Towards a structure of insight: a clinical and conceptual analysis

The concept of insight in mental illness is explored with the objective of developing a structural model of insight. This model, in turn, aims to provide a framework allowing the different clinical phenomena subsumed under the term 'insight' to be identified in a systematic manner. It is through the identification of, and differentiation between, such clinical phenomena that further progress can be made in the determination of the possible neurobiology underlying the different aspects of insight and insightlessness. The thesis is divided into 2 sections. The first section (chapters 1-5) examines and analyses the notion of insight into mental illness from its historical development as an independent concept to the ways in which insight has been conceptualised and explored in clinical psychiatry and related disciplines. The second section (chapters 6-8) focuses on developing a model for the structure of insight. This section represents an integration of both conceptual and empirical work. Thus, the issues arising from the analysis in the first section are examined critically in order to determine possible theoretical components to the concept of insight as a whole. The empirical work draws on 2 studies undertaken to explore insight clinically and which help to support some of the theoretical distinctions made between the constituents of insight. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)