Kinesthesia and Temporal Experience: On the 'Knitting and Unknitting' Process of Bodily Subjectivity in Schizophrenia.

Summary

The paper proposes that psychosis disrupts the processes of kinesthesia and touch, affecting bodily subjectivity. It highlights a connection between increased synchrony in brain regions linked to psychosis and disrupted temporal experiences. The study examines how kinesthesia interacts with touch and vision, as well as its relationship with temporal experience, emphasizing the body's cyclical sense of time. This understanding is suggested as a foundation for developing body-based therapeutic approaches.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper proposes a phenomenological hypothesis that psychosis entails a disturbance of the two-fold process of the indication function of kinesthesia and the presentification function of touch that affects the constitution of bodily subjectivity. Recent functional connectivity studies showed that the increased synchrony between the right anterior insula and the default mode network are associated with psychosis. This association is proposed to be correlated with the disrupted dynamics between the pre-reflective and reflective temporal experience in psychotic patients. The paper first examines the dynamic nature of kinesthesia and the influence touch and vision exert on it, and then the reciprocal influence with temporal experience focusing on the body's cyclic sense of temporality and its impact on physiology and phenomenology. Affectivity and self-affection are considered in their basic bodily expressions mainly through the concepts of responsivity and receptivity. The overall constitutive processes referred to throughout the article are proposed as a roadmap to develop body-based therapeutic work.

Tags