Abstrakt
Mental disorders are edge phenomena of human mental life. From the point of view of psychology and psychiatry, mental disorders are studied in order to be cured.
However, conceptualization of their origins is still far from comprehensive. Psychiatry and neurolobiology are able (to some extent) influence severity of mental disorders and accounts of symptoms are available, but it seems this approach has difficulties with theoretising origins of these symptoms.
Semiotics, as outlined by Charles Sanders Peirce and other authors, understands mental life as consisting of signs. Peirce suggests theory of signs and study of their specific features.
In the proposed presentation, I'd like to outline possibilities of using the concepts and terms of Peirce's semiotics in the study of mental disorders, specifically schizophrenia and it's symptoms. I thus propose to study symptoms of mental disorders with regard of their sign nature.
I suggest that this can help for better understanding of their nature, for symptoms of mental disorders have not yet been studied from this perspective. For some psychiatrists (i.e.
Chris Frith), symptoms of schizophrenia (such as hallucinations, delusions, etc.) are connected with inner speech disorders. However, Frith and other authors haven't yet utilized semiotics for further analysis of these phenomena.
I shall argue the thesis that symptoms of schizophrenia derive from and can be explained as derangement of indexicality. Thus the underlying structure of (otherwise different in content) hallucinations can be understood as dysfunction of indexicality of core reality sign complex, delusions as hypertrophy of specific sign complex indexicality etc.
However the concept of indexicality is inseparable from the concept of the sign, for indexicality for Peirce can be understood as a type of relationship between specific aspects of the sign (namely representamen and object), which opens field for wider range of interpretation.