The leading symptom is a violation of self-consciousness, which is manifested by a distorted perception of one’s own personality as a whole with a feeling of loss of its unity or distortion and alienation of its individual physiological or mental manifestations.
Depersonalization can occur as an independent syndrome, and also be part of the structure of other psychopathological conditions.
There are the following forms of depersonalization:
- allopsychic;
- autopsychic;
- somatopsychic;
- anesthetic.
Allopsychic depersonalization is characterized by a distortion or loss of action, deeds, speech, movements, etc. are made as if automatically, their alienation takes place. Then the feeling of the unity of the “I” is lost (the feeling of duality). Patients note that two personalities seem to coexist in them.
Autopsychic depersonalization is characterized by a feeling of ever-increasing loss of the individual specificity of social communication. At first, there is a feeling of own change, accompanied by difficulty in contacts with people. Patients perceive themselves not as before, intellectually and spiritually impoverished, “strangers among people.” In the future, there is a feeling of complete loss of the idea of \u200b\u200bhis “I”. Patients complain that they have completely lost their own worldview, views, judgments, they have become faceless people.
Somatopsychic depersonalization is characterized by a feeling of alienation of the perception of individual physiological processes with the loss of their sensual brightness. It can manifest itself in the form of sleep alienation (if it is actually available), in the absence of a subjective feeling of relief and satisfaction from emptying during defecation or urination, when satiated with food, etc.
Anesthetic depersonalization (painful mental insensitivity). It is characterized by a painfully experienced by the patient sensation of a gradual blanching of higher emotions with their subsequent loss. Patients have a hard time feeling the loss of the possibility of rejoicing, sadness, even with events and facts that are especially important for them. There is a painful feeling of feeling the loss of emotions, not being able to feel pleasure, joy, love, hate, sadness.
Derealization is a distorted perception of objective reality as a whole without disturbing the perception of its individual parameters. This is a distorted worldview with a sense of lifelessness, unreality, alienation, unfamiliarity, fading surroundings. Derealization also includes: “already seen” – a short-term state in which in an unfamiliar situation there is a feeling that she is familiar, that he has already been in it; “never seen” – a short-term state in which in a familiar situation there is a feeling that he got into it for the first time; “already experienced” – a short-term state in which the complex of emotional experiences of a given moment is experienced as identical to something that has already taken place.