Original Paper

Psychopathology Received: January 4, 2017

Accepted after revision: September 13, 2017
DOI: 10.1159/000481516
Published online: ■■■

New Insight into Affectivity in

Schizophrenia: from the Phenomenology
of Marc Richir
Tudi Gozé a, b Till Grohmann d Jean Naudin c Michel Cermolacce c
a Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Art Therapy, Toulouse University Hospital, and b Equipe de

Recherche sur les Rationalités Philosophiques et les Savoirs (ERRaPhiS – EA 3051), University of Toulouse Jean
Jaurès, Toulouse, and c Department of Psychiatry, Sainte Marguerite University Hospital, Marseilles, France;
d Philosophisches Seminar, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany

1. Please confirm that authors' names and initials have been identified correctly.
2. Ref. [19] has been deleted as it was the same as Ref. [6].
3. Please check that Ref. [30] is now correct (you cannot mention 2 books in the same
Ref.). Thank you.

Keywords hension. By drawing on the phenomenology of Marc Richir,

Schizophrenia spectrum · Affectivity · Phenomenology ·
Psychopathology · Embodied intersubjectivity · Marc
Richir · Corporeality
Abstract
Background: According to Karl Jaspers, psychopathology
requires a comprehensive method, understood as a system-
atic exploration of the first-person perspective of the pa-
tient’s experience. At the same time, however, schizophre-
nia for Jaspers is characterized by its radical incompre-
hensibility. In addition, Rümke’s so-called “praecox feeling”
paradoxically combines the incomprehensibility of schizo-
phrenic experience and the evidence of its pathological
manifestation in the encounter. Aim: Through a re-exami-
nation of the notions of affectivity and interaffective contact
we propose a coherent theoretical model to explain the cli-
nician’s paradoxical understanding of schizophrenia. Meth-
od: Phenomenological tradition regards affectivity as an en-
compassing phenomenon that connects body, self, world,
and others. In our view, only a thorough and systematic link
between corporeity and affectivity is able to explain em-
bodied affective resonance as a basis of empathic compre-
we will systematically unfold the complex nature of affectiv-
ity and lead it back to a twofold constitution of corporeality.
Conclusion: The Richirian account on affectivity can be
fruitfully put into discussion with other recent phenomeno-
logical models on schizophrenia. It might be able to exhibit
affectivity as the operative ground of minimal self-distur-
bance and thus argue for its intersubjective dimension.
© 2017 S. Karger AG, Basel
Introduction to the Notion of Affectivity in
Schizophrenia
Since Karl Jaspers, a phenomenological attitude in
psychiatry has been understood to call for a comprehen-
sive rather than an explicative method [1]. Psychopathol-
ogy requires a method of exploration of first-person per-
spective of the patient’s experience, an investigation
“from within.” Such a methodological, epistemological,
and ethical claim, however, relies on the idea that an un-
derstanding of the other’s experience is possible [2, 3].
Jaspers argues that empathic understanding enables us to
resonate with the cognitive and affective states of others

© 2017 S. Karger AG, Basel Dr. Tudi Gozé

Service de Psychiatrie, Psychothérapies et Art-Thérapie
Pavillon Sénac, CHU Purpan, Place Baylac TSA 40031
E-Mail karger@karger.com
FR–31059 Toulouse, Cedex 9 (France)
www.karger.com/psp
E-Mail t.goze @ hotmail.fr

PSP481516.indd 1 18.10.2017 14:27:07

 [4, pp. 93–117, 5]. Nevertheless, there are limits to the
very possibility of a comprehensive phenomenology in
the encounter of schizophrenic patients. According to
Jaspers, the “primary experiences” of schizophrenic delu-
sion are characterized for the clinician by the radical in-
comprehensibility of their subjective aspect. But if it is
true for the clinician that schizophrenic experience con-
stitutes a radical otherness, how then can it be described
in a genuine phenomenological perspective? Where and
how can we find an access, albeit precarious and fleeting,
allowing the clinician to develop a genuine phenomeno-
logical description of schizophrenia? Without interaffec-
tive contact, there is no basis for an intuitive empathic
understanding [6]. However, if, with Jaspers [4, p. 447],
we acknowledge the unshareability of delusional experi-
ence, do we not thereby paradoxically acknowledge that
people with schizophrenia affect us, touch us, often in a
disturbing way? This ambiguity of the notion of affectiv-
ity in schizophrenia bursts in all its complexity with the
phenomenon of the “praecox feeling,” defined by Henri-
cus Cornelius Rümke [7] as the feeling of strangeness
arising in the clinician in contact with a person with
schizophrenia. According to Rümke, the “praecox feeling”
allows some very skilled psychiatrist to diagnose schizo-
phrenia at first sight [8]. Rümke claims that the “praecox
feeling” allows denoting a certain “lack of exchange of af-
fect” with the patient, such as an impossibility for empa-
thizing with his/her affective experience. Paradoxically, if
this feeling arises in the clinician as an elusive atmo-
sphere, it nevertheless carries an ineffable evidence. The
“praecox feeling” aggregates all at once the radical incom-
prehensibility of the schizophrenic experience [4, 9] and
the evidence of its pathological manifestation in the en-
counter [10, 11]. As a consequence, affectivity reveals it-
self as being a paradoxical but paradigmatic psychopatho-
logical operator in the difficult task of responding to the
question: what can I know about schizophrenia?
Despite a growing number of publications that have
recently highlighted the importance of affectivity within
the psychopathology of schizophrenia [12–14], the no-
tion of affectivity itself still does not appear as a key fea-
ture in the psychopathological debate. However, classical
psychopathology has already emphasized the link be-
tween affectivity and the core psychopathology of schizo-
phrenia [15–17]. The influential conceptualization of
schizophrenia as a disorder of minimal-self has clearly
highlighted the involvement of diminished self-affecta-
tion as a basic component of the disorder’s core distur-
bance [12, 18]. Others emphasize the embodied dimen-
sion of affectivity as central for understanding the inter-
2 Psychopathology
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PSP481516.indd 2
subjective disturbances that are related to the
schizophrenia spectrum [6, 19–21].
Recent developments in French phenomenology can
be described by a certain theoretical turn towards an “asu-
bjective phenomenology” [22] which proposes to think
affectivity as an encompassing phenomenon beyond the
subject/object dualism, and thus not only as a mere per-
sonal experience. In our view, this alternative conception
of affectivity delivers the missing link between self-cen-
tered, personal, and intersubjective conceptions of affec-
tivity. By drawing on this asubjective conception of af-
fectivity, the present article aims to rethink the specific
relevance of affectivity for the psychopathological under-
standing of schizophrenia from an original phenomeno-
logical perspective. Primarily, we discuss the classic view-
point of phenomenology on affectivity. Secondly, we re-
fer to Marc Richir’s phenomenology, which provides a
strong heuristic device for developing a consistent phe-
nomenological standpoint on affectivity in schizophrenia
[23]. We examine the notion of affectivity within the
Richirian theory of embodiment. This helps us to better
grasp the paradoxical nature of affectivity, which we refer
to, in a final step of our argument, as the clinical core of
schizophrenia.
A Phenomenological Perspective on Affectivity
Defining affectivity is a complex task. As a matter of
fact, the notion of affectivity, which appeared in philoso-
phy and psychology in the 18th century, reveals a great
semantic diversity [23]. We find connections to emotion,
sentiment, mood, or passions. The links and exclusions
between affectivity, affection, and affect remain largely
unclarified today. The Latin etymology refers to afficere,
which is usually translated as “the ability to be touched.”
As we can see, the notion of affectivity exhibits an inner
relationship with the notion of contact in its tactile, em-
bodied, and intersubjective understanding. Thus, in af-
fectivity, we find the meaning of a certain passivity, of
being struck by the world and by others. In phenomenol-
ogy, affectivity refers primarily to the ability of the subject
to be affected by the outside world. As Martin Heidegger
underlined with his notion of Stimmung [24], our open-
ness to the world and others is determined by a certain
affective disposition (Befindlichkeit). However, by lack-
ing a systematic elaboration of affectivity’s foundation in
embodiment, the Heideggerian account on affectivity re-
mains abstract and is inefficient for understanding the
intersubjective encounter as an intercorporeal or interaf-
Gozé/Grohmann/Naudin/Cermolacce
18.10.2017 14:27:23
 fective phenomenon. In order to solve our problem of af-
fectivity as a contagious intersubjective phenomenon, we
need a systematic phenomenological account on embodi-
ment, as one can find for instance in Maurice Merleau-
Ponty [25]. Merleau-Ponty’s theory of operative inten-
tionality helps us to prepare the conceptual frame in
which Richir’s own account has to be situated.
Merleau-Ponty was one of the first to systematically
criticize any too-narrow concept of intentionality in which
the “sense (Sinn)” of the world is restricted to the realm of
language and categorial forms. He rejected the idea of a
merely cognizing subject and concentrated on the consti-
tutive intentional ground of the wide spectrum of affective,
emotional, and sensorimotor significance. With his notion
of an “operative intentionality” he provided a unitary con-
cept for a diversity of nonverbal forms of understanding
reality. In Merleau-Ponty’s terms, operative intentionality
is “that which produces the natural and antepredicative
unity of the world and of our life” [25, XVII]. It does not
simply orientate us to objects by local operations of act in-
tentionality, but discloses the subject’s worldly horizon
and constitutes experience as a field of possibility. It guar-
antees the subject’s “transcendence” [25, p. 372] and there-
by institutes a form of presence which is fundamentally
“ek-static” [25, p. 382]. This means that as soon as we are
affected by the world, we are affecting the world in return
too. Affectivity, in its embodied dimension, is thereby pro-
jected within the world – binding, tying, and invading its
objects. Affectivity tints the world in such a way that I rec-
ognize the world as mine. It has to be underlined that this
subjective impregnation of the world occurs without ex-
plicit awareness – it strangely operates before our encoun-
ter with it. Affectivity is therefore said to be prereflective,
which means that it occurs upstream of any object con-
sciousness. In this sense, we can say that affectivity pre-
cedes every explicit experience of the world, of others, and
of oneself. It provides the minimal intentional matrix of
contact with the world, others, and oneself. Affectivity,
thus, cannot be thought of as a simple category of human
experience, as for instance an emotion or memory. Neither
can it be reduced to a psychological or perceptual state
[19]. Furthermore, the subject has no control over this ex-
periential field. It is not constituted by consciousness, even
though it reveals itself to consciousness as a tacit, nonver-
bal, and fundamentally elusive phenomenon. Affectivity is
thus impossible to locate, is everywhere and nowhere at
once, and is unassignable and escaping: the human-being
“always-already” finds him/herself affected in a certain
passivity. On this understanding, affectivity is that which
unfolds the “color of the atmosphere” [24, 26]. It sets the
New Insight into Affectivity in
Schizophrenia
PSP481516.indd 3
pace for our relationship with the world by determining it
in its very familiarity, strangeness, harmony, and dishar-
mony. It is the ground of our everyday connection with the
world, a ground we always take for granted as obvious and
unquestioned.
Human beings all have their own affective tone which
colors their entire experience. And although this affective
tone involves a contact with reality of the most intimate
level, it is paradoxically “contagious” [27] in the intersub-
jective encounter. As a matter of fact, the affective tone is
somehow sensible beyond any linguistic communication.
We could say that every full-blown interpersonal relation
involves two “moments”: a primordial and presubjective
affective attunement and an explicit identification be-
tween self and other as two separate egos with two physi-
ologically understood bodies. Only in the latter moment
does the other become the endpoint of an intentional ap-
perception. Real relating involves a constant interplay be-
tween these two moments. In psychiatric practice, it is a
rather common experience to feel euphoric in contact
with a manic person or, on the contrary, to feel one’s own
body collapse under the weight of the melancholic com-
plaint. Since it is tacit and prereflective, this phenomenon
often happens without our knowledge. Its genesis escapes
us. But even beyond these particularly pertinent encoun-
ters with persons with affective disorders, the contagious-
ness of affectivity concerns every situation and even the
most banal ones. Considering this very contagiousness of
our seemingly private affective relationship with the
world, we might have to think of affectivity in terms of an
intersubjectively articulated meshing of atmospheres. In
almost all of our everyday encounters there is a funda-
mental intertwinement of affectivities. How can we make
understandable that affectivity interferes with the mind
and the body of each person yet referring to our most in-
timate relationship with the world? In order to clarify this
paradox, we now present the relevance of Marc Richir’s
phenomenology for psychopathological research.
Richir’s Views on Affectivity and Schizophrenia
Phenomenological Architectonics of Affectivity
Physicist and philosopher, Marc Richir was born in
1943 and died in 2015. He can be associated with the 3rd
generation of phenomenologists. His work is intended as
a “recast” and a “refounding” of phenomenology [28]. As
a preliminary statement, we must admit that it is not easy
to present Richir’s thought without betraying its radical
project. Indeed, it is a revolutionary and fundamentally
Psychopathology 3
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 vivid thought. Providing a short summary of his thinking,
as we try to do in the following, therefore necessarily runs
the risk of substantiating certain of his notions, which
nonetheless must be understood in their fundamental vi-
tality. Richir’s philosophy is a living and dynamic think-
ing that focuses on the most archaic and originary layers
of subjectivity. It thus constitutes a paradoxical undertak-
ing since it seeks to articulate in verbal terms phenomena
that are fundamentally “beyond-language” (“hors-lan-
gage”) [29], that is, the grounding structures which si-
lently underlie our entire contact with the world. In order
to introduce the Richirian project of a refounded phe-
nomenology, we restrict our analysis to the points we be-
lieve important for our own argument.
In his masterwork, Méditations phénoménologiques
[29], Richir proceeds to a phenomenological reduction of
the duality between the constituting subject and the con-
stituted object. This method, also known as the “hyper-
bolic phenomenological epoché,” involves questioning the
idea that every relation to the world has its origin and
source in the intimacy of an ego, which relates to a world
as an externality. Thereby challenging the dualism of a
subjective intimacy and an objective externality, Richir
intends to think affectivity before any “a priori” position
of interiority and exteriority. In other words, it offers a
philosophy beyond the limits of an inner/outer separa-
tion. Trying to lay bare the genesis of the inner/outer,
subject/object polarization, Richir describes affectivity as
the experiential layer in which the inseparable and syn-
chronic constitution of self and world is possible. It ac-
counts not only for an inseparable unity of both terms,
but also for the fundamental fact that we usually experi-
ence a reliable world, consistent, stable, and ultimately
trustworthy. Affectivity constitutes a proof of acquain-
tance: we encounter the world with the subjective quality
of trust. Here, trust is not to be understood as a psycho-
logical or a moral quality but as faith in the coherence and
continuity of our experience. In the same respect, Mau-
rice Merleau-Ponty mentioned the “perceptual faith” [30,
31], which is supported by the constant and dynamic in-
tegration of our body schematic processes.
In the context of this phenomenological investigation
into a constitutive realm of affectivity before the distinc-
tion of intimacy and externality, it is important to empha-
size Richir’s interest in Donald W. Winnicott’s theoriza-
tion of the early infant’s relationship to the environment
and “transitional phenomena” [32, 33]. Following Win-
nicott, Richir locates the roots of affectivity in the infant’s
early contact with the world. As a not yet differentiated
field of experience, this contact takes place before a clear-
4 Psychopathology
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PSP481516.indd 4
ly instituted delimitation of the newborn and the care-
giver. For Richir, the adult’s affective relationship with
the world emerges out of this primordial relational space
[32]. This is the reason he describes affectivity as a “living
fossil” [27], a vivid residue of our life before any subject/
object polarization as well as before any “symbolic institu-
tion” of language. According to Richir, this very archaic
relationship to the world is not forgotten by the develop-
ing child and is still present as bodily and affective phe-
nomena. Affectivity is still “here” and colors our current
field of experience. It somehow rises up in an uncon-
trolled way – and from the deeper archaic layer of the ex-
periential field. Affectivity, according to Richir, is a “wild
being” (“Wesen sauvage”) [27, p. 60].
This view of affectivity is to be distinguished, however,
from recent phenomenological models of the articulation
between mood(s) and affect(s) as actual events of con-
sciousness, such as proposed by Stanghellini and Rosfort
[34] or Fuchs [35]. Understood as “feelings,” these events
are directly accessible to consciousness and operate as al-
ready symbolically coded significations (such as anger,
fear, or joy). The Richirian account differs from these au-
thors insofar as it situates affectivity on a deeper architec-
tonic layer of the self/world relatedness. In the present
paper, we try to focus, following Richir, on affectivity’s
“archaic” and “wild” nature [27], as well as its unfolding
somehow “below” first-personal givenness of experience.
Interestingly, this account might be fruitfully combined
with a recent distinction from Parnas and Henriksen [21]
between two strata of the minimal-self: a “first-personal
givenness of experience” and an “inchoate sense of self-
presence.” As the authors suggest, only the latter is dis-
turbed in schizophrenia. As we will see, this idea finds
further support in Marc Richir’s own conception. In ad-
dition, Marc Richir’s account of affectivity might be illu-
minated by a comparison with Michel Henry’s and Jan
Patočka’s views of the constitutional basis for our contact
with the world. For Henry [36], the genuine contact with
the world is lived without any distance, in subjective inti-
macy, through what he calls “life” understood as pure
self-affection. For Patočka [37], on the contrary, our con-
tact with the world comes from a movement that has its
operational base not in the inside of the self but in the
world. It is, for Patočka, a purely asubjective phenome-
non that might be better called “world-affection.” Marc
Richir shows how our contact with the world may result
from both movements (the self and the world). It is con-
tained neither exclusively in a subjective intimacy nor in
a worldy exteriority, but displayed as a free-floating
movement between both poles.
Gozé/Grohmann/Naudin/Cermolacce
18.10.2017 14:27:23
 The Paradox of Affectivity
Despite our preceding analysis, we have not yet solved
our so-called paradox of affectivity: namely, that it stems
from an originary and archaic layer of the self/world re-
latedness, but that it nonetheless resonates in the other’s
body, somehow spreads out and literally infects others.
As a matter of fact, insofar as affectivity comes from the
depth of the self, it is an “internal” structure of my body’s
intimacy. Yet we cannot deny that the affective tone of
others is somehow felt in my own body. In the intersub-
jective encounter, it is given to me in a way that short-
circuits language. If affectivity is expressed through the
body, it is, however, not explicitly perceptible as an ex-
plicit object of consciousness. It is felt as the tacit tone of
an intersubjective relationship. This spreading of affectiv-
ity is commonplace and banal; we constantly live with
such a contagiousness: we can rejoice together, mourn
our losses, speak with one voice. This contagious and per-
vasive relatedness thus constitutes the connective tissue
of a primordial intersubjective space – in other words, a
common phenomenon which is located somehow “be-
fore” or “below” the institution of the self as a body felt as
mine, with its absolute “here,” and separated from a body
that is yours, with its relative “there.” Thus, how is it pos-
sible that affectivity, coming from the depth of the expe-
riential field, may nonetheless arise in the intersubjective
encounter and be felt through my own body and then
resonate and attune in the other’s intimacy? Moreover,
why does this phenomenon not lead to a feeling of confu-
sion of the two bodies? If affectivity describes an uncon-
trollable contagion, why does this basic phenomenon not
lead to a complete matching of our two interiorities? Ac-
cording to Richir, these issues constitute a core problem
of schizophrenia [27].
The Twofold Constitution of Corporeality
What is the relationship of affectivity with the body?
To unfold the preceding paradox, it is useful to distin-
guish, on the one hand, affectivity’s expression in the vis-
ible side of the body and, on the other hand, the intimate
schematic structure which allows the unremitting move-
ment of affectivity. In consequence, if affectivity is ex-
pressed outside the visible body, its phenomenological
roots are nonetheless to be located within the depths of
the “lived body.” There is a subtle play of affectivity be-
tween the visible and the invisible side of the “lived body.”
The “lived body” is neither the objective nor the physio-
logical body, but rather the body as it is experienced in its
immediate and mediating character. This is what Husserl
[38] called Leib, to distinguish it from Körper, the ana-
New Insight into Affectivity in
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PSP481516.indd 5
tomical body. The embodied condition of all human life
which he designated as Leiblichkeit will be translated here
by “corporeality.”
On the one hand, Richir indicates that corporeality is
involved in affectivity as the medium of our usual rela-
tionship to the world. As we have seen, embodied sche-
matism organizes the polarity of affective contact, steers
it to the world and, in return, brings it back to me, making
the experience thereby “mine.” It is this unremitting
movement of deployment and withdrawal across the cor-
poreality that ensures a continuous updating of experi-
ence. On the other hand, the body is the medium of the
visible expression of affectivity. Richir therefore propos-
es, in reference to Husserl [38, p. 331], to distinguish two
facets of corporeality, one as visible – the external-living
corporeality (Aussenleiblichkeit) – and the other as invis-
ible – the inner-living corporeality (Innenleiblichkeit)
[27]. The latter underpins the vital dynamics of the first.
If, with Richir, affectivity is lived from within and as mine
thanks to inner-living corporeality, it is otherwise ex-
pressed and visible from the outside thanks to external-
living corporeality. We must keep in mind that this dis-
tinction does not match the anatomic topology of the
Körper with an “inside” and an “outside,” taking for
granted the empirical border of the skin.
According to Richir, inner-living corporeality refers to
the “intimate and archaic depths of the psychic life” [27,
p. 62], which we understand as the tacit or “fossil” struc-
tures of the self. They refer to what Merleau-Ponty de-
scribed as “the invisible of the visible” [30, p. 303], “the
unconscious of the conscious,” that is the “negative”
which “is not nothing” [30, p. 199] but supports all em-
bodied relationships to the world [39]. External-living
corporeality is the medium by which affectivity is ex-
pressed in the posture of the Leib, the tone of the voice,
the choreography of gesture, in facial expression or pros-
ody, by a certain bodily style, etc. – but always without
speech and below the symbolically instituted language.
However, Richir warns us not to reduce affectivity to its
mere visible expression! Corporeality is never a pure ex-
teriority. Affectivity cannot be reduced to its expressive-
ness, since this would lead to a false and artificial expres-
sion, strange and mimed as a bad actor’s performance.
Metamorphosis of Affectivity in Schizophrenia
What does this imply for schizophrenia? According to
Richir, schizophrenia is characterized as a partial closure
of affective contact. It constitutes a mutation of living cor-
Psychopathology 5
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 poreality [27] and occurs as if corporeality had been “enu-
cleated,” that is, had lost its internal dimension, the inner-
living corporeality. In schizophrenia, affectivity becomes
blinded, thereby leaving corporeality without an interior-
ity able to ensure the mineness as well as the consistency
of self/world relatedness. Within Richir’s thought, this
implies two consequences. The first concerns the fact that
affective expressiveness appears as disconnected from its
phenomenological origin in inner-living corporeality.
Cut off from its contextual roots in the auto-coincident
center of experience, the expression of schizophrenic af-
fectivity appears as aberrant and disconnected from the
intersubjective atmosphere. The expression of schizo-
phrenic affectivity appears as aberrant and disconnected
from the intersubjective atmosphere. Affectivity goes
wrong, appearing as misplaced and inappropriate [13] –
it just does not sound true. Richir suggests that this is why
contact with a person with schizophrenia appears dis-
turbing and bizarre. The affective tone is not adjusted, the
mimicry seems robotic, the laughs unmotivated. Here are
some hints to understand the famous “praecox feeling” as
an expression of the schizophrenic metamorphosis of af-
fectivity.
The second consequence of the metamorphosis of af-
fectivity implies more directly the person’s intentional re-
lationship with the world and others in paranoid delu-
sion: Richir emphasizes that the enucleation of corporeal-
ity in schizophrenia leaves affectivity without a
phenomenological origin in the “here” of an embodied
privacy. In this case, “wild” affectivity is felt in pure pas-
sivity [27], as if it is coming from outside. Affectivity is
thus not recognized anymore as belonging to the subject
him/herself but only felt as an intrusive and arbitrary
event. As Naudin [40] mentioned, this metamorphosis
involves an inversion of the movement of intentionality
itself. Downstream the mutation of affectivity, the polar-
ity of constitution between subject and object turns inside
out and catastrophically overwhelms the self. Everything
goes as if affectivity, in its constitutive dimension, chang-
es direction. As if it would come from the outside, it in-
stitutes the experience of frank strangeness. Strangeness
is the proper sense of the stranger, of what is not-me. Con-
sequently, in paranoid delusion the embodied self can be-
come the objective pole of a foreign intentionality which
exercises, from the outside, its influences on the Leib. For
example, Karl, who suffers from paranoid delusions, at-
tributes to a girl (whom he met once in the context of his
work) a considerable influence on his daily life. This girl,
who lives at a distant place in another city, obliged him to
act by touching the back of his neck. When he first met
6 Psychopathology
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this girl, he instantly loved her and felt that she suddenly
stole his emotions, his enthusiasm, and his will. In Karl’s
own theory, the girl instantly made him incapable of feel-
ing anything (“this was also an act of God, present in the
hand of the girl). Three years later, Karl still feels nothing
inside of him and thinks that anything he does is pas-
sively acted on him and thus the result of an external in-
tentionality – precisely the girl’s will which animated his
body from the outside. He also thinks that he needs to
meet the girl again in order to be able to recover and ex-
perience true emotions again.
In our view, this Richirian understanding can be com-
pared with a recent phenomenological model on schizo-
phrenia called “ipseity disturbance.” This model refers to
two intrinsically related processes – “diminished self-af-
fection” and “hyperreflexivity.” The former refers to a
primary disturbance of the very sense of self-presence,
whereas the latter implies an exaggerated consciousness
of normally tacit and unnoticed experiences [11]. Both of
these processes describe a growing experiential distance
between the patient and his/her own experiences – a dis-
tance which emerges from a hardly describable experi-
ence of strangeness and may lead to frank objectifications
and delusional interpretations of one’s own subjective
states. The same processes are captured by the Richirian
idea of a metamorphosis of affectivity in schizophrenia
and, particularly, the notion of “enucleation of Leiblich-
keit,” understood as the subtraction of affectivity from
inner-living corporeality.
According to Richir, the passivity of the schizophrenic
Leib is such that corporeality seems to withdraw entirely
into the external corporeality, while the inner corporeal-
ity appears to be in danger of disappearing. This is also
why people with schizophrenia sometimes feel the threat
of frank annihilation or – like Karl – of being controlled
by the outside. It is something the clinician can feel as a
dull terror, a deep awkwardness that would forbid any
movement if we let it flow. It is the fear that the slightest
gesture could make both the self and the world collapse.
Conrad called this delusional affectivity [41] “Wahnstim-
mung,” distinguishing two phases: the “Trema,” charac-
terizing the predelusional experience, and the “apopha-
ny,” characterizing the full-blown psychosis [42]. In the
predelusional experience of the “Trema,” the intuition of
the catastrophe is imminent for the patient. It is an inef-
fable feeling that something is brewing up. The patient
senses that the slightest movement could trigger the ca-
tastrophe. It could come from anywhere, it could be born
anywhere; the only thing the patient is sure about is that
it will overwhelm him. It is maybe this strange and inde-
Gozé/Grohmann/Naudin/Cermolacce
18.10.2017 14:27:23
 scribable intuition, this disturbing invasion of privacy in
delusional affectivity, that is so evident in the “praecox
feeling” of schizophrenic encounter.
Conclusion
focusing on the alterations of contact and the experience
of a reversed movement of intentionality in schizophre-
nia. This calls for developing experimental investigations
in both directions: that of persons who experience schizo-
phrenia, and that of persons who encounter them and who
may diagnose on the basis of such a contagious affectivity.

Affectivity is an important direction of research in

schizophrenia and psychopathology. Richir’s work pro- Disclosure Statement
vides a new model, helping us switch from an exclusively
ego-centered to a more intersubjective perspective, now The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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New Insight into Affectivity in Psychopathology 7

Schizophrenia DOI: 10.1159/000481516

PSP481516.indd 7 18.10.2017 14:27:23