Abstract: In this talk, I cross-analyze a particular feature of intense musical absorption, ex-static absorption against the tendency to hyper-reflection found on the schizophrenia spectrum. The former analysis is based on qualitative “phenomenological” interviews with the “Danish String Quartet”, while the latter comes from phenomenological psychopathology.
For patients with schizophrenia, phenomenological psychopathologists such as Sass and Parnas maintain that they pathologically hyper-reflect as a result of an altered sense of self, namely a weakened self-affection. Inversely, I speculate that musicians in ex-static absorption experience similar states as a result of a superior bodily control and self-affection which affords them the opportunity of experimenting with their own consciousness.
Bio: Simon H?ffding is a post doc at the RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion working on understanding the phenomenology and physiology of musical absorption. His results are published in Musicae Scientiae, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Topoi, Synthese, Mind and Language and Journal of Consciousness Studies and many are summed up in his recent monograph A Phenomenology of Musical Absorption (Palgrave MacMillan)