Henry Raffles Cowan

Topic: “Narrative Self-Disturbance in the Development of Psychotic Disorders”

In first-person accounts of mental illness, many individuals report that their sense of self has been “silenced”, “eradicated”, or “replace[d] with a black hole”. These experiences are often reported to be more distressing and impactful than clinical symptoms themselves, and models of recovery typically emphasize the importance of rebuilding a coherent sense of self. This presentation will examine disturbance to the narrative sense of self in psychotic disorders, focusing on how self-disturbance develops alongside psychotic symptoms in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Specifically, I will discuss why it is important to study narrative self-disturbance in serious mental illness, what is known about the development of narrative self-disturbance in the early stages of serious mental illness, and how to integrate narrative self-disturbance into mechanistic and transdiagnostic models of serious mental illness.

Raffles Cowan is a postdoctoral scholar at The Ohio State University specializing in the study of self and identity in the development of serious mental illness. He completed a PhD in Clinical Psychology at Northwestern University in 2022 including a predoctoral internship at The Ohio State University’s Early Psychosis Intervention Center (EPICENTER). His research has been recognized by awards from organizations including the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, Schizophrenia International Research Society, and Association for Research in Personality. His work integrates qualitative and quantitative analyses of individual differences, mechanisms, and transdiagnostic processes to understand how individuals interpret their experiences and construct their sense of self in the early stages of psychotic disorders.