Losing an intimate other to death belongs to the most uprooting experiences in human life. Not only is it accompanied by a range of negative emotions such as sorrow, longing, anger etc., but profound grief is a limit experience that causes a rupture in the sense of self of the bereaved. This experience is often expressed in identity statements such as ‘I no longer feel like myself’ or ‘I am missing part of myself’. Although such experiences are richly reported (...) in empirical studies on grief and implemented in diagnostic criteria for pathological grief, their experiential meaning is largely left unexplored. In this article, I suggest that being bereaved of an intimate other is self-alienating because our sense of self is a distributed phenomenon relying on daily confirmation through interaction with our habitual environment. When our lives are intertwined with intimate others, this habitual identity become a dyadic structure, relying on a heteronomy. Being bereaved of this intimate other leads to a profound impoverishment of the habituated sense of self, leading to self-alienation. Finally, I discuss the process of returning to a non-alienating state and suggest that this is not exclusively a cognitive process, but equally an embodied process of appropriating a habitual identity. (shrink)

This article covers issues illustrating determining significance of philosophy as a theoretical reflection over the utmost bases of culture as well as processes, conditioned by phenomena of alienation and self-alienation of culture, resulting in its integrity, uniqueness and originality demolition. This, in its turn, definitely leads to various kinds of deformation of philosophic reflection. The most important tendency in subduing the crisis of culture and philosophy is to project a new type of philosophizing, represented in the critical (...) philosophy of “Frankfurt’s School”, and other trends, which emphasize ideas of correlation between philosophy, science, art and morality, and transforming its former states into the new stream of philosophizing and questioning. Variety of philosophic trends, originality of its approaches, variety of its ”images” is determined, to a considerable extent, not only by contradiction of philosophic process, but also by the status of culture, its deformations, its former values devastation as well as forming new ones, decaying of its integrity, embodied in the form of alienation and self-alienation of culture.Self-alienation of culture only reveals alienated character of society itself, both its creators and its consumers, dividing and studying cultural values. Transformations of philosophic ideas appear not only in the form of reconsidering for historic and philosophical process achievements, but also in the form of new forms of society and culture reconsidering, appealing to the future in the outline of its humanitarian development. (shrink)

One of the central questions within contemporary debates about collective intentionality concerns the notion and status of the we. The question, however, is by no means new. At the beginning of the last century, it was already intensively discussed in phenomenology. Whereas Heidegger argued that a focus on empathy is detrimental to a proper understanding of the we, and that the latter is more fundamental than any dyadic interaction, other phenomenologists, such as Stein, Walther and Husserl, insisted on the importance (...) of empathy for proper we-experiences. In this paper, I will present some of the key moves in this debate and then discuss and assess Husserl’s specific proposal, according to which reciprocal empathy, second-person engagement and self-alienation are all important presuppositions for group-identification and we-identity. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the approaches to methodological abstraction and self-alienation developed respectively in Karl Mannheim’s early sociology of intellectuals and in Edmund Husserl’s late transcendental phenomenology. In Mannheim’s early and experimental works, the resistance to abstraction and alienation is located in a stratum of intellectuals able to meaningfully combine diverse cultural currents in a social process of cultivation (Bildung). In Husserl, to contrast, this resistance is grasped as a constant crisis in the methods of pursuing (...) philosophical truth. While these approaches seem difficult to reconcile, I suggest in closing that this difficulty can be related to their shared emphasis on a theoretical response to the practical and historical reality of self-alienation. (shrink)

An examination of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of "alienated self-consciousness.".

It is often emphasised that persons diagnosed with borderline personality disorder show difficulties in understanding their own psychological states. In this article, I argue that from a phenomenological perspective, BPD can be understood as an existential modality in which the embodied self is profoundly saturated by an alienness regarding the person’s own affects and responses. However, the balance of familiarity and alienness is not static, but can be cultivated through, e.g., psychotherapy. Following this line of thought, I present the (...) idea that narrativising experiences can play an important role in processes of appropriating such embodied self-alienness. Importantly, the notion of narrative used is that of a scalar conception of narrativity as a variable quality of experience that comes in degrees. From this perspective, narrative appropriation is a process of gradually attributing the quality of narrativity to experiences, thereby familiarising the moods, affects, and responses that otherwise govern ‘from behind’. Finally, I propose that the idea of a narrative appropriation of embodied self-alienness is also relevant to the much-debated question of personal responsibility in BPD, particularly as this question plays out in psychotherapeutic contexts where a narrative self-appropriation may facilitate an increase in sense of autonomy and reduce emotions of guilt and shame. (shrink)

While many commentators have held that the concept ‘alienation’ is of crucial importance when attempting to understand human existence, others have held that it is an inherently empty concept that we should abandon. In this article, I refute the latters’ charge by showing that each conception of ‘alienation’ is underpinned by a normative ontological conception of the preferable, or authentic, self and show that the concept ‘alienation’ has ethical, existential and socio-political uses. From this I conclude (...) that, when properly understood, the concept ‘alienation’ can provide us with vital insights into human existence. (shrink)

This article argues that alienation should be understood as a particular form of individual and social heteronomy that can only be overcome by a dialectical combination of individual and collective autonomy, recovering a deontological sense of normative authority. If we think about alienation in Kantian terms, the main source of alienation is a denial of standing or, in the extreme, losing a sense of oneself as a rational normative authority equal to all others. I call the former (...) kind of alienation, where persons deny others equal standing as a normative authority in moral or political terms, first order noumenal alienation, as there is no proper mutual cognition and recognition of each other in such a social context. I call the latter kind of alienation, where a subject does not consider themselves an equal normative authority – or an ‘end in oneself’ – second order noumenal alienation. In this sense, alienation violates the dignity of humans as moral and political lawgivers – a dignity seen by Rousseau, Kant and Marx as inalienable: It can be denied or violated, but it cannot be lost. (shrink)

Richard Moran and Matthew Boyle have objected to a variety of accounts of self-knowledge of belief on the grounds that they depict us, in possessing that knowledge, as alienated from our beliefs. The idea of alienation is meant to capture something important about the first-person perspective and to help us rule out competing accounts of self-knowledge. Moran and Boyle’s claim is that standing in a first-personal relation to one’s belief involves both knowing what one believes and occupying (...) the perspective of that belief on the world. This is the Alienation Constraint. The goal of the chapter is to provide a novel argument for it. Drawing on Shoemaker’s idea that it is impossible for a rational and conceptually competent subject to be “self-blind”, it argues that our capacity for self-knowledge must be constitutive of possession of the concept of belief, the Concept Constraint. The chapter argues that the Alienation Constraint follows from the Concept Constraint on an independently plausible understanding of the concept of belief. (shrink)

Self-realizationist theories are among the classical attempts to develop a comprehensive normative ethical theory. Plato and Aristotle, in giving classical statements of such theories, argue that a man's distinctive happiness, a man's distinctive flourishing, will only be realized when he realizes himself, i.e. when he achieves to the fullest possible degree his distinctive function. And to achieve one's function is to develop to the full those capacities which are distinctive of the human animal. In doing this we are being (...) most truly ourselves and in doing this we are doing what it is our own nature to do. Men who cultivate to the fullest that which men and only men have will be the happiest men and in so acting they will realize themselves most fully; they will achieve their maximum potential or their fullest distinctively human growth. To so realize oneself is the final end of all moral activity. It defines what is to constitute ‘the good life’ and what is to count as ‘a good man’. (shrink)

Our emotions can be revealing. They can not only reflect our character traits and our judgments, but they can also tell us things about ourselves that we do not fully realize or may not want to admit. In this chapter, I am particularly interested in how we relate to what I will call alienated emotions: emotional experiences that are unusual, surprising, or even disturbing. What, if anything, do our alienated emotions tell us about who we are? I argue here that (...) alienated emotions lead to important questions about the ethics of self-interpretation. (shrink)

This research explores the carnal, experienced self as processual and becoming, situating life as zoe (as per Braidotti) in the context of the Western culture, characterized by alienation (Fromm, Foucault). The study first addresses the ontological disposition of the carnal self and then turns to the concepts of life and death (Freud, Fromm), to explicate the tie between materiality and discourse conditions. Erich Fromm’s classical distinction of having and being is restated as a distinction of having and (...) becoming, which are then explored as complimentary ontological, cultural, and characterological directionalities. A genealogy of their mutual dynamics then allows situating the relations of carnal bodies and inorganic prosthesis (e.g. technologies) in the light of life considered as the necessary synthesis of forces of preservation and perpetual change, beyond subject-object duality. (shrink)

Stephens and Grahamset themselves an apparently modest task, to understand why people who experience alien voices and inserted thoughts do not believe that they themselves are the source of these experiences. However, it soon becomes clear that there are many connected issues here. In eight short chapters, they address the phenomenology and ontology of consciousness, the phenomenology of alien voices, inserted thoughts, obsessive-compulsive thoughts and feelings, and other cases of unusual experience often associated with psychopathology, including brief discussion of multiple (...) personality disorder. They survey some of the main empirical explanations of the phenomenology, set out the shortcomings of these theories, and end by proposing their own schematic account. (shrink)

Artificial genetic constructs that direct the synthesis of self‐replicating RNA molecules are used widely to induce gene silencing, for bioproduction, and for vaccination. Interestingly, one variant of the self‐replicon has not been discussed in the literature: namely, transgenic organisms that synthesise alien replicons. For example, plant cells may be easily genetically modified to produce bacteriophages or insect viruses. Alien replicon‐producing organisms (ARPOs) may serve as a unique tool for biocontrol or to selectively influence the characteristics of a target (...) organism. The ARPO approach would have to meet strict biosafety criteria, and its practical applications are problematic. However, a discussion on ARPO applicability would be valuable to outline the full set of options available in the bioengineering toolbox. In this paper, RNA replicons for bioengineering are reviewed briefly, and the ARPO approach is discussed. (shrink)

This chapter intervenes in recent debates in Kant scholarship about the possibility of a general logical alien. Such an alien is a thinker whose laws of thinking violate ours. She is third-personal as she is radically unlike us. Proponents of the constitutive reading of Kant’s conception of general logic accordingly suggest that Kant rules out the possibility of such an alien as unthinkable. I add to this an often-overlooked element in Kant’s thinking: there is reason to think that he grants—and (...) in fact presupposes—the possibility of a transcendental logical alien. Such an alien is a knower whose laws of experience purport to violate ours. She is first-personal as she is radically like us. In other words, she is us, insofar as we are alienated from ourselves and our experience. I go on to draw an analogy between her, a dogmatist, and another transcendental alien, an evil agent. Just as a dogmatist is alienated from her (our) experiential laws, an evil agent is alienated from her (our) moral law. These forms of theoretical and practical self-conceit require self-knowledge in the form of a critique of speculative or practical reason. In bringing this point out, I aim to shift from the question of whether logical laws constitute our thinking to the question of whether grasping our experiential and moral laws as our laws constitutes our reason. (shrink)

This work, the most comprehensive treatment of alienation ever published, deals with the philosophical, sociological, psychological, religious, political, and literary aspects of the problem. Among the topics discussed are the lost self, the fragmented self, alienated leisure, measurements of social alienation, counterculture, anti-intellectualism, and cures for alienation.

This narrative symposium examines the relationship of bioethics practice to personal experiences of illness. A call for stories was developed by Tod Chambers, the symposium editor, and editorial staff and was sent to several commonly used bioethics listservs and posted on the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics website. The call asked authors to relate a personal story of being ill or caring for a person who is ill, and to describe how this affected how they think about bioethical questions and the (...) practice of medicine. Eighteen individuals were invited to submit full stories based on review of their proposals. Twelve stories are published in this symposium, and six supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. Authors explore themes of vulnerability, suffering, communication, voluntariness, cultural barriers, and flaws in local healthcare systems through stories about their own illnesses or about caring for children, partners, parents and grandparents. Commentary articles by Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Carol Taylor follow the collection of personal narratives. (shrink)

Reviews the book, When self-consciousness breaks: Alien voices and inserted thoughts by G. Lynn Stephens and George Graham . In this book, the authors examine and explain the experience of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion in terms of an alienated self-consciousness, in which the person is directly or introspectively aware of an episode in mental life but experiences it as alien. Psychopathologists look to such episodes as a way to reveal the underlying pathology of mental illness. As philosophers, (...) however, Stephens and Graham are concerned with what such experiences might reveal about the underlying psychological structure and processes of human consciousness. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Disturbances to one's sense of self, the feeling that one has ‘lost a part of oneself’ or that one ‘no longer feels like oneself,’ are frequently recounted throughout the bereavement literature. Engaging Allan Køster's important contribution to this issue, this article reinforces his suggestion that, by rupturing the existential texture of self-familiarity, bereavement can result in experiences of estrangement that can be meaningfully understood according to the concept of self-alienation. Nevertheless, I suggest that whilst Køster's relational (...) interpretation of alienation as the withdrawal of heteronomy can be applied to the experience of world-collapse in bereavement, what sets bereavement apart from other limit situations is the fact that it involves an intersubjective relation between the living and the dead. In contrast to Køster, therefore, I suggest that the experience of self-alienation that is distinctive to bereavement results from the fact that the bereaved is exposed to, and co-opted by, the absolute alterity of death itself. (shrink)

It is widely held that reflexivity is the defining feature of selfhood: the ability of the self to stand in a certain relation to itself. The question of how exactly to theorize this self-relation, however, has been the source of ongoing debate. In recent years, Kantian and post-Kantian approaches such as Christine Korsgaard’s constitutivism and Richard Moran’s commitment view, have attempted to establish the priority of the agential over the epistemic self-relation, thereby re-orientating the debate away from (...) metaphysics and epistemology towards ethics and moral psychology. Despite the important progress they make towards a de-alienated and reified understanding of the self-relation, however, I argue that the Kantian paradigm is ultimately inadequate because its methodological individualism makes it incapable of accounting for the irreducibly social dimension of the self-relation and, therefore, of successfully making the transition from ethics to social and political philosophy. In other words, an adequate ontology of the self-relation is possible only as a social ontology. In order to motivate this thesis, I appeal to two examples that expose the “social deficit” of the Kantian approach: Frantz Fanon’s phenomenology of race/racism in “The Lived Experience of the Black” and the phenomenon of cultural collapse in Jonathan Lear’sRadical Hope. I then go on to provide a sketch of an alternative approach based on the notion of “self-appropriation”, distinguishing it from Rahel Jaeggi’s use of the term in her recent critique of alienation, in the process. (shrink)

In a late manuscript, Husserl explicitly addresses the problem of depersonalization. Depersonalization is described as a rupture in a certain layer of experience, which, however, does not touch the fundamental unity of the underlying genesis. After a brief recapitulation of historical approaches to depersonalization, I’ll come to comment on this passage. To assess Husserl’s contribution to the clinical understanding, and more specifically to the phenomenology of depersonalization, it is essential to understand his concept of personhood. In Husserl’s account of personhood, (...) we can identify a tension between the unity and continuity of the transcendental genesis of the personal ego and the self-alienation and de-presentation at play in this genesis. Drawing on the French reception of Husserl’s phenomenology and Eugen Fink’s notion of de-presentation, I suggest that transcendental temporalization not only cannot function as a fail-safe in the case of depersonalization but may even be at the core of the loss of the sense of personhood. To account for the fact of personalization, one must re-evaluate the notion of empathy in the relation of the self to itself. (shrink)

The article individuates free self-alienation and reconciliation as the specific characters of the last chapter of Phenomenology of Spirit, in contrast to an interpretation of absolute knowing as appropriation of otherness within selfconsciousness. Such self-alienation has already been developed by Hegel in the chapter “Religion”. The limit of religion depends on the last opposition to otherness, and not on to the presence of otherness itself, which has already been taken off along the path of self-becoming (...) and self-consciousness. The overcoming of this opposition represents the crucial difference between self-consciousness in chapter IV and self-consciousness of spirit. The inclusion of otherness is realized in the content of revealed religion, but not in the its form, which is imprisoned in the reference to an abstract divinity. The aim of absolute knowing is to change the sense of absoluteness, which has to mean the overcoming of Entfremdung through Entäusserung and Versöhnung, or through the unification of self-consciousness with consciousness: absolute spirit becomes other from itself and includes the other in its own identity. (shrink)

Intimacy and Alienation puts forward the author's unique paradigm for psychotherapy and counselling based on the assumption that each patient has suffered a disruption of the `self', and that the goal of the therapist is to identify and work with that disruption. Using many clinical illustrations, and drawing on self psychology, attachment therapy and theories of trauma, Russell Meares looks at the nature of self and how it develops, before going on to explore the form and (...) feeling of experience when self is disrupted in a traumatic way, and focusing on ways towards the restoration of the self. Written in an accessible style from the author's singular perspective, Intimacy and Alienation will appeal to professionals in the fields of psychotherapy, counseling, social work and psychiatry, as well as to students and the lay reader. (shrink)

Thought insertion is a common delusion in schizophrenia. People affected by it report that there are thoughts in their heads that have been inserted by a third party. These thoughts are self-generated but subjec-tively experienced as alien (hereafter, we shall call them alien thoughts for convenience). In chapter 5 of Transparent Minds, Jordi Fernández convincingly argues that the phenomenon of thought insertion can be accounted for as a pathology of self-knowledge. In particular, he argues that the application of (...) the bypass model of self-knowledge can shed light on what is amiss in people with thought insertion. In this brief commentary, we examine the proposal by Fernández, highlight some of its strengths, and raise one main objection to it. In mainstream philosophical accounts of thought insertion, people who report the delusion are thought to have ownership of the alien thoughts, but to lack a sense of agency with respect to such thoughts, and this is supposed to explain why they ascribe the thoughts to some-one else. Fernández correctly identifies the limitations of mainstream accounts of thought insertion. First, to claim that people with the delu-sion of thought insertion own the alien thoughts does not sit well with the phenomenology of thought insertion as it is reflected in people’s self-reports. Second, people do not need to experience a sense of agency with respect to a thought in order to ascribe the thought to themselves. Sense of agency is too demanding a condition for self-ascription. Fernández puts forward a novel account of thought insertion, at-tempting to solve the problems identified with mainstream accounts. He defends the view that thought insertion is a failure of self-knowledge that consists in the person failing to ascribe one of her be-liefs to herself. Similar accounts to the one Fernández develops in the chapter have been defended by Bortolotti and Broome (2009) and Pickard (2010). For Fernández, the failure in self-ascription is due to the fact that the person with thought insertion does not feel pressured to endorse the content of a belief that she has [Fernández (2013), p. 142]. Fernández explains this phenomenon in detail by reference to the bypass model of self-knowledge. When Fernández develops his own proposal, he relies on the claim that the alien thought is a belief. We challenge this claim.We agree with Fernández that, in thought insertion, the person does not ascribe the alien thought to herself and does not commit to the content of the thought being true, in spite of the thought being self-generated. Such considerations powerfully suggest to us that the alien thought is not a belief. Given the elusive nature of mental states in general and beliefs in particular, this may seem just a terminological issue. But in the present context, whether the alien thought is a belief is important in order to offer a characterisation of thought insertion that makes jus-tice to the first-person reports and other behavioural manifestations of people with the delusion. One may also argue that, as the model of self-knowledge Fernández applies to alien thoughts, that is, the bypass model, is a model of self-knowledge for beliefs, such a model could only feature in the explanation of thought insertion if alien thoughts were beliefs. But we do not think this is necessarily the case, as in the book Fernández successfully applies his bypass model to other types of mental states, such as desires. (shrink)

The topic of alienation has fallen out of fashion in social and political philosophy. It used to be salient, especially in socialist thought and in debates about labor practices in capitalism. Although the lack of identification of people with their working lives—their alienation as workers—remains practically important, normative engagement with it has been set back by at least four objections. They concern the problems of essentialist views, a mishandling of the distinction between the good and the right, the (...) danger of paternalistic impositions, and the significance of democratic authorization. This paper recasts the critique of alienation in a way that vindicates its importance for social and political philosophy and rebuts these objections. First, it provides an analytic framework to understand alienation—distinguishing its various conceptual, explanatory, and normative dimensions. Second, it accounts for the normative aspect of the critique of alienation by articulating it in terms of prudential and moral ideas of positive freedom regarding human flourishing and solidaristic empowerment. Finally, the normative account is developed further, and sharpened to respond to the four objections, through the introduction of the Dignitarian Approach—the view that we have reason to organize social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individual human beings that give rise to their dignity. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of artificial intelligence and the challenges of “smart technologies”, which threaten the autonomy of human mind and the existence of human itself. The author states the crisis situation of contemporary culture, the existential fatigue of humanity, which manifests itself in the intention to delegate one’s own subjectivity, will and rationality to external actors – namely the Internet, artificial intelligence, and robotics. The article discovers the alienation of the fundamental quality of a thinking (...) person – intelligence – and the threat of human enslavement in the world of the near future, governed by autonomous technologies. In addition to delegating rationality to machines, there is also a tendency to transfer goal-setting to “intelligent technology”, which is gradually endowed with the ability for self-learning and self-programming, and therefore may not align its tasks with human intentions. This problem is traced back to the origins of philosophical thinking and the earliest mentions of artificial beings in mythology, theology, fiction and scientific theory, that proves eternal human strife for creation and replication of human traces in natural environment. Humanization and rationalization of outer world thus is thought as an integral feature of human activity, but it also means constant and continuing alienation of human mind due to its openness and incompleteness, that puts mankind at risk – yet therefore defines humanity as a “risky” way of being. The author considers a scenario of the doubling of reality, in which digital algorithms, computer programmes and robotics may conquer, supplant or replace the world of nature and the human world, bypassing the latter as a less effective evolutionary step. In contrast to this, the author raises the question of what is mind, what is thinking and what is a human being – and whether consciousness, reduced to corporeality, sensuality or rationality, can serve as a model for reproduction. And whether a person is capable of creating a new life without love? (shrink)

?In everday language, the word ?attention? implies control of access to consciousness, and we adopt this usage here. Attention itself can be either voluntary or automatic. This can be readily modeled in the theory. Further, a contrastive analysis of spontaneously self?attributed vs. self?alien experiences suggests that ?self? can be interpreted as the more enduring, higher levels of the dominant context hierarchy, which create continuity over the changing flow of events. Since context is by definition unconscious in GW (...) theory, self in this sense is thought to be inherently unconscious as well. This proposal is consistent with a great deal of objective evidence. However, aspects of self may become known through ?conscious self-monitoring,? a process that ??is useful for self-evaluation and self?control. The results of conscious self-monitoring are combined with self?evaluation criteria, presumably of social origin, to produce a stable ?self?concept?, which functions as a supervisory system within the larger self organization. (shrink)

(1998). Species‐being, teleology and individuality part III: Alienation and self‐realisation the physiognomy of the human. Angelaki: Vol. 3, Impurity, authenticity and humanity, pp. 89-101.

This paper argues that it is possible to knowingly believe something while judging that one ought not to believe it and (so) viewing the belief as manifesting a sort of failure. I offer examples showing that such ‘alienated belief’ has several potential sources. I contrast alienated belief with self-deception, incontinent (or akratic) belief and half-belief. I argue that the possibility of alienated belief is compatible with the so-called ‘transparency’ of first-person reflection on belief, and that the descriptive and expressive (...) difficulties it involves stem from well-understood sources. I conclude by speculating that endorsed belief is in important respects like intentional action. Reflection on the possibility of alienated belief may thus help us to see one respect in which an agent can be responsible for her attitudes. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against certain dogmas about ambivalence and alienation. Authors such as Harry Frankfurt and Christine Korsgaard demand a unity of persons that excludes ambivalence. Other philosophers such as David Velleman have criticized this demand as overblown, yet these critics, too, demand a personal unity that excludes an extreme form of ambivalence (“radical ambivalence”). I defend radical ambivalence by arguing that, to be true to oneself, one sometimes needs to be radically ambivalent. Certain dogmas about (...) class='Hi'>alienation are even more entrenched. Allen Wood’s entry on “alienation” in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy begins as follows: “A psychological or social evil, characterized by one or another type of harmful separation, disruption or fragmentation, which sunders things that belong together.” I think that it is not true that self-alienation is necessarily “harmful.” I argue that radical ambivalence is a form of self-alienation. Thus, because faithfulness to oneself sometimes requires radical ambivalence, to be true to oneself, one sometimes needs to be alienated from oneself. (shrink)

This article presents an introductory overview of the interpretations of schizophrenia offered by three phenomenological psychiatrists: Eugene Minkowski (1885-1972), Wolfgang Blankenburg (b. 1928), and Kimura Bin (b. 1931). Minkowski views schizophrenia as characterized by a diminished sense of dynamic and vital connection to the world ("loss of vital contact"), often accompanied by a hypertrophy of intellectual and static tendencies ("morbid rationalism," "morbid geometrism"). Blankenburg emphasizes the patient's loss of the normal sense of obviousness or "natural self-evidence"—a loss of the (...) usual common-sense background that enables normal persons to cope easily with the social and practical world. Kimura focuses on certain distortions of self-experience: a distinctive splitting of the subjective self, alienated awareness of one's own ongoing consciousness, and profound uncertainty about the "I-ness" of the self. In addition to a summary, this article offers a comparison and critique of these three approaches. The three approaches are also considered in light of a more recent, phenomenological formulation of schizophrenia as a disorder of self-experience (an ipseity disturbance) involving hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection (i.e., heightened awareness of aspects of experience that would normally remain tacit or presupposed and decline in the feeling of existing as a subject of awareness). (shrink)

It is questionable whether counterfeiting in many areas of life contributes to unethical behavior to a wider extent. If the notion is supported by data, then the moral damage in a society could be prevented by reducing the counterfeit self and behavior to a bare minimum. This study aimed at empirically testing the measurement model of counterfeit self of Wood et al. (2008) among Indonesians as well as theoretically reviewing counterfeit self roles in unethical behavior. The participants (...) of this study were 1,655 high school students (764 males, 891 females; Mage = 15.76 years old; SDage = 1.08 years) recruited through a purposive sampling technique in North Sumatera and West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The data analysis technique used was Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The results showed that the counterfeit self model--comprised of counterfeit self dimensions, namely Self-alienation (ALIEN), Inauthentic Living (LIVE), and Accepting External Influence (EXT)--was supported by the empirical data. However, the dimension of EXT could not be represented by its indicators. The study contributed to the psychological body of knowledge that the EXT dimension might need to be excluded from the measurement of counterfeit self on teenagers, especially in Indonesia and other Eastern countries. (shrink)

This research is into the experience of alienation amongst British adolescents. The study had three major aims: firstly to investigate potential differences across various dimensions of alienation on the basis of gender, ethnicity and religion. Secondly, to establish a relationship between alienation, self‐esteem and selected undesirable school behaviours. Finally, there is an attempt to evaluate the use of alienation scales as a research tool in education. The study involved 254 participants aged between 13 and 15 (...) years attending large, multi‐ethnic comprehensives. The findings show that reported levels of alienation were influenced by religious orientation but only minimally by gender or ethnicity per se. Reported alienation negatively correlated with self‐esteem but was positively associated with truancy, exclusion and disruptive behaviour. The authors conclude that, whilst alienation remains a useful concept for educational research, it is unhelpful to see it as an inevitable consequence of deprivation or membership of certain social groups. (shrink)