Altered Self and Altered Self Experience

Abstract

From a theoretical point of view the experiences in which the feeling of self is temporarily or permanently altered, pose opportunities to apply, critically verify or even renew theories of the self. The altered self, from a human point of view, gains its most relevance when it is related to psychological sufferings, their comprehension, relief or treatment. For some, self-alterations are desired as in technically achieved, or drug induced suspensions of a “fixed”, „regular“, „normalized“ or „orthodox“ experience of self. Altered Self and Altered Self-Experience (ASASE) explores different conceptual and clinical notions of the altered Self and different modes of altered self-experience in order to clarify the notion of self.
This book deals with questions on the self from an interdisciplinary point of view including decidedly divergent perspectives from different philosophical approaches to the Altered Self and Altered Self-Experience such as “neuro”-philosophies, philosophy of emotion, philosophy of psychiatry, phenomenology besides approaches from developmental psychology, mindfulness praxis, as well as religious studies, cinema and literature studies.
ASASE is the result of a selection of research papers of the project “Cognitive Foundation of the Self” with contributions of international scholars who mainly presented and discussed their work at the international workshop "Altered Self and Altered Self Experience" organized by Alexander Gerner (CFCUL) and Jorge Gonçalves (IFILNOVA) held at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCSH-UNL) at the institute of philosophy IFILNOVA on the 30th and 31st of May 2013 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Authors of this volume include: Dina Mendonça, Amber Griffioen, Sara F. Bizzaro, Niccola Zippel, João Fonseca, Alexander Gerner, Michele Guerra, Iwona Janicka, Gabriel Levy, Bernardo Palmerim, Michaela Hulstyn, Vera Pereira, Jorge Gonçalves, Pablo López-Silva Pio Abreu, Georg Northoff, Inês Hipólito and Anna Ciaunica.
Chapters include: Emotional Aspects of the self; Disembodiment of Self-experience: Out-of-Body Experience, Full-Body Illusion and Cinematic Experience; Altered Self-Experience in Religious Self-Experience, Intimacy, Self Reports of Drug-Experiments and Mindfulness Meditation; Gender and Altered Self-Experience; Acting Theories and the Self; Altered Self in Schizophrenia; Altered Social Selves: Autism and intersubjectivity