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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1546453
Autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia: a phenomenological comparison
Provisionally accepted
Tim Schnitzler *
Thomas Fuchs - Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany
A mental illness can lead to a distortion in a person’s capacity to engage with the world and other people in a variety of ways. This is particularly relevant to schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which are not only historically linked, but also overlap clinically in several respects. From a phenomenological point of view, the differences or similarities between both disorders have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Schizophrenic autism can be characterized as a disorder of three interconnected dimensions, namely the self, intersubjectivity and the self’s relationship with the life-world. The present work therefore investigates differences in these three dimensions between the two disorders. One key difference is that the self-world relationship in schizophrenia can be described as unstable or fragmented, whereas in ASD it is considered stable. Finally, possible differences in the experience of delusions are discussed as a change in the self’s relationship with the world.
Keywords: Phenomenological psychopathology, Self-disorder, embodied intersubjectivity, Schizophrenic Autism, delusion
Received: 16 Dec 2024; Accepted: 03 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Schnitzler and Fuchs. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tim Schnitzler, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany
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