action identification theory (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987) permits further links to be made, since higher‐level action identities are viewed as being practically synonymous with self‐defining significance. It is suggested that the information‐processing disturbance results in a tendency to low‐level action identification and a gradually developing instability in the sense of personal identity.