Abnormal time experience, bizarre delusions and verbal-acoustic hallucinations in schizophrenia

The integrity of time consciousness is the condition of possibility of the identity through time of an object of perception as well as of the person who perceives it. I will present our findings about abnormal time experience (ATE) in people with schizophrenia. These data may support the following hypothesis: if the continuity of temporal experience disintegrates (of which ATE are experiential manifestations), overarching meaningful units are no longer available, thereby creating temporal gaps, e.g., in one's stream of consciousness. In some cases, thoughts that are no longer experienced as embedded in one's stream of thoughts are experienced as, e.g., thought interferences, blockages, insertion or withdrawal. These symptoms cannot be explained as a mere disturbance of attention or comprehension at the level of semantic combinations. Rather, the disturbance could be searched for at a more basic level where the temporal coherence of conscious awareness is constituted. A failure of the constitutive temporal synthesis may create micro-gaps of conscious experience. In the most severe cases, thoughts or other mental phenomena that are no longer embedded in the continuity of basic self-experience may appear in consciousness as “erratic blocks” and experienced as being inserted, or, if further externalized, as auditory hallucinations (“voices”). This coheres with the hypothesis that a breakdown of temporality may be bound up with the breakdown of prereflexive self-awareness. Disclosure of interest The author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.