When the Window Cracks: Transparency and the Fractured Self in Depersonalisation
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences June 6, 2020 Anna Ciaunica, J. C. Charlton, Harry Farmer 78 citations
Depersonalization Disorder (DPD) alters the transparency of basic embodied pre-reflective self-consciousness and impairs the ability to flexibly switch between reflective and pre-reflective facets of self-awareness. The condition involves detachment from self, body, and world (derealization), with impaired processing of bodily signals. First-hand reports describe a fracture between an observing and an observed self, similar to self-detachment in certain Buddhist meditative practices. These alterations reveal the normally tacit transparency of pre-reflective self-consciousness, like a crack in transparent glass showing an unnoticed window.