COGITO AND I

The certainty of ''I am I myself'' is quite self-evident for most peop le, but in schizophrenia, this selfness of I is not sufficiently const ituted to the effect that the patients are incessantly forced to an ex cessive and painfull self-reflection. A clue to understand this phenom enon can be found in a phrase of Descartes explaining his concept of c ogito in the meaning of ''it seems to me (that I am seeing, hearing, a nd feeling the warmth)''. The selfness of ''me'' indicated in ''it see ms to me'' is not the same as that of ''I'' in ''I am seeing and so on ''. According to M. Henry, the former refers to a pure auto-affection in the sense of sensual appearance of living, in contrast with the Hei deggerian interpretation of co:ito as representation of the personal I rather in the latter sense. The schizophrenic uncertainty of selfness consists in the fact that the appearance of ''it seems to me'' cannot belong any more seif-evidently to me, so that the personal I cannot b e present to the prepersonal immediate auto-affection of living, due t o an alteration in relationship between both kinds of selfness. Indivi duals as well as various groups of all living beings including mankind behave themselves subjectively at the interface with their environmen t. Thus we can speak of an individual and a collective subjectivity. T he ''it seems to me'' is nothing but a self-ascertainment of the livin g subjectivity encountered with environment. In the human being, the i ndividual subjectivity assumes the privileged uniqueness and unreplace ability of ''I'' whereas the collective subjectivity is almost entirel y suppressed. That is why the cogito, ''I think''. can be understood a s certification of personal ''1 am''. In schizophrenics, due to a prob ably genetically conditioned instability of the relationship between b oth subjectivities, the certainty of ''I am'' cannot be established, t hat causes the painful self-reflection as well as feeling of being inv aded by others who join the same collective subjectivity.