Affect-Logic, Embodiment, Synergetics, and the Free Energy Principle: New Approaches to the Understanding and Treatment of Schizophrenia
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Embodied Cognition
3. Synergetics
4. Free Energy Principle
5. Discussion: Towards a Translational Understanding of Psychosis
6. Therapeutic Implications
7. Open Questions
- Why do certain people react to critically rising emotional tensions with psychotic symptoms, whereas others respond with violence, fall into panic, or become depressed?
- Is there a specific schizophrenogenic vulnerability, and what does it consist of? It was long suspected by the affect-logic perspective, with special reference to Eugen Bleuler’s concept of “loose associations” (cf. disembodiment!), that there may be a partly genetically and partly biographically determined instability of the links between feeling and thinking. Of particular importance are those links that regulate basic interpersonal relations (in psychoanalytic terminology, the object representations). This hypothesis is at least partly supported by recent neurobiological findings revealing disturbed neuronal connections between frontal cortical and subcortical areas, the amygdalae [69].
- There is yet no direct quantitative evidence for the hypothesis that emotional tensions can lead to a phase transition into psychosis, as is proposed by affect-logic. It would be desirable to have objective physiological markers for emotional tension at hand.
- Why does the psychotic phenomenology differ so much from case to case that Eugen Bleuler, the creator of the term schizophrenia in 1911, used to speak of “the group of schizophrenias” [72]? Is this related to the changing influence of a great number of environmental variables or to some genetic or other biological variables?
- As a final and perhaps most important, but to our knowledge astonishingly neglected, question: How do both “spontaneous” and therapy-induced improvements and recoveries arise? According to long-term follow-up studies over several decades [48,50,73], full and lasting recoveries comprise, in the long run, at least one fourth of cases and may even amount to roughly two thirds under especially favorable conditions [51,74].
8. Endnotes
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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Ciompi, L.; Tschacher, W. Affect-Logic, Embodiment, Synergetics, and the Free Energy Principle: New Approaches to the Understanding and Treatment of Schizophrenia. Entropy 2021, 23, 1619. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23121619
Ciompi L, Tschacher W. Affect-Logic, Embodiment, Synergetics, and the Free Energy Principle: New Approaches to the Understanding and Treatment of Schizophrenia. Entropy. 2021; 23(12):1619. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23121619
Chicago/Turabian StyleCiompi, Luc, and Wolfgang Tschacher. 2021. "Affect-Logic, Embodiment, Synergetics, and the Free Energy Principle: New Approaches to the Understanding and Treatment of Schizophrenia" Entropy 23, no. 12: 1619. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23121619
APA StyleCiompi, L., & Tschacher, W. (2021). Affect-Logic, Embodiment, Synergetics, and the Free Energy Principle: New Approaches to the Understanding and Treatment of Schizophrenia. Entropy, 23(12), 1619. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23121619