gms | German Medical Science

We have diagnosed and treated schizophrenia for over a century but have not come very far in alleviating its burden. This may be due to a simple, but essential aspect, widely ignored in conventional research: the moving body.

Focusing on objective observation of either the body (medicine) or the mind (psychology), traditional research on health fails to integrate the prereflective, corporeal experience of individuals. The recent embodiment approach has helped to overcome the body-mind dualism and inspired innovative treatments. Defining schizophrenia as disembodiment contrasts current neuropsychological theories, yet hasn’t resulted in a fundamental change of research methods.

How do we let the body talk before the mind interferes? How do we uncover the prereflective, the corporeal?

Contrasting empirical sciences, the arts (particularly the performing ones) and consequently artistic research have always appreciated the moving body as a source of knowledge and expression. Foucault describes it as an independent, poetic form of knowledge, capable of revealing the concealed or the flipside of objective rationality.

In order to make implicit movement characteristics and a prereflective body knowledge of individuals with schizophrenia visible, tangible and ultimately understandable, I propose a research design that approaches the moving body in two seemingly anthithetic ways: (A) A quantitative-empirical one and (B) an artistic one.