Tese de doutoramento, Medicina (Psiquiatria e Saúde Mental), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Medicina, 2017This thesis investigates Anomalous Self-Experiences (ASE) testing new ways of their symbolization (e.g. Truman Symptoms), extending the detail of their subsets (e.g. abnormal bodily experiences) in Ultra-High-Risk (UHR) and further isolating them in new settings, such as anxiety disorders. The first aim was to study Truman Symptoms (TS) including their presence in UHR, their clinical implications and their relation with ASE. The second aim was to study the Abnormal Bodily Phenomena subset of ASE in UHR and to determine their clinical implications. The third aim was to identify if ASE occurred in Panic Disorder, to characterize their profile in this category considering possible differences from schizophrenia. Anomalous Self-Experiences are the most important contemporary conceptual and empirical research topic in the field of Schizophrenia. The set of these subjective phenomena constitutes particular traits of schizophrenic subjects which are present in the 1st episode of psychosis, in prodromal and in Ultra-High-Risk states. Outstandingly, such enquiries have raised the standard of the psychopathological examination as they’ve endorsed reconsidering subjective phenomena to increase validity of a psychiatric category without sacrificing reliability. This constituted the first step to sanction a new set of enquiries which contemplate other subjective phenomena in schizophrenia and also recognize the possible role of psychopathology of subjectivity in other disorders. This thesis stands upon the latter phenomenological entreaties in three separate approaches. It starts by taking on Truman Symptoms, a contemporary way of symbolizing depersonalization/derealization experiences, to identify their relevance in UHR and considering their relation with ASE. TS seem to represent a fresh cultural symbolization of the initial phase of psychosis and yet no empirical enquiry has set their bearing in the risk of psychosis, found possible analogies to ASE or a relation with other clinical measures. It continues by addressing the subset of bodily ASE, of which the relevance in a schizophrenic sample has been recently reconsidered. Deploying a new instrument – the Abnormal Bodily Phenomena Questionnaire – it examines the UHR states drawing the relation of these unique subjective elements with established ASE and other clinical measures. Lastly it probes the presence of ASE in a well-established, almost archetypal, nosological category of anxiety – Panic Disorder – aiming to contribute to the characterization of the psychopathological forms of their subjectivity. Such enquiry seems fundamental to the use of ASE in UHR populations where anxious settings are extant and therefore identifying particular clusters which could be representative of more severe disturbances of “basic-self” as crucial for their clinical relevance.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, SFRH/SINTD/95675/2013
