From theory to clinical practice: a phenomenologically inspired intervention for patients with schizophrenia

Phenomenological conceptualizations of schizophrenia regard the fundamental transformation of self-experience as the central feature of the schizophrenic state of mind. Recently, self-disorders as subtle, trait-like, merely subjective alterations of self-experience have received vast empirical attention. However, the question of how to address self-disorders psychotherapeutically has remained neglected.

From phenomenologically inspired analyses of self-disorders we derive a therapeutic intervention that focuses on the following: (1) verbalizing diffuse changes in self-experiences and (2) conceptualizing these self-experiences in terms of aggravating and relieving factors in order to stimulate coping and derive targeted therapeutic interventions.

The clinical implementation is illustrated by two case studies. The feasibility of our approach is preliminarily supported by an exploratory study.

This intervention seems promising in assisting patients to develop an embodied and enacted understanding of self-disorders.