The disruption of the 'sense of self' in schizophrenia: potential links with disturbances of information processing.

It is argued in this paper that the disruption of one aspect of the 'sense of self' in schizophrenia, that relating to the continuity of conscious experience and the organization of action, may be linked to current models of the information-processing disturbance prominent in the disorder. The 'sense of self' in normal persons in part results from the consistent manner in which contextually appropriate stored material operates of sensory input. If, as has been proposed, there is in schizophrenia a disruption in the moment-by-moment integration of these sources of information, then a disturbance in the 'sense of self' is implicit in the cognitive model. A consideration of action identification theory (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987) permits further links to be made, since higher-level action identities are viewed as being practically synonymous with self-defining significance. It is suggested that the information-processing disturbance results in a tendency to low-level action identification and a gradually developing instability in the sense of personal identity.