Le soi et le non soi comme problème phénoménologique posé à l’expérience psychiatrique

Abstract

ObjectivesSelf cannot be dissociated from non-self. We cannot consider the problem of self as if it were an entity separate from others and from the world. MethodIf we set aside the issue of the commensurability of disciplines, it is then possible to construct bridges to understand them within the life-world. Phenomenology places the constitution and the maintenance of self at the interface with non-self, extending from the biological self, or Endon, to the narrative self found in the Daseinsanalyse. ResultsThe self is emotionally anchored at the intersection between the actual body and the appearing body. Its positioning is off-center. Psychotherapeutic action targets the self by language and also by its bodily anchoring. There is a trend in psychiatric phenomenology that attempts to describe schizophrenia as a primary disorder of the sense of self, at a basic, pre-reflexive level: Parnas, Sas and Bovet explore the notion of the minimal self (ipseity), linked to excessive self-consciousness (hyper-reflexivity), however questionable this may be from a philosophical perspective, yet relevant from a clinical perspective. Other perspectives, more critical and more existential, recall that the concept of ipseity also belongs to the inter-subjective space, to time and to affectivity. DiscussionThe only way to capture one's self, differentiating it from non-self, is to resort to many different narratives of self that together raise the issues of identity, freedom, autonomy and the quest for recognition. ConclusionsSelf is indeed double-sided, both self and “one”, according to the dialectics of ipseity and mêmeté and leading to the clinical opposition between two poles, namely melancholy and schizophrenia. Hence there could be a typology of the self, linking therapeutic action to an understanding of the life-world.