Anna Golova

ABSTRACT‘Self-ambiguity’, we suggest, is best understood as an uncertainty about how strongly a given feature reflects who one truly is. When this understanding of self-ambiguity is applied to a view of the self as having both essential and shapable components, self-ambiguity can be seen to have two aspects: (1) uncertainty about one's essential or relatively unchangeable characteristics, e.g. one's sexuality, and (2) uncertainty about how to shape oneself, e.g. which values to commit to, actions to pursue, or essential features to identify with. We explain how a narrative account of agency can accommodate these forms of self-ambiguity and argue that such an account also reveals another kind of self-ambiguity, namely, (3) uncertainty about whether one's established self-narrative represents who one really is. We illustrate this third form of self-ambiguity in the context of addiction where people's established addiction self-narratives make it difficult to identify with recovery. We argue that recovery will require embracing, especially, our third form of self-ambiguity as a chance for positive self-transformation. Treatment for addiction should, therefore, support people in going through and ultimately narratively resolving the inevitable self-ambiguities of the recovery process.

Self-illness ambiguity (SIA) has been understood, roughly, as a difficulty in delineating one’s self from one’s mental illness. In this paper, we explicate some of the previously neglected complexity of SIA, by distinguishing two forms of the phenomenon: (a) identity-related SIA (‘How do I relate to my illness?’) and (b) agential SIA (‘Is it me or my illness that makes me act/think/feel a certain way?’). In addition, we differentiate general and particular varieties of these SIA-forms, as well as descriptive and analytic approaches to them. The resulting taxonomy allows (1) clarifying the growing SIA-literature, (2) supporting (self-)understanding in clinical contexts, and (3) drilling into the normatively significant features of SIA, e.g., enabling the better theorising of potential connections between agential SIA and questions of responsibility. Our taxonomy thus strengthens the conceptual foundation for future theories and applications of SIA.