The disrupted ‘we’: Schizophrenia and collective intentionality

In various ways, schizophrenia seems to involve an anomalous form of collective intentionality. Many patients report notable difficulties in establishing and maintaining relationships to others, which often may lead to social withdrawal, isolation, and profound feelings of solitude. What is puzzling is of course not that patients, despite their interpersonal difficulties, participate in or try to participate in various social activities, but that some of these social activities appear quite tolerable to the patients, whereas other activities seem almost unbearable. The aim of this paper is to shed light on this aberrant social behaviour by clarifying the relations between schizophrenia and collective intentionality.