Atmosphere: On the Phenomenology of “Atmospheric” Alterations in Schizophrenia - Overall Sense of Reality, Familiarity, Vitality, Meaning, or Relevance (Ancillary Article to EAWE Domain 5)

Abstract

"Atmospheric" alterations are key aspects of altered subjectivity in mental disorder. Karl Jaspers famously described the "delusional mood": a sense of uncanny salience and ominousness that often precedes the onset of schizophrenic psychosis or of delusions. Such experiences, he writes, involve "a transformation in our total awareness of reality" that often verges on ineffability. In psychiatry, these experiential alterations are often referred to in terms of "derealization." Though derealization most obviously refers to a decline in the sense of objective presence or felt actuality, it can also refer to other unusual experiences in which things seem unlike normal or standard reality, including altered familiarity, vitality, meaning, or relevance. This paper first describes two complementary ways of approaching these phenomena: the notion of an "ontological" dimension (Sass) and that of "existential feeling" (Ratcliffe). It then offers a wider-ranging synopsis of work in phenomenological psychopathology that has sought to address atmospheric alterations believed to be especially characteristic of schizophrenia spectrum conditions, focusing on the themes of a diminished sense of reality, altered sense of meaning, disrupted feeling of familiarity, and diminished vitality and relevance.

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