Self in Recovery: a phenomenological perspective on schizophrenia – SelfRecovery

Theoretical, Empirical, and Participatory Approaches to Self-Recovery in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders

Axis 1 – Theoretical Phenomenology

This project develops a conceptual framework integrating diverse descriptions of self-recovery in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSDs) through three phenomenological approaches: static (analyzing the lived experience of recovery), genetic (exploring the formation and disruption of ipseity), and generative (examining the intersubjective conditions of self-emergence and continuity). The study will assess existing models of ipseity disorders, focusing on imagination, affectivity, and embodiment, and investigate how trust in oneself and the environment can be restored through social and therapeutic mechanisms.

Axis 2 – Qualitative Research on Self-Recovery in SSDs

The empirical approach uses qualitative methods to examine both the personal experience of ipseity and the material conditions that shape recovery. It builds on the static, genetic, and generative phenomenological framework (see Axis 1) to explore: (1) the subjective experience of self-recovery, (2) its dynamic processes, and (3) the institutional and social conditions that influence it.

A participatory approach ensures that the study remains user-controlled, involving a peer researcher who brings lived experience to the research. Participants will be recruited from Immanuel Klinik in Rüdersdorf, peer-support networks in Germany (Ex-In Deutschland), Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse, and Groupes d’Entraide Mutuelle (GEM) in Toulouse, France.

Axis 3 – Interdisciplinary and Participatory Scientific Coordination

This axis represents the greatest scientific challenge, as it involves coordinating researchers from different epistemological backgrounds and ensuring meaningful collaboration between professional and peer researchers. A central issue is preventing the appropriation of lived experiences by academic researchers (psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers), who might construct general models of disturbance and recovery without full participation from those directly affected, leading to epistemic injustice (Drozdzowicz, 2020).

The study integrates multiple narratives of recovery, including philosophical perspectives, third-person accounts from practitioners, and first- and third-person perspectives from peer researchers. These viewpoints are considered equally valid contributions to understanding self-recovery.

The challenge is to facilitate a productive dialogue that respects differences without imposing asymmetry. The project avoids both epistemological dominance and pure relativism by adopting a perspectivist approach, using hermeneutic dialogue to symmetrically integrate philosophical, experiential, and medical perspectives. Inspired by cultural anthropology, this comparative approach aims to uncover what these narratives reveal about the lived experience of recovery.

Preliminary results :
Our preliminary research confirms that people living with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSDs) can experience experiential recovery, involving a transformation in their relationship with the illness within a process of well-being. This finding challenges the notion of an inevitable decline often associated with the diagnosis and its poor prognosis. Instead, both the literature and our results show that recovery is a unique process, marked by relapses and difficulties, and should be understood as a personal journey rather than merely the progression of a disease.

Initially, we assumed that recovery primarily involved the personal self and the narratives structuring identity. However, our qualitative interviews revealed that individuals experiencing recovery emphasize the crucial role of collective and social dimensions. Contrary to dominant approaches, this process is not purely individual; it depends on a supportive social environment that fosters connection and subjectivation.

To study experiential recovery, a participatory research approach is essential. People with lived experience possess an expertise derived from their own journey. As such, we have integrated two peer researchers in France and Germany, recruited for their “insider” knowledge. Their contributions help refine the research focus, challenge academic biases, and enrich the confrontation of perspectives.

However, organizing participatory research requires adjustments to prevent social and epistemic injustices within the team. We strive to establish a horizontal and respectful dynamic that serves knowledge construction. In this sense, our research is performative: it examines schizophrenia recovery through its own collaborative and interdisciplinary structure.

Expected results and prospect :
- To create an integrative model of experiential recovery in SSDs based on a
discussion between mental health services users, mental health professionals and
actors in the social field.
- To identify factors (individual, collective and/or institutional) that may be levers for a
person's recovery and that may be the subject of targeted public health policy.
- to vitalize the translational dialogue between clinical sciences, social sciences and
theoretical philosophy, particularly in the growing field of recovery-oriented practices.
- to participate in the empowerment of mental health services users in psychiatry
research and in the creation of scientific and philosophical narratives about them
- to structure an interdisciplinary European pole of excellence in research on
recovery-oriented practice in schizophrenia.

Books :

Gozé, T. (2024). Phénoménologie et schizophrénie : Recherches pour une anthropologie du contact (Préface de I. Fazakas). Paris : Éditions Hermann.

Gozé, T., Englebert, J., Amadei, F., & Wykretowicz, H. (Eds.). (2025). Phénoménologie du soin. Paris : Hermann.

Articles of peer review journals :

Fazakas, I., Thoma, S., Bois, M., & Gozé, T. (Under review). Shaun Gallagher’s Pattern Theory of Self: A Critical Review from a Transcendental Standpoint. Philosophical Psychology.

Thoma, S., et al. (Under review). In need for revision. Why traditional phenomenological single case studies are not a recommendable role model. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.

Fazakas, I., Bois, M., & Gozé, T. (2024). Giving thickness to the minimal self: Coenesthetic depth and the materiality of consciousness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09951-w

Gozé, T., & Fazakas, I. (2024). Anthropologie phénoménologique et psychiatrie. Encyclopédie Médico-Chirurgicale.

Fazakas, I. (2025). Depersonalization, alienation, and depresentation in Husserl and beyond. Husserl Studies. doi.org/10.1007/s10743-024-09355-x

Scholz, T., & Thoma, S. (2024). Book review: Marie Koenig, Le rétablissement dans la schizophrénie. Sozialpsychiatrische Informationen, 4.

Fazakas, I. (2024). Bachelard et la matière des rêveries. Annales de phénoménologie – Nouvelle Série, 22, 35-71.

Fazakas, I. (2024). The flesh of stories of pain and suffering: Towards a hermeneutics of the ante-predicative. Ricoeur Studies, 15(2). doi.org/10.5195/errs.2024.674

Chapters :

Gozé, T. (2024). Anomalies du Minimal Self et les voies d’une psychothérapie minimale des schizophrénies. In P. Cabestan & A. Urfer-Parnas (Eds.), Phénoménologie de la schizophrénie - Hommage à Josef Parnas (pp. xx-xx). Paris : Éditions du Cercle Herméneutique.

Popa, D., & Fazakas, I. (2024). Tengelyi, László (1954–2014). In N. de Warren & T. Toadvine (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Springer, Cham. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47253-5_447-1

The project addresses the process of recovery in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs). The aim of the proposed research is to design a conceptual heuristical framework capable of describing what it is like to recover from SSDs, what processes are in play in recovery and what are their conditions of possibility. Based on a phenomenological framework, we focus on experiential recovery. In such a perspective the question of recovery from SSDs is related to the central notion of the self. It has been argued that SSDs can be phenomenologically described as self-disorders or ipseity disturbances. The most central aspects of such disturbances manifest themselves as diminished self-affection, hyperreflexivity and a loss of the subject’s hold or grip on the world and on their own experience. In the light of the current understanding of SSDs as ipseity disturbances, the phenomenology of recovery should account for the possibility for the self to reestablish its hold on the world and on their own experience. How is it possible for a disturbed self to re-establish itself as a self-coincident member of society, to reappropriate and reformulate their own identity in order to inhabit the world? It is to these issues that our research proposes to seek answers with the aid of theoretical phenomenology and phenomenological inspired qualitative research. The methodology of this interdisciplinary project will be twofold. On the one hand, we will conduct a phenomenological analysis of a philosophical type that will allow us to identify the operative concepts of the scientific and philosophical literature that allow us to describe ipseity. On the other hand we will conduct several qualitative surveys to explore the singular way people recover. We will use qualitative interview methods inspired by phenomenology (IPA, IPSE, PGQR) and methods from cultural anthropology (go-along, focus group). This will offer a description of what it is like to live with a disturbed self and what it is like to recover (this step corresponds to a static analysis). The second step focuses on the processes in play in ipseity disturbances and in recovery grasping these experiences in their temporal unfolding. The description of these processes calls for a genetic approach in phenomenology. Finally, the third step thematizes pre- or a- subjective structures that make it possible for the self to recover. This step focuses on the intersubjective, narrative and institutional background that functions as a transcendental support for the emergence and the institutions of ipseity. The method here to be applied is generative phenomenology. With this threefold approach, we aim to investigate the processes in play in recovery comparing them to those in function in the ontogeny of the self and the institutions of its narrative, imaginative and social identities. We expect that this will lead to the emergence, inductively, of innovative strategies that can then be transferred to care protocols.