No non-sense without imagination
schizophrenic delusion as reified imaginings unchallengeable by perception
pp. 181-203
in: Massimiliano Cappuccio, Tom Froese (eds), Enactive cognition at the edge of sense-making, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
Psychopathology of schizophrenia is presented as a core issue for an enactive theory that is confronted by non-sense. The core disturbance of schizophrenia has been recently identified with disembodiment: a lack, or weakening, of sensory-motor self-awareness. The problem of the transition from prodromal disembodiment to acute schizophrenic symptoms (hallu- cinations and delusions) is discussed. A phenomenological psychology of imagination turns out to be necessary to explain this transition and to conceive of schizophrenic delusion as reified imaginings unchallenge- able by perception. The enactive approach to the psychopathology of schizophrenia shows that there can be no radical experience of non-sense without imagination, but also that imagination is a crucial faculty to make sense of non-sense in embodied and embedded psychotherapies.