On the Microgenogesis of Schizophrenia

The theory of microgenesis, as described by Jason Brown and others, involves the hierarchical elaboration of the self and object world from a deep core of self, from unconsciousness to consciousnesss, through a simultaneous interval of time that continuously reiterates the development of the individual and the evolution of the organism. The core features of microgenesis place demands on our view of time, which are addressed and fully formulated here in terms of dynamical systems theory, and generalized to all dynamical systems, including abiotic systems. We further formulate microgenesis in the more general physical theories of information and the foundations of dynamical states in physics. A dissociative model of the microgenesis of schizophrenia is proposed based on this formulation, and a case study is presented utilizing this model. The neurobiology of schizophrenia is indicative of abnormalities in functional connectivity and activation of the brain. Psychologically, there is also an apparent disintegration or fragmentation of self, which we describe in terms of the association and dissociation entropies of the self-construct, presenting a simple paradigm of the schizophrenic break as a dynamically enduring process that arises when the dissociation entropy exceeds the association entropy or the self construct. The case study presented demonstrates the successful reduction of the level of self-dissociation using hypnotherapy. The dissociative construct of self is emphasized as a mi crogenetic model where dissociation is, fundamentally, a loss of cohesion and splitting of the self-construct. Mul tiple working hypotheses of schizophrenia, the self, and the broad scientific implications of microgenesis are outlined, and future directions of inquiry are addressed.