Phenomenological Psychopathology: From Spatial Disorder to the Problem of Disembodied Desire

Abstract

This study presents a phenomenological analysis of a case of schizotypal personality disorder used as a concrete starting point to formulate a basic phenomenological theory of embodied and disembodied desire. After describing the core symptoms of the patient (i.e. mainly his spatial disorder) from a first-person per-spective, the problem of disembodied desire is introduced in relation to patient’s imaginary that is lived as an isolated experience condemned to remaining unrealized. The case analysis refers to Blankenburg’s concept of the loss of natural self-experience and to its contemporary development, i.e., the psychopathology of common sense, conceiving schizophrenia, and schizotypal personality disorder, as a syndrome rooted in ipseity disturbance and in disembodiment of the self. Disembodied desire is then qualified as a disorder due not to neurotic defense mechanisms, but rather to more pervasive self-disorders. In the final part, the problem of disembodied desire is addressed starting from a basic phenomenological theory of desire, dealing both with drive intentionality, as the transcendental condition of the ego-constitution, and with imagination, as the distanced self-representation of drive and as a structural possibility of distancing the immediacy of bodily experience.

Keywords

• Phenomenological Psychopathology
• Scizotypal Personality Dosorder
• Disembodied Desire
• Loss of Natural Self-evidence
• Self-affection