Abstract / Summary
Psychiatric disorders remain a major global health challenge, yet research does not adequately incorporate first-person lived experience. A central component of lived experience is the sense of self, which is often profoundly altered in psychiatric conditions and can serve as a prognostic phenomenological marker, particularly in psychosis. In psychiatry, the most minimal form of self, i.e., the basic-self, is conventionally conceptualized as an enduring, individuated subjectivity defined by perspectival ownership and a clear boundary between self and world. Conversely, some contemplative frameworks, including mindfulness and certain non-dual perspectives, view the basic-self as a dynamic, conditioned process, such that experience need not be fundamentally structured by a self–world distinction or a fixed perspective. Drawing on phenomenological evidence from published first-person reports, we argue that the contemplative view can illuminate previously unexplored mechanisms underlying basic-self disturbances in psychosis-spectrum disorders. We formalize this view in a testable meta-awareness - equanimity (MA–E) framework of self that maps key phenomenological overlaps and distinctions across mindfulness, psychosis, and psychedelic experiences. Finally, we outline future research directions for validating and operationalizing the MA–E framework with implications for intervention design in psychosis.