A review of psychoanalytic writings reveals a vibrant but overlooked history of descriptions of the phenomenology of schizophrenia. In this paper we suggest that neglect of these important psychoanalytic contributions to the understanding of alterations of self-experience in schizophrenia is at least partially due to an absence of sufficient operational definitions by which to study these constructs. We then detail an emergent line of research from the neurosciences investigating processes, referred to as metacognition, by which persons develop, evolve, and reflect upon mental representations of self and others. The findings from this growing line of research are convergent with psychoanalytic descriptions of self-experience in schizophrenia, and may provide a method to guide investigation of concepts found in psychoanalytic literature. This convergence presents a number of implications for both contemporary understandings of schizophrenia, future research, as well as psychoanalytically and nonpsychoanalytically informed treatments of schizophrenia.