Defining the acoustico-verbal hallucination as a self-awareness disorder.

The acousticoverbal hallucination, defined here as " a report of experience s attributed to a foreign voice in direct association with a self-awareness disorder,, is re-established in its cultural and scientific context. Detai led attention is given to the cognitive models, conventionally divided acco rding to the opposites Top-Down/Bottom-Up. Identifying the acousticoverbal hallucination as a symptom within the clinical dialogue cannot occur from t he scientific stories which determine the empirical significance of the sym ptom as such. In this work, this empirical significance is associated with the cerebral neurofunctional structures from the perspective of Damasio. By distinguishing the proto-Self, the central-Self and the autobiographical-S elf, Damasio suggested that the schizophrenic hallucination is a disorder o f the autobiographical-Self, but this fact does not preclude that this diso rder itself is accompanied by anomalies of the proto-Self and of the centra l-Self We challenge this model with the clinical case study resulting from phenomenology. The method of analysis of the experiment suggested by Damasi o, rooted in the reflection of James is not, altogether, very far from the phenomenologic practice: one finds notably the idea of a division of the su bject revealing self-awareness which is at the foundation of conscience. Ho wever, the phenomenologic method suggests a continuation of the functional anomalies of self-awareness towards the naturalization of lived time, which will be the subject of a forthcoming work. (C) 2000 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.