In this chapter, we put pristine experience into bolder relief by considering what is not pristine experience. We first examine a paper titled “The Subjective Experience of Emotion in Schizophrenia” (Kring & Germans, 2004) and conclude that, despite its title, this paper does not investigate the pristine experience of emotion in schizophrenia. We then discuss some DES findings about the experience of emotion in schizophrenia. Then we repeat that process for emotion in general, examining a paper titled “The Experience of Emotion” (Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner, & Gross, 2007).

KRING: “THE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF EMOTION IN SCHIZOPHRENIA”

Ann Kring is a noted schizophrenia and emotion researcher, and “The Subjective Experience of Emotion in Schizophrenia” (Kring & Germans, 2004) is a highly competent example of how the discipline of psychology attempts to tackle inner experience. We will critically examine that paper. First, we will ask whether Kring and Germans mean by “subjective experience” in the title of their paper the same thing that we mean by pristine inner experience; we'll answer yes. Then we'll examine Kring and Germans's methods and conclude that despite the article's title, they actually examine neither moments nor experience, that their method does not genuinely submit to the constraints that the examination of experience requires, and therefore that the paper is not genuinely about pristine experience.

I emphasize that I choose the Kring and Germans article for us to examine for four reasons: First, understanding schizophrenia is a vitally important task; I commend researchers who undertake studies of schizophrenia.