The Self and Alien Self in Psyche and Soma

This paper compares presentations of disorders of the sense of body ownership and agency from psychoanalytic and neurological perspectives to demonstrate similarities in symptomatology proposing these similarities arise from adjustments in Friston's generative model of self-organization and selfhood. The implications for the analytic model of the Self, for clinical practice and for neuroscience research are considered. Patients with narcissistic disorders use projective defences resulting in a disordered sense of what belongs to whom. This applies to mind and body of self and other and is central to understanding transference and countertransference. Clinical observations of this disordered sense of ownership and agency mirror findings in neurological disorders. This paper proposes that in both neurological and psychological disorders Friston's ‘internal generative model’ of selfhood is adjusted. Further to this whilst this adjustment may be either neurogenic or psychogenic, the final neural mechanism and symptomatic outcome are similar. On the basis of these observations the paper compares the concept of the Self from Jungian and psychoanalytic perspectives. Finally, the implications for the concept of the death instinct and Britton's concept of Xenophobia are explored along with the implications of these observations for clinical practice.