Enactment in Schizophrenia: Capacity for Dialogue and the Experience of the Inability to Commit to Action

Abstract

While research has steadily begun to explore thoughts and beliefs linked with helplessness and despair in schizophrenia, it is less clearly understood how to account phenomenologically for the related experience of being unable to commit to action in the midst of grave discomfort. To explore this issue, the current paper presents an analysis of the experience of volitional paralysis of two persons over the course of long—term integrative psychotherapy. In particular, we explore the experience of the inability to commit to action and the consequences of the gradual recovery of a sense that one is capable of action. Results suggest that in both cases inaction was tethered to a sense of self as insufficiently centered to survive action. In particular, we suggest both men appeared initially unable to commit to action because such a commitment threatened them with forces both felt would undo the tenuous conversations that comprised their identities. Finally, as a sense of self as capable of action emerged, both men began to experience themselves as relatively more complex human beings and to sustain more complex conversation within themselves and between themselves and others. Implications for psychotherapy and rehabilitation are discussed.