[Psychopathological study of lie motif in schizophrenia].
The theme of a statement is called "lie motif" by the authors when schizophrenic patients say "I have lied to anybody". We tried to analyse of the psychopathological characteristics and anthropological meanings of the lie motifs in schizophrenia, which has not been thematically examined until now, based on 4 cases, and contrasting with the lie motif (Lügenmotiv) in depression taken up by A. Kraus (1989). We classified the lie motifs in schizophrenia into the following two types: a) the past directive lie motif: the patients speak about their real lie regarding it as a 'petty fault' in their distant past with self-guilty feeling, b) the present directive lie motif: the patients say repeatedly 'I have lied' (about their present speech and behavior), retreating from their previous commitments. The observed false confessions of innocent fault by the patients seem to belong to the present directed lie motif. In comparison with the lie motif in depression, it is characteristic for the lie motif in schizophrenia that the patients feel themselves to already have been caught out by others before they confess the lie. The lie motif in schizophrenia seems to come into being through the attribution process of taking the others' blame on ones' own shoulders, which has been pointed out to be common in the guilt experience in schizophrenia. The others' blame on this occasion is due to "the others' gaze" in the experience of the initial self-centralization (i.e. non delusional self-referential experience) in the early stage of schizophrenia (S. Kato 1999). The others' gaze is supposed to bring about the feeling of amorphous self-revelation which could also be regarded as the guilt feeling without content, to the patients. When the guilt feeling is bound with a past concrete fault, the patients tell the past directive lie motif. On the other hand, when the patients cannot find a past fixed content, and feel their present actions as uncertain and experience them as lies, the present directive lie motif is told. Lie motifs are considered to have the effect of restoring the patient's own subjectivity by the following ways: (a) by actualizing the structural constituents elementary for the establishment of subjectivity, (b) by conducting a kind of speech act for declaring themselves as an active lying subject to co-presenting others for the resettlement in our inter-subjective world.
Otsuka
Koichiro
K
Department of Psychiatry, School of Nursing, Jichi Medical University.
Kato
Satoshi
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006167:Guilt; D006801:Humans; D008014:Lie Detection; D008297:Male; D011599:Psychopathology; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology