Presentation to the conference of The Association for Psychosocial Studies,
December 2014
1. Introduction
The title of my Ph.D. Study, is
Habits of body activity in everyday life among individuals suffering from
schizophrenia
This paper is about PhD project and examples to illustrate how empirical findings from my
fieldwork can be interpreted in a theoretical perspective.
The point I want to stress is the following:
Changes of habits in everyday life have to be seen in relation to life conditions of the
subject, to patterns of everyday life and to an unreflective bodily presence.
I want to highlight the importance of the body when professionals, in their practice, work
with processes of changes among people with schizophrenia. In addition I will focus upon
a theoretical understanding of the body and of everyday life in a psychosocial perspective.
I am only on the way in my research process and therefore my theoretical and analytical
points are temporary.
2. Description of the study. Purpose, design and methods.
My aim is to investigate the organizing and contents of everyday life among people with
schizophrenia. How habits, bodily movements and practice can be understood as
interwoven with everyday life.
My interest is furthermore to investigate the complex possibilities of creating changes of
everyday life.
The background of my interest in processes of changes is that people with schizophrenia
often live a life characterized of inactivity and withdrawal, and are less bodily active than
other people.
Individuals with schizophrenia furthermore report about a perception of their body image
that is changed or distorted (Fuchs & Schlimme 2009, Fuchs 2010, Moltke 2010). As a
consequence, the possibilities of these people to unfold, including using the body in their
everyday life, will often be limited.
In addition the informants in my study take part in a randomized research project called
CHANGE.
In project CHANGE they receive a lifestyle intervention and are offered a coach during one
year. In project CHANGE the coaches try to motivate the participants to involve
themselves in processes of changes of their level of psychical activity, smoking cessation
and their diet.
In project CHANGE the experiences of the participants creating changes in their habits are
made visible.
Illustration of the process of my fieldwork and my interviews.
3. The theoretical understanding of the body, habits and everyday life.

Theoretically I depart from the phenomenology of the body, inspired by MerleauPonty. In his understanding the body is seen as a fundament to be present in the
world, to act, to realize and to experience (Mearley-Ponty 2011).
This understanding implies that disturbances in the body image, that often are a
consequence of schizophrenia make an impact on the basic experience of ‘mineness’ of a human. The pre-reflective experience of I am being me. Individuals with
schizophrenia may have experiences that their body are alien to themselves or of
daily movements like reaching out and lift a cup, must be thought about before they
can be managed. Such experiences can be understood as an expression of
reduced experience of a spontaneous mine-ness and disembodiment (Fuchs 2010).
Secondly

An interest for the naturalness of everyday life. That means everything that the
subject doesn’t question, the unnoticed acts. In other words the commonsense
understandings of everyday life. In my understanding commonsense is not alone, at
a level of cognition and realization, but also on a level of acts and practice.
In a phenomenological understanding habits are basically funded in an unreflective
way of relating yourself to the world, achieved during life and therefor formed in an
interaction with the life conditions and life history of the subject (Crossley 2013).
Thirdly

The phenomenology doesn’t include a theory of creation of and importance of social
structures. The theory of everyday life is also used inside the tradition of critical
theory rooted in the Frankfurter school. In this tradition life history, life conditions
and societal structures are integrated in the understanding of everyday life.
The concept of everyday consciousness is developed by the German social
phycologist Thomas Leithauser, among others (Leithäuser 2000)
The concept of everyday conciseness means that the consciousness of humans in
a lot of cases is able to conceive the contradictions, the fragmentations and the
limitations that characterize everyday life.
In my opinion the concept of everyday consciousness is understood as a concept of
the commonsense understandings and habits of everyday life that include a
psychological and a societal perspective.

Fourthly
In my way of thinking habits are understood as a bodily practice. Habits are ways in
which humans relate to everyday life and cope with challenges. Combining a
phenomenological and a critical theoretical point of departure I understand habits as
being expressions of ways in which the subjects spontaneously interact and act
upon the background of their life history and actual life conditions.
4. An extract of a temporary analysis
The following is a detailed description. In my PhD study as well as in this presentation I
have chosen to let my empirical findings gain a lot of attention and let my analytical
considerations be open to investigation in my forthcoming fieldwork.
A story about a man called Bjarne
Bjarne is around 30 years old and live in a residence of mentally ill people, who also have
big social problems. The residence is placed in a suburb of Copenhagen.
From the life history of Bjarne
Ever since his childhood Bjarne has been placed in care and has been living on several
institutions. He has repeatedly been admitted to psychiatric wards. In the period of my
fieldwork he has been hospitalized acutely and shortly for many times.
During all of his life Bjarne has gone in for different kinds of sport. He is calling himself an
addict of physical training. Though, for the last there years it has been hard for him to do
something targeted, including using his body.
…all of a sudden, there I was lying in my bed, in Nørrebro, and thought now I can’t be
bothered with exercises no more, and I turned around my body, turned my back against
the pillow and all that.
I visit Bjarne in his room. Piles of clothes are lying on the floor, on a small dinner table, and
on chairs, as well as used utensils and plastic backs of garbage and empty bottles of soft
drinks. The couch table in front of the bed of Bjarne is covered by many cigarette packs,
ash trays, used cups and electronic equipment.
5. From fieldnotes
During my fieldwork I often sit in the room. I am sitting in an armchair perpendicularly to his
bed that is placed in the corner of his room.
While we are talking, Bjarne is lying on his side in the bed, the hand holding the
head, and his is smoking. For a moment his hand with the cigarette is resting on the
thigh, thereafter he is lifting his cigarette to the mouth and then he moves it further
on to the ash tray. He turns it against the edge the ash tray till there is no longer any
ash around the glow. During the short movements between the cigarettes Bjarne
drinks soda or looks upon his fingers and nails.
Even if Bjarne is lying quietly his body is moving all the time.
6. Analytical considerations
I understand the way Bjarne is smoking as an expression of a habitual bodily act Bjarne
has done for years.
When Bjarne smokes the continuing movement he performs, expresses an inner
restlessness and unrest or energy. At the same time Bjarne lies down upon his bed and I
get the impression of a complete lack of energy with him. He does not even have the
energy to keep himself upright during our conversation. Bjarne’s lack of energy means
that he finds it hard to perform the acts that he intends. The chaotic condition of the room
supports this interpretation.
The movements of Bjarne express an inner tension between a lack of energy and a
restless energy that is difficult to control. As Bjarne says it:
I have more energy than I need.
I interpret the smoking habits of Bjarne as an example of a pre-reflective habitual bodily
act that expresses an inner tension and ambivalence. The smoking habits of Bjarne can be
understood as an everyday way upon which he copes with his inner bodily tension and a
way upon which he copes with the chaos of his every day and the mental illness.
The ambivalence of Bjarne also has a linguistic expression. He says that he doesn’t need
the energy that expresses itself in body action and at the same time he misses to be active
and use his body. He wants to be an addict of training again. This ambivalence can be
understood with the concept of everyday consciousness. Understood in the way that the
consciousness and the habitual bodily acts of Bjarne contributes to smooth out his
experiences of the contradictions of his everyday life.
The upbringing of Bjarne characterized by discontinuity and breaks has an impact on his
difficulties to establish by himself a stable everyday life, with continuing human relation
and social participation. In a psychosocial perspective the life history of Bjarne has an
impact on his possibilities to express and use the energy that his body expresses. To me, I
think I see links between the life history of Bjarne, his actual everyday life and his
unreflective habitual acts.
7. Processes of changes happen on the background of patterns of the body and
everyday
Now, I will return to the question about processes of changes in the habits of everyday life.

During the intervention of the project CHANGE Bjarne wants to stop smoking. He
feels plagued by the health consequences from intensive smoking during many
years. He tries to stop smoking. After a couple of days he begins again. This
experience of not being able to stop smoking he turns inward. He thinks that he acts
self destructively when he lives unhealthy way.

To changes this habits of smoking would be a radical change. Not only a change of
a concrete habit but also a change of the way upon which Bjarne copes his
everyday characterized by mental illness and a difficult social situation.
My points are
A theoretical interest on aspects of the unreflective and the body may enlarge our
understanding of the possibilities of humans to create changes, including individuals
with schizophrenia.
The commonsense understandings and the consciousness of everyday life manifests
themselves in expressions of unreflective bodily practice. Such expressions of bodily
practice I consider as ways in which human beings can cope and live with the
difficulties and ambivalences in everyday life.
Processes of changes in relation to habits like lifestyle, smoking and physical activity
are not only rational acts and decision that individual make. Changes must be
understood in the perspective of the total life conditions and life historical experiences
of humans. This holistic understanding is important because lifestyle interventions often
forget about the importance of collective life historical and societal conditions.
These analytical points will be investigated further in my future fieldwork.
Ane Moltke
Ph.D. Fellow
Roskilde University, RUC
amoltke@ruc.dk
References
Crossley, N 2013 Habit and Habitus, Body and Society 2013 19: 131-136. Localized June 2013 at
http://bod.sagepub.com/content/19/2-3/136.full.pdf+html
Fuchs, T & Schlimme J E 2009, Embodiment and psychopathology: a phenomenological
perspective. Current Opinion in Psychiatry. 22(6):570-575.
Fuchs, T (2010) Phenomenology and psychopathology In: Gallagher, S (eds.) Handbook of
phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. Springer.
Leithäuser, T. 2000. Subjectivity, lifeworld and organization. Illeris, K (eds.): Adult education in the
perspective of the learners. Roskilde University Press
Merleau-Ponty, M 2011, Phenomenology of perception. Routledge
Moltke A 2010, Kroppens ambivalens. Frydenlund.