Indeed, the experience of being a unified self can come undone all too easily. The sense of personal identity, built on the narrative self, can erode or disappear entirely in dementia and in severe cases of amnesia, and it can be warped and distorted in cases of delirium, whether hospital-induced or not. The volitional self can go awry in conditions like schizophrenia and alien hand syndrome, when people experience a reduced sense of connection with their own actions, or in akinetic mutism, a disorder in which people stop interacting with their surroundings altogether. Out-of-body experiences
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