Understanding the lived experience of illusory social agents in psychosis : a corpus linguistics analysis

Several studies have shown that positive symptoms of psychosis are highly social in nature. The presence of illusory social agents in psychosis have been reported in studies spanning a number of years in different cultures and etiologies. However, there is currently a limited understanding of the social phenomenology of psychosis and the presence of illusory social agents in the positive symptoms. Part 1 of this thesis is a conceptual introduction that provides an overview of the literature on the social phenomenology of psychosis. The introduction highlights gaps in the literature, including a need for more research that explores illusory social agent representation in the lived experience of psychosis. Part 2 is an interdisciplinary study exploring the characterisation of illusory social agents in the lived experience of community and ward based participants. Corpus linguistics was used to analyze phenomenological data that was gathered using semi-structured interviews. Frameworks from Clinical Psychology and Corpus Linguistics were used to interpret the findings. Illusory social agents were represented as active and dynamic beings that engaged in a range of verbal, mental, behavioural and material processes. Part 2 discusses the impact of these behaviours on participants lives. It concludes with clinical and research implications and ideas for future research. Part 3 offers the considered thoughts on the process of undertaking the study. It considers the strengths and limitation of the study and offers thoughts on how these could be addressed by future researchers.