The Self in Psychopathology Special Topic Issue: Psychopathology 2015, Vol. 48, No. 5

The concept of the self has recently gained increasing attention in psychopathology for mainly two reasons: firstly, major mental disorders such as schizophrenia have been related to disturbances on a prereflective or basic level of self-awareness which has largely escaped the present criteriological diagnostic systems; secondly, the level of the social or narrative self, including aspects such as social identity, self-concept, self-image and self-esteem, is key to understanding a variety of disorders such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social phobia or borderline personality disorder. Moreover, the concept is suitable for integrating our attempts at describing the lived experience of mental illness which in the analysis always affects the patients in their self-awareness and self-relation. This special topic issue of Psychopathology brings together 10 papers from psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, phenomenological, neurocognitive and nosological perspectives that advance the understanding of the role of the self in conceptualization, diagnosis and treatment of psychopathology.