Re-Schematizing Pre-Reflective Consciousness

Abstract

This thesis aims at constructing an ontology of pre-reflective and reflective modes of consciousness in an attempt to understand how pre-reflective responses to certain stimuli become schematized through reflection. After mapping movements made in phenomenology that allow for the body to be our departure point for analysis, this paper focuses especially on the role that affectivity plays in motivating a reflective act, and how that reflective act may habituate new behaviors over time. To do so, I look to Jeffrey Schwartz's theory and research on his patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and through phenomenological methodology show why his Four-Step Method for overcoming the disorder has ontological grounding.