THE THICKNESS OF BEING - INTENTIONAL WORLDS, STRATEGIES OF IDENTITY, AND EXPERIENCE AMONG SCHIZOPHRENICS

IN RECENT years, researchers have explored the subjective experience o f patients diagnosed as schizophrenic and its transformation throughou t the course of schizophrenia. Experience is a complex, nontransparent reality that escapes direct, empathic understanding. Concepts and met hods developed by European psychiatric phenomenology and by Ricoeur's hermeneutics are used for discussing data collected in Montreal with p atients diagnosed as schizophrenic. Persons who differ for their rate of rehospitalization during the last 4 years are compared on various i ndices of social integration and for their subjective ''life-world.'' Data indicate the importance of ''positive withdrawal'' for nonrehospi talizated patients and enlighten its subjective significance. Patients ' narrative reveal how distancing and relating elements are interwoven in their life history. Self-descriptions bring out the semantic and s tylistic strategies used to construct a narrative identity. They illus trate the range of strategies patients use to distance themselves from a static, objectified characterization of themselves. Data indicate t he importance of understanding patients' experience from the perspecti ves developed by European phenomenological psychiatry. This invites th e reevaluation of the very notion of coping and its expansion on the b asis of a broader approach to the notion of experience. Hypotheses are drawn regarding the role of cultural and social factors in shaping a position of ''positive withdrawal.''