Mysticism and schizophrenia: a phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Abstract

• The paper is a clinical-phenomenological investigation of schizophrenic psychosis. • Mystical states, especially mystical union, are used for analogical exploration. • Structural similarities between schizophrenic and mystical experience are described. • Similarities comprise world-detachment, self-effacement, and revelation. • In schizophrenia, these experiences are facilitated by self-disorders. Mysticism and schizophrenia are different categories of human existence and experience. Nonetheless, they exhibit important phenomenological affinities, which, however, remain largely unaddressed. In this study, we explore structural analogies between key features of mysticism and major clinical-phenomenological aspects of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders—i.e. attitudes, the nature of experience, and the ‘other’, mystical or psychotic reality. Not only do these features gravitate around the issue of the basic dimensions of consciousness, they crucially seem to implicate and presuppose a specific alteration of the very structure of consciousness. This finding has bearings for the understanding of consciousness and its psychopathological distortions.