PW01-169 - Affective Attunement. Towards An Alternative Explanation Of Delusion

Abstract

In the course of this paper it will be argued that the Cotard's and Capgras' delusions results from an anomalous perceptual experience, caused by the lack of affective responsiveness. The central difference seems to lie in the attributional manner: Capgras patients interpret the resultant experiences in a paranoid, projective attributional manner, while Cotard patients interpret them in a depressive, introjective attributional manner.

The main idea of this paper is that a philosophical analyse of anomalous experience in these delusions can help us to modify the traditional assumptions about the primacy of cognitive or theoretical attitudes to the world. I will argue that primacy is to be granted to an affective attunement to the world, which functions as a subpersonal mechanism of qualitative bodily responses. What these delusions show us is that the disruption of this affective attunement leads to a cognitive deficit, in which the patient accepts a belief that is incoherent with the rest of her believes.