Self-Consciousness, Mental Agency, and the Clinical Psychopathology of Thought Insertion

This paper shows that self-consciousness actually contains two distinct experiences: the sense of being the subject of consciousness, and the sense of being the agent of mental events within one's psychological history. This claim is based mainly on an analysis of psychopathological data concerning thought insertion, or thought alienation. These data may also seem to support the separability of self-consciousness from introspection. It is shown, however, that the data do not support separability. The experience of thought insertion requires the sense of being the subject of consciousness.