The Nested States Model: A Phenomenologically-Grounded Model of the Mind

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Phenomenology
• Enactive Cognition

Background:

• Subjective experience is crucial to mental illness but often overlooked in empirical psychopathology.
• A resurgence in phenomenological perspectives highlights the need for detailed models grounded in phenomenology and enactive approaches.
• Existing empirical methods lack sufficient focus on the qualitative aspects of mental illness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a framework, the Nested States Model (NSM), for constructing detailed, phenomenologically-grounded models of psychopathological processes.
• To demonstrate how the NSM can characterize patterns of subjective experience in psychopathology.
• To show the utility of the NSM for clinical practice and advancing psychopathology research.

Main Methods:

• Derivation of a framework from the Nested States Model (NSM).
• Description of subjective experience as a system of nested, hierarchically layered states.
• Application of the NSM to characterize patterns of experience in psychopathological processes.

Main Results:

• The NSM provides a scheme for characterizing diverse psychopathological processes based on subjective experience.
• The NSM's utility is demonstrated for both clinical practice and broader psychopathology knowledge building.
• The framework facilitates the construction of clinical formulations and treatment considerations centered on individual subjective experiences.

Conclusions:

• The NSM advances the integration of phenomenological approaches in psychiatry by centering subjective experience.
• It offers a framework for organizing clinical-phenomenological research and guiding model construction.
• The NSM bridges phenomenological insights with neurophysiological research by aligning subjective experience with brain dynamics.