Affordances are action-possibilities, ways of relating to and acting on things in our world. They help us understand how these things mean what they do and how we have bodily access to our world more generally. But what happens when this access is ruptured or impeded? I consider this question in the context of psychopathology and reports that describe this experience. I argue that thinking about the bodily consequences of losing access to everyday affordances can help us better understand these (...) reports. An affordance-based approach to psychopathology can illuminate some of the causes, as well as the experiential character and consequences, of affective disorders and diminished spatial agency in self-world disturbances. It also highlights some under-explored ethical and political dimensions of these issues that need further attention. (shrink)

The notion of an enactive system requires thinking about the brain in a way that is different from the standard computational-representational models. In evolutionary terms, the brain does what it does and is the way that it is, across some scale of variations, because it is part of a living body with hands that can reach and grasp in certain limited ways, eyes structured to focus, an autonomic system, an upright posture, etc. coping with specific kinds of environments, and with (...) other people. Changes to any of the bodily, environmental, or intersubjective conditions elicit responses from the system as a whole. On this view, rather than representing or computing information, the brain is better conceived as participating in the action. (shrink)

The DSM characterizes major depressive disorder partly in temporal terms: the depressive mood must last for at least two weeks, and also must impact the subject "most of the day, nearly every day." However, from the standpoint of phenomenological psychopathology, the long-lasting quality of the condition hardly captures the distinctiveness of depression. While the DSM refers to objective time as measured by clocks and calendars, what is especially striking about depression is the distortions to lived time that it involves. But (...) is there any relation between a) these disruptions to temporal experience and b) the tendency for depressive symptoms to persist and endure? To explore the connection between lived time and objective time, I investigate the embodied and enactive nature of intentionality among subjects suffering from depression. What I call 'affective framing' is a spontaneous, pre-reflective way of filtering information that involves bodily attunement and allows subjects to focus their attention on what they feel is important. I will argue that affective framing ordinarily has a forward-looking temporal structure and a "teleological direction" that is rooted in our embodiment. However, depression involves a distortion in future-directed intentionality, so that a subject becomes temporally desituated and cut off from the future. This contributes to many of the characteristic features of depression, including apparent lack of motivation, inability to imagine future possibilities, alterations in lived time, and a sense that one is "stuck." To gain a better understanding of this disruption to the futuredirected structure of affective framing in cases of depression, I look to concepts from complex dynamic systems theory and the notion of 'habit.' My proposed account aims to shed light on how a disruption to future-directedness impacts bodily attunement and reinforces depression as a long-term condition. (shrink)

Questions about the nature of self and self-consciousness are closely aligned with questions about the nature of autonomy. These concepts have deep roots in traditional philosophical discussions that concern metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. They also have direct relevance to practical considerations about informed consent in medical contexts. In this paper, with reference to understanding specific side effects of deep brain stimulation treatment in cases of, for example, Parkinson’s Disease, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder, I’ll argue that it is (...) best to frame discussions of informed consent in terms of relational autonomy and a pattern theory of self. (shrink)

This paper utilizes the enactivist notion of ‘sense-making’ to discuss the nature of depression and examine some implications for treatment. As I understand it, sensemaking is fully embodied, fundamentally affective, and thoroughly embedded in a social environment. I begin by presenting an enactivist conceptualization of affective intentionality and describing how this general mode of intentional directedness to the world is disrupted in cases of major depressive disorder. Next, I utilize this enactivist framework to unpack the notion of ‘temporal desituatedness,’ and (...) maintain that the characteristic symptoms of depression result from a disruption to the future-directed structure of affective intentionality. This can be conceptualized as a loss of “online intelligence” and a shrinking of the field of affordances. Then, I argue that two of the standard modes of treatments for depression, medication and cognitive behavioral therapy, are not fully sufficient means of restoring online intelligence, and that these limitations stem partly from the approaches’ implicit commitment to a brain-bound, overly cognitivist view of the mind. I recommend expressive arts interventions such as dance-movement therapy and music therapy as important supplementary treatment methods that deserve further consideration. Insofar as they revitalize subjects’ bodies and emotions, cultivate an openness to the future, and promote self-insight and social synchrony, these treatment modes not only reflect key insights of enactivism, but also offer great potential for lasting healing. (shrink)

Several enactive-phenomenological perspectives have pointed to affectivity as a central aspect of mental disorders. Indeed, from an enactive perspective, sense-making is an inherently affective process. A question remains on the role of different forms of affective experiences (i.e., existential feelings, atmospheres, moods, and emotions) in sense-making and, consequently, in mental disorders. This work elaborates on the enactive perspective on mental disorders by attending to the primordial role of affectivity in the self-individuation process. Inspired by Husserl’s genetic methodology and Simondonian philosophy (...) of individuation, sense-making is described as the process of progressive concretization and structuration of the self-world structures that support the intentionality of conscious experiences. Accordingly, affectivity is described as the force that anticipates a partial self-world coherence in sense-making. Structurally different types of affective experiences are integrated into the genetic picture and, on this basis, a reinterpretation and classification of certain mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, and the anxiety spectrum, is provided. In this way, this work contributes to a phenomenologically informed enactive account of mental disorders as disorders of affectivity. (shrink)

We argue that a phenomenological approach to social space, as well as its relation to embodiment and affectivity, is crucial for understanding how the social world shows up as social in the first place—that is, as affording different forms of sharing, connection, and relatedness. We explore this idea by considering two cases where social space is experientially disrupted: Moebius Syndrome and schizophrenia. We show how this altered sense of social space emerges from subtle disruptions of embodiment and affectivity characteristic of (...) these conditions. These disruptions are instructive, we suggest, in that they highlight the foundational role that body and affect play in organizing social space—the lived context in which we first encounter one another as social agents. (shrink)

The embodied approach of human cognition suggests that concepts are deeply dependent upon and constrained by an agent's physical body's characteristics, such as performed body movements. In this study, we attempted to broaden previous research on emotional priming, investigating the interaction of emotions and visual exploration. We used the joystick-based approach-avoidance task to influence the emotional states of participants, and subsequently, we presented pictures of news web pages on a computer screen and measured participant's eye movements. As a result, the (...) number of fixations on images increased, the total dwell time increased, and the average saccade length from outside of the images toward the images decreased after the bodily congruent priming phase. The combination of these effects suggests increased attention to web pages' image content after the participants performed bodily congruent actions in the priming phase. Thus, congruent bodily interaction with images in the priming phase fosters visual interaction in the subsequent exploration phase. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the contemporary field of phenomenological psychopathology, or the phenomenological study of psychiatric disorders. The work proceeds with two major aims. The first is to show how a phenomenological approach can clarify and illuminate the nature of psychopathology—specifically those conditions typically labeled as major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. The second is to show how engaging with psychopathological conditions can challenge and undermine many phenomenological presuppositions, especially phenomenology’s status as a transcendental philosophy and its corresponding (...) anti-naturalistic outlook. In the opening chapter, I articulate the three layers of the subject matter of phenomenological research—what I refer to as “existentials,” “modes,” and “prejudices.” As I argue, while each layer contributes to what we might call the “structure” of human existence, they do not do so in the same way, or to the same degree. Because phenomenological psychopathology—and applied phenomenology in general—aims to characterize how the structure of human existence can change and alter, it is paramount that these layers be adequately delineated and defined before investigating these changes. In chapters two through five, I conduct hermeneutic and phenomenological investigations of psychopathological phenomena typically labeled as major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder. These investigations address the affective aspects of depression and mania, and the embodied aspects of depression. In addition to clearly articulating the nature of these phenomena, I show how certain psychopathological conditions involve changes in the deepest or most fundamental layer of human existence—what I refer to as existentials. As I argue, many of the classical phenomenologists (including Husserl and Heidegger) believed that these structural features were necessary, unchanging, and universal. However, this presupposition is challenged through the examination of psychopathological and neuropathological conditions, undermining the status of phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy. While this challenge to classical phenomenology is only sketched in the early chapters, in chapters six and seven I develop it in more detail in order to achieve two distinct ends. In chapter six I argue that psychopathology and neuropathology not only challenge phenomenology’s status as a transcendental philosophy, but also supply a key to developing a phenomenological naturalism (which I contrast with a naturalized phenomenology). Phenomenological naturalism, as I articulate it, is a position in which phenomenology is not subsumed by the metaphysical and methodological framework of the natural sciences, but nonetheless maintains the capacity to investigate how the natural world stands independent of human subjectivity (and how events in the natural world can bring about changes in the most fundamental structures of human existence). In the seventh chapter I argue that a phenomenology in which existentials are contingent and variable rather than necessary and unchanging allows phenomenologists to contribute to new dimensional approaches to psychiatric classification. Rather than begin from distinct categories of disorder, these approaches begin from distinct core features of human existence. These features, referred to as either dimensions or constructs, can vary in degree and are studied in both normal and pathological forms. (shrink)

An oft misattributed piece of folk-wisdom goes: “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” In many cases, we don’t just do things repeatedly but think over the same topics repeatedly. People who ruminate are not often diagnosed as insane—most of us ruminate at some point in our lives—but it is a common behaviour underlying both depression and anxiety :504, 2000). If rumination is something we all do at some time, what is it about (...) ruminative thought that makes it ‘sticky’ and difficult to stop for the worst sufferers? In order to answer this question, I will present a plausible account of how ruminative behaviour becomes entrenched to the point where sufferers of anxiety and depression simply cannot make meaning from the world except in terms of the kinds of behaviours, actions and thoughts they have become reliant on. I develop my account from Barrett’s theory of constructed emotion using the work of Merleau-Ponty, ProQuest Ebook Central, 2012. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=1433878. Accessed 29 Dec 2020) in order to bridge the gap between the explicit thought we experience—an important part of the lived experience of rumination. To conclude, I will apply my account to Wu and Dunning’s :25–35, 2018; Hypocognitive mind: How lack of conceptual knowledge confines what people see and remember, 2019. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/29ryz) theory of hypocognition to further illuminate the particular cognitive qualities that can be experienced by ruminators, i.e. a prohibited access to particular emotion concepts. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 13, Issue 4, Page 289-298, October 2021. This paper takes its cue from the recent interest in materiality and “things” in the field of Byzantine studies, to explore the role of objects in evoking being moved. First, it advances a new model to explain the relationship between being moved and affordances. Second, it focuses on a specific case study, that is Michael Psellos’ funeral oration for his daughter Styliane, who died of smallpox at the age of 9 (...) years old. The paper sheds light on how affective affordances of an object contribute to the evocation of being moved in literary texts, working within and affecting narrative patterns. While building on the experience of ethical and spiritual principles clearly recognizable by the audience, such affordances point toward the activation of broader core values. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to discuss the specifics of human actions and decision-making processes from the psychopathological perspective. The concepts of action and decision making are reported in the context of human experience and the experiential structure of self-determination. The starting point is provided by considerations related to the notion of mental illness as described by Lennart Nordenfelt, as well as Antoni Kępiński’s concept of informational metabolism. The consequences of and changes to decision-making processes in mental disorders will (...) be presented on the example of depressive experience. Decision-making process can be understood in terms of three-dimensional pre-reflexive experience that undergoes changes in depressive patients: space of possibility, sense of agency and time experience. The analysis will allow us to better understand the structure of experience attributable to people suffering from depression. (shrink)