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

This carefully reasoned essay by Stephens and Graham shows how lines of thought emerging from Anglo-American philosophy can converge on traditions in Continental phenomenology. Many of the distinctions and claims that Stephens and Graham are seeking to establish display profound similarities with ideas developed by Edmund Husserl and his followers.

In 1913, Husserl began to distinguish between "active" and "passive" experiences in mental life (Husserl, 1982). For Husserl, the term mental life (Bewusstsein) designated a single unified whole of active and passive mental processes. The active processes in a mental life are those actively produced by a mental agent. The passive mental processes are those that occur in the same mental life but occur only "automatically" and are thus not produced by any mental agency. Husserl called the mental agent that produced the active processes the "ego." He thought that an ego inhabited each human mental life and actively produced some of its experiences. Later phenomenologists, such as Aron Gurwitsch and Jean-Paul Sartre, disputed the mental existence of such an ego. Gurwitsch (1966) and Sartre (1957) developed non-egological accounts of mental life. Yet both Gurwitsch and Sartre continued to accept Husserl's distinction between active and passive experiences in mental life.

We may thus translate the claims of Stephens and Graham into Husserlian terms. A person experiences thought insertion when active processes occur in the person's mental life but the person does not experience them as produced by her ego (her mental agency). The person may seek to explain such occurrences by ascribing them to another active ego (e.g., Eamonn Andrews).

Stephens and Graham have yet to account, however, for at least two other items that their essay presupposes. First, their essay explains the experience of "my-ness" by attributing it to agency (p. 9). This would entail that only my active experiences are mine. But surely my passive mental processes are also "mine" in some legitimate sense. That is to say, surely both my passive and active experiences are "mine" in the sense of being occurrences within a single mental life. Stephens and Graham have yet to account for the unity of a mental life composed of both passive and active processes. Their essay presupposes this unity because their argument hinges on claiming that active processes occur in a person's mental life and yet she herself does not actively produce the (inserted) process of "thought." In what sense is this her mental life despite the fact that she experiences herself as not actively producing these particular mental events? Husserl sought to account for the unity of a single mental life by describing the complex processes of "time-consciousness" that relate past, present, and future experiences, both passive and active (Husserl 1966). Following Husserl, I would suggest that we distinguish two senses of "my-ness." "My-ness 1" consists in my experience that my ego actively produces some of my mental processes: "my-ness 1" signifies my ego. "My-ness 2" consists in the unity of my mental life as a whole (including my ego as merely a part) constituted by inner time-consciousness.

Second, Stephens and Graham treat self-awareness as if it were synonymous with introspection. I doubt that the term introspection can sufficiently describe all forms of self-awareness. As usually employed, the term signifies active self-awareness. Husserl (1966), Gurwitsch (1985), and Sartre (1956) again have explicated distinctions between active and passive self-awareness. If Stephens and Graham are right, a person can experience thoughts as not one's own without being actively engaged in introspection—without being actively engaged in examining one's own thought processes. The experience of thought insertion does, of course, require self-awareness (i.e., awareness of one's experiences); it simply does not require active self-awareness. If active introspection were required in order to experience thoughts as not one's own, then one would not have the experience of thought insertion unless one were introspecting, that is, actively examining one's thought processes. Suffice it to note here, however, that the distinction between active...