Fascinating writing … but I have a couple of questions.

Can’t what you are describing as ‘abnormal’ and “seeing their own body from the outside” be, in fact, a normal everyday experience?

Looking at the problem in a different way, seeing the body from the outside is what is phenomenologically primary. When someone looks at their body, or anything else for that matter, it is seen ‘from the outside’! In fact, if one tries to assume the opposite, that vision occurs from the inside, on the back of the retina, in the brain, etc., then the paradox becomes: if all of this is in my brain and eyes, then why don’t I see the world inside my head?

In fact, what you are describing as normal, I would phenomenologically call psychotic, and what you are describing as abnormal, can be shown to be normal and everyday. In fact, contrary to your statements that we never think about body ownership, I think we think about this all the time in quite normal circumstances: I AM not simply a body, but I HAVE a body. And anyone who cannot make this difference consciously, not unconsciously, cannot play with their image in a mirror or put on make up. It is really as simple as that: we relate to our body from the exterior both as image and materiality as ownership just as we see from the outside. At the turn of the century, Nacke, then Freud, called this ownership of a body and exterior gaze narcissism.

So if what I am suggesting is true, no doubt I am stating things too briefly and dogmatically for lack of space and time, then what is all this talk about ‘out of body experiences’ as it is recounted in the popular imaginary?

I would agree that the popularly recounted ‘out of body experience’ is, in fact, a delusion, but not for the same reason as you (for me, it has nothing to do with what is inside a brain). For a delusion is a reaction, not the cause. That is, the delusion is trying to cure the initial psychotic position of the psychological subject which thinks it ‘sees from the inside’. That is to say, an ‘out of body experience’ is nothing more than a delirious return to what is phenomenological primary: seeing from the outside. In the end, a delirium is not itself part of psychosis, but an attempt to correct one.

In any case, thanks for publishing the article since it brings out the difficulty of communicating such important subjects ‘outside’ — to the general public.

S