Kafka, paranoic doubles and the brain: hypnagogic vs. hyper-reflexive models of disrupted self in neuropsychiatric disorders and anomalous conscious states

Abstract

Kafka's writings are frequently interpreted as representing the historical period of modernism in which he was writing. Little attention has been paid, however, to the possibility that his writings may reflect neural mechanisms in the processing of self during hypnagogic (i.e., between waking and sleep) states. Kafka suffered from dream-like, hypnagogic hallucinations during a sleep-deprived state while writing. This paper discusses reasons (phenomenological and neurobiological) why the self projects an imaginary double (autoscopy) in its spontaneous hallucinations and how Kafka's writings help to elucidate the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. I further discuss how the proposed mechanisms may be relevant to understanding paranoid delusions in schizophrenia. Literature documents and records cognitive and neural processes of self with an intimacy that may be otherwise unavailable to neuroscience. To elucidate this approach, I contrast it with the apparently popularizing view that the symptoms of schizophrenia result from what has been called an operative (i.e., pre-reflective) hyper-reflexivity. The latter approach claims that pre-reflective self-awareness (diminished in schizophrenia) pervades all conscious experience (however, in a manner that remains unverifiable for both phenomenological and experimental methods). This contribution argues the opposite: the "self" informs our hypnagogic imagery precisely to the extent that we are not self-aware.

Figure 1

Methods of the natural and the human-historical sciences. Opposed directionality between explanation (arrow pointing to smallest circle) and understanding (arrow pointing from smallest circle), indicating the methods of the natural and human-historical sciences, respectively. Natural sciences proceed in terms of the 'classic reductionist hierarchy' from sociology to psychology to biology, chemistry and physics. They generally proceed from larger, rather nebulous wholes to seek out explanatory relationships between ever-smaller parts of these wholes. Conversely, understanding is contextual by situating parts in ever-greater wholes, even if these totalities are ultimately unavailable to the individual perspective but transcend or 'encompass' it. Each discipline requires an 'abstraction, reduction to and idealization (i.e., "naming," Husserl) of the 'objects' or entities of its discipline (which exclude the objects of neighboring disciplines). Gray areas between disciplines indicate interdisciplinary relationships which are often more fuzzy involving destabilizing relationships within interdisciplinary vocabulary and concepts. φ, physis (φύσις), physical-natural sciences; β, bios (βίος), biological sciences; ψ, psyche (ψυχή), psychological-cognitive sciences; π, polis (πόλις), historical-cultural sciences. From Mishara [6]. Reprinted with permission from Wolters Kluwer.

Figure 2

Woodcut from the Alchemical Work, Rosarium Philosophorum (1550) indicating one of the stages in the alchemical process: the Tomb. This resembles the strange union between the doctor and his patient in Kafka's A Country Doctor, which is at once a dying and being reborn.

Figure 3

Woodcut from the Alchemical Work, Rosarium Philosophorum (1550): the Mercurial fountain, which Jung (1969) interprets as symbolizing the self as the ongoing integrational effort of a conjunction of opposites.

Figure 4

Example of Rococo Art Breaking Frame, Phillip Friederich von Hetsch's Allegory of Merit Accompanied by Nobility and Virtue (1758).