Negative symptoms in psychosis: failure and construction of narratives

ABSTRACT Background Despite considerable scientific interest in the negative symptoms of psychosis, the subjective dimension of these experiences has barely been studied. Methods This paper aims at addressing this shortcoming by means of an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of semi-structured interviews with 12 participants with a psychotic disorder. Results The analysis yielded three major themes: 1) negative symptoms can be conceptualized as a failure of narratives to account for perplexing experiences participants are confronted with in psychosis; 2) negative symptoms challenge participants to make sense of them with meta-narratives; 3) participants highlight a withdrawn attitude towards life after psychosis. Discussion The standard characterization of negative symptoms as a loss of normal functioning should be revised, as this does not match participants’ subjective experiences. Negative symptoms rather represent hard to verbalize experiences. This difficulty of linguistic expression is not 20 a shortcoming of the person experiencing them, but characteristic of the experiences themselves.