When the Window Cracks: Transparency and the Fractured Self in Depersonalisation

Summary

Profound detachment from one's self and body defines Depersonalization, a mental health condition offering unique insights into consciousness. This phenomenon reveals how basic embodied cognition—our pre-reflective self-awareness—typically operates with seamless transparency. Drawing on phenomenology, observations suggest a split between an observing and observed self, akin to a crack in a window revealing its unnoticed presence. Empirical evidence and first-hand accounts illuminate how this alteration impairs the flexible modulation of self, deepening our understanding of the psychology of self and epistemology of personal experience.

Abstract

Abstract There has recently been a resurgence of philosophical and scientific interest in the foundations of self-consciousness, with particular focus on its altered, anomalous forms. This paper looks at the altered forms of self-awareness in Depersonalization Disorder (DPD), a condition in which people feel detached from their self, their body and the world (Derealisation). Building upon the phenomenological distinction between reflective and pre-reflective self-consciousness, we argue that DPD may alter the transparency of basic embodied forms of pre-reflective self-consciousness, as well as the capacity to flexibly modulate and switch between the reflective and pre-reflective facets of self-awareness. Empirical evidence will be invoked in support of the idea that impaired processing of bodily signals is characteristic of the condition. We provide first-hand subjective reports describing the experience of self-detachment or fracture between an observing and an observed self. This split is compared with similar self-detachment phenomena reported in certain Buddhist-derived meditative practices. We suggest that these alterations and changes may reveal the underlying and tacit transparency that characterises the embodied and basic pre-reflective forms of self-consciousness, in the same way that a crack in a transparent glass may indicate the presence of an unnoticed window.

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