Raballo Andrea, Maggini Carlo
Neuroscience Department, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.
Psychopathology. 2005 May-Jun;38(3):124-32. doi: 10.1159/000085842. Epub 2005 May 19.
Contemporary psychopathological research has shown that some qualitative anomalies of the first-person experiential givenness qualify the subjective experience of schizophrenia. Such essential clinical features of schizophrenia have recently been condensed into 7 phenomenologically coherent clusters derived from the Bonn Scale for the Assessment of Basic Symptoms (BSABS). The experimental intent of this study was to test whether subapophanic self-centrality (i.e. a protopathic nondelusional form of intersubjective spatial disattunement) empowers the discriminant capacity of such a set of subjective experiential disturbances among different diagnostic groups.
Three comparably sized samples of outpatients with schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive or mood disorders were examined with the BSABS. Logistic regression analysis was performed with diagnosis as the outcome variable.
Elevated scores in self-perceived cognitive disorders and abnormal self-centrality were associated with DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia. Self-centrality increased the discriminant capacity of the 7 designed a priori dimensions.
These findings confirm the previously reported aggregation of some subtle qualitative alterations of subjective experience in schizophrenia, and suggest that a careful consideration of autocentric disturbances of intersubjectivity might enrich current heuristics on schizophrenic experiential vulnerability.
