Mental Illness as an (Un)Limited Experience of Intersubjectivity

Mental illness is often seen as a dissolution of the ego, confronting the psychotic with frightening limits of perception, understanding, vulnerability, and intersubjectivity. This paper examines mental illness phenomenologically as both a limited and an unlimited experience of intersubjectivity. On one hand, it limits access to the Other; on the other, it opens a new world that can be transposed into artistic expression. Drawing on clinical studies by Marguerite Sechehaye and Rosemarie Samaritter, the author identifies three disturbed experiential layers in schizophrenia: the affective, the symbolic, and the kinesthetic, where spatial presence and body movements shape the sense of self. The paper then explores art and schizophrenia to consider how psychotics transcend experiential limits.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract Often understood as a dissolution of the ego, mental illness implies a process of deconstruction where the psychotic faces the most frightening limits one can encounter: the limits of perception, the limits of understanding, the limits of vulnerability, and above all, the limits of intersubjectivity. The present paper aims to explore mental illness phenomenologically, taking it as both a limited and an unlimited experience of intersubjectivity. On the one hand, mental illness is widely regarded as a limited experience of intersubjectivity, for it alters and hence limits access to the Other. But on the other hand, it can equally be taken as an unlimited experience of intersubjectivity, because it opens up a new world to the psychotic that can be transposed into and improved through artistic expression. The present article will bring together these two dimensions in order to reflect on the limits of experience in general. To do so, I will first address the clinical studies of the analyst Marguerite Sechehaye and of Rosemarie Samaritter. By retracing Marguerite Sechehaye’s deconstruction of the ego in a case of schizophrenia that she successfully treated, I attempt to circumscribe three distinctive experiential layers that have been disturbed by her patient’s mental illness: (1) the affective layer, (2) the symbolic layer, and (3) the kinesthetic layer, which is indicative of the fact that our spatial presence and body movements are constitutive elements of our sense of self and of our being in the world. Second, I will focus on the relationship between art and schizophrenia, and subsequently on the limits of experience that a psychotic transcends when undergoing his/her illness.