[The being ill of the schizophrenic approached from existential analysis].
Schizophrenia is one of the most pervading and obscure mental deseases. No scientific explanation--either somatogenic or psychogenetic--has attained, so far, a comprehensive grasp of schizophrenic ways of experiencing the world. Not that the valuable research made in many branches of Psychiatry is to be belittled because of being parcial or single-oriented: it is necessary a completely different approach--from a phenomenological standpoint-- provided by Daseinanalyse, to encompass the richess and complexity of schizophrenic experience. In that view, "being-ill" is, for the schizophrenic, a basic impairment of the capacity of "being-open-to" the human environment, and a correlative lack of "feeling-of-the-self", an incapability to be what one really is. The consequence is a loss of freedom, a basic difficulty to face the world and to reach its meaning together with the meaning of one's own life. Three cases are discussed, in which the patients are overwhelmed by other's actions and thoughts, and cannot tell apart what pertains really to their own inner world. They are even absorbed by inanimate elements, or by ordinary objects of everyday life. Everything is a threat to their nonexisting beings. Once such a grasp of the complexities of schizophrenic "way-of-being-in-the-world" is attained, it is possible to work towards the development of the patient's own self, to help to expand and strenghthen the individual inner "roots" in order to gain a higher level of individual entity that enables the patient to face the world without the risks and perils of being engulfed in its maelstroms.
D005086:Existentialism; D006801:Humans; D012559:Schizophrenia
El "estar enfermo" del esquizofrénico entendido desade el análisis existencial