What is hyperreflexivity?

What is hyperreflexivity? Before entering into its definition, let’s talk about what it means to be reflective (or what is the same, to have a tendency to reflect). Reflecting means thinking and considering something carefully and carefully. This action has the objective of studying, understanding and forming a valid opinion on a certain matter or question.

Normally, to make a decision about it. In the case of hyperreflexivity, We talk about excessive or very great reflexivity. Specifically, hyper-reflection towards oneself.

This phenomenon could be defined as ‘intensified self-awareness’. But what exactly does it mean and how does it fit into the scope of psychopathology? What relationship does it have with mental disorders?

What is hyperreflexivity?

To understand what the word hyperreflexivity means, we are going to look at the origin of this quality. Someone who is reflective is someone accustomed to acting with reflection, that is, through thought and reasoning. People who are very thoughtful They frequently resort to introspection processes. They think a lot before and after acting; that is reflecting.

In the case of hyperreflexivity, the prefix -hyper- is added, which means ‘excessive, very large or superior’. So, Hyperreflexivity is intended to denote the tendency to reflect excessively.especially in relation to oneself.

Hyperreflexivity in psychopathology

We find the concept of hyperreflexivity in the field of psychopathology. According to Marino Pérez Álvarez, in an article published in Psychothema In 2008, hyperreflexivity is understood as a “heightened self-awareness in which the person disengages from normal ways of the involvement with nature and society, taking itself as its own object.”

Other authors, such as Stanguellini (2009), have called this concept hyperreflective self-recognition. For his part, Foucault, in 1966, defined this concept as a “hypertrophy of subjectivity.”

Several psychological theories, as Marino Pérez already proposes in the aforementioned article, defend that hyperreflexivity is the condition of mental disorderssince without it many of them would not exist.

Clinical and historical perspective

This thesis we are talking about is argued through two perspectives: a clinical one and a historical one. From a clinical perspective it is argued that hyperreflexivity is not a mere concomitant of mental disordersbut rather it has a causal (cause-effect) priority over it.

This cause-effect relationship is supported by empirical evidence of different types (correlational, experimental and therapeutic); That is, it has been studied and demonstrated in numerous studies of different nature.

On the other hand, from the historical perspective, it is shown that this phenomenon depends on certain historical-cultural circumstances given since the Renaissance, and that they have to do with the person. Continuing with this perspective, the mental disorders that we know today would not exist before that time.

The influence of society

But what else is behind the concept of hyperreflexivity? The influence of society on the emergence of mental disorders. And, according to the theories that defend this phenomenon, psychological disorders have to do with the imposed social model for modernity and postmodernity.

Because? Because they configure and contextualize the disorder and because society in part generates them, in addition to having a causal effect on its interaction with the person who suffers from it.

As stated by Francisco Traver Torras, Head of Service of the Mental Health Area of ​​the Castellón Provincial Hospital Consortium, “Societies determine the qualities of psychological disorders and, furthermore, cause psychological disorders, if only because the label psychological disorder belongs to modernity.”

An example of hyperreflexivity: sadness

This concept is a bit complex and not always easy to understand. To understand it a little better, Francisco Traver proposes an example with sadness.

According to him, both pathological sadness and “normal” sadness are adaptive. What happens is that Normal sadness is functional and pathological sadness is dysfunctional.

Both types of sadness arise to solve problems and to adapt in moments of adversity and collapse of the emotional world. But something paradoxical happens with pathological sadness; This becomes the object of the patient’s focused attention or, what is the same, the person begins to observe himself (he is the subject of her observation).

And we could extrapolate this example to other types of emotions, continuing with hyperreflexivity as the basis of psychological disorders or as the basis of certain dysfunctional emotions.

How does hyperreflexivity come about?

Traver continues his explanation in relation to sadness. He suggests that when what we mentioned about pathological sadness occurs (and recurrently), a loop is formed through which the person tries to “get rid of” that representation loaded with unpleasant emotions.

The noise of those negative emotions becomes audible and the void becomes a corporeal experience, somewhat roboticized and supposedly directed by an external artifact. What happens then?

That the person tries to understand, focusing on your own experience, placing it at the center of your concerns. Then comes hyperreflexivity, that “I” that occupies everything, which can end up leading to a psychological disorder.

The concept of hyperreflexivity is not easy to understand. However, in this article we have made some very generic outlines of its meaning, so that it can be understood why some psychological theories place it as necessary condition when suffering from a mental disorder.

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