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1760Self-concept through the diagnostic looking glass: Narratives and mental disorderPhilosophical Psychology 24 (3): 357-380. 2011.This paper explores how the diagnosis of mental disorder may affect the diagnosed subject’s self-concept by supplying an account that emphasizes the influence of autobiographical and social narratives on self-understanding. It focuses primarily on the diagnoses made according to the criteria provided by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and suggests that the DSM diagnosis may function as a source of narrative that affects the subject’s self-concept. Engaging in this an…Read more
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1383The Missing Self in Hacking's Looping EffectsIn H. Kincaid & J. Sullivan (eds.), Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds, Mit Press. 2014., Looping Effects, the Self, Psychopathology
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1253
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1010Hyponarrativity and Context-Specific Limitations of the DSM-5Public Affairs Quarterly 29 (1). 2015.his article develops a set of recommendations for the psychiatric and medical community in the treatment of mental disorders in response to the recently published fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that is, DSM-5. We focus primarily on the limitations of the DSM-5 in its individuation of Complicated Grief, which can be diagnosed as Major Depression under its new criteria, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We argue that the hyponarrativity of the …Read more
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946New Directions in Philosophy of MedicineIn James Marcum (ed.), Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 343-367. forthcoming.The purpose of this chapter is to describe what we see as several important new directions for philosophy of medicine. This recent work (i) takes existing discussions in important and promising new directions, (ii) identifies areas that have not received sufficient and deserved attention to date, and/or (iii) brings together philosophy of medicine with other areas of philosophy (including bioethics, philosophy of psychiatry, and social epistemology). To this end, the next part focuses on what we…Read more
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903“Will I Be Pretty, Will I Be Rich?”: The Missing Self in Antidepressant CommercialsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 13 (5). 2013.No abstract
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533How Does the Self Adjudicate Narratives?Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (1): 25-28. 2013.Philosophers and psychologists have advanced a plethora of explanations of the self in relation to narratives, positing varying degrees of connection between them. For some, narratives created by a subject about herself shape her self-constitution (Flanagan 1991; Fivush 1994). For others, they help the subject to participate in social cognition (Hutto 2008). Some represent narratives as merely one basis of personal identity and consider them cognitive tools used by the subject to construct self-…Read more
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171Self-Insight in the Time of Mood Disorders: After the Diagnosis, Beyond the TreatmentPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 21 (2): 139-155. 2014.This paper explores the factors that contribute to the degree of a mood disorder patient’s self- insight, defined here as her understanding of the particular contingencies of her life that are responsive to her personal identity, interpersonal relationships, illness symptoms, and the relationship between these three necessary components of her lived experience. I consider three factors: (i) the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), (ii) the DSM culture, and (iii) the cognitive…Read more
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153Are Mental Disorders Natural Kinds?: A Plea for a New Approach to Intervention in PsychiatryPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 23 (2): 147-163. 2016.Mental disorder is an urgent and growing public health problem.1 Scientific investigation of this problem has the pragmatic goals of identifying the causes of mental disorders and developing strategies to effectively treat them. Philosophers of psychiatry have participated in the inquiry into the empirical examination of mental disorders, predominantly by debating whether psychopathology is a legitimate target of scientific inquiry and, if so, how mental disorders should be explained, predicted,…Read more
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98The Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophy of PsychiatryBloomsbury. 2019.This book explores the central questions and themes lying at the heart of a vibrant area of philosophical inquiry. Aligning core issues in psychiatry with traditional philosophical areas, it presents a focused overview of the historical and contemporary problems dominating the philosophy of psychiatry. Beginning with an introduction to research issues, it addresses what psychiatry is and distinguishes it from other areas of medical practice, other health care professions and psychology. With ea…Read more
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75The missing self in scientific psychiatrySynthese 196 (6): 2197-2215. 2019.Various traditions in mental health care, such as phenomenological, and existential and cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, implicitly or explicitly acknowledge that a disruption of the self, or the person, or the agent is among the common denominators of different mental disorders. They often emphasize the importance of understanding patients as reasonsresponsive, in their full mental health relevant complexity, if their mental disorder is to be treated successfully. The centrality of the conce…Read more
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47Self and mental disorder: Lessons for psychiatry from naturalistic philosophyPhilosophy Compass 16 (1). 2021.The question “What is the relationship between the self and mental disorder?” is especially important for mental health professionals interested in understanding and treating patients, as most mental disorders are intimately tied to self‐related concerns, such as loss of self‐esteem and self‐control, or diminished agency and autonomy. Philosophy, along with the cognitive and behavioral sciences, offers a wealth of conceptual and empirical resources to answer this question, as the concepts of the…Read more
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45Psychiatric taxonomy: at the crossroads of science and ethicsJournal of Medical Ethics 40 (8): 513-514. 2014.The scientific investigation of mental disorders is an invigorating area of inquiry for philosophers of mind and science who are interested in exploring the nature of typical and atypical cognition as well as the overarching scientific project of ‘carving nature at its joints’. It is also important for philosophers of medicine and bioethicists who are concerned with concepts of disease and with the development of effective and ethical treatments of mental disorders and the just distribution of m…Read more
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44Beyond mind–body dualism: embracing pluralism in psychiatric research—introduction to the special issue, “Psychiatry and Its Philosophy”Synthese 196 (6): 2111-2115. 2019.The special issue, “Psychiatry and Its Philosophy,” focuses on addressing the mindbrain dualism and connected problems in the clinical and scientific contexts of psychiatry. Authors in this special issue address the theoretical disagreements that are manifest in the clinical and scientific goals of psychiatry and explore the possibility of reconciling the claim that research on psychopathology needs to be scientific with the claim that it needs to address the needs of patients in the clinic. Our…Read more
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41Is Big Data the New Stethoscope? Perils of Digital Phenotyping to Address Mental IllnessPhilosophy and Technology 34 (3): 447-461. 2020.Advances in applications of artificial intelligence and the use of data analytics technology in biomedicine are creating optimism, as many believe these technologies will fill the need-availability gap by increasing resources for mental health care. One resource considered especially promising is smartphone psychotherapy chatbots, i.e., artificially intelligent bots that offer cognitive behavior therapy to their users with the aim of helping them improve their mental health. While a number of st…Read more
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35A Perfect Storm: Health, Disorder, Culture, and the SelfPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 21 (2): 165-168. 2014.
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34Participatory Interactive Objectivity in PsychiatryPhilosophy of Science 89 (5): 1166-1175. 2022.This paper challenges the exclusion of patients from epistemic practices in psychiatry by examining the creation and revision processes of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a document produced by the American Psychiatric Association that identifies the properties of mental disorders and thereby guides research, diagnosis, treatment, and various administrative tasks. It argues there are epistemic—rather than exclusively social/political—reasons for including patient…Read more
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33Resourcefulness of an empirically informed and thickly normative account of diseaseJournal of Medical Ethics 45 (9): 589-590. 2019.Educators who start a philosophy of medicine or medical ethics class with a philosophical discussion on the definition of basic concepts in medicine, such as health and disease, might relate to this anecdotal account. Students initially find the topic engaging because of the ubiquity of the concept of disease regulating not only their direct encounter with health-related contexts, for example, when veterans returning to school receive accommodations after being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stre…Read more
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31A philosophical exploration of experience-based expertise in mental health carePhilosophical Psychology 36 (7): 1415-1434. 2023.1. Imagine the following hypothetical scenario: Sarah is often called an expert on depression: after all, she graduated from medical school and has a PhD in neuroscience. She knows all theories of...
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30My Illness, My Self, and I: when self-narratives and illness-narratives clashPhilosophical Explorations 25 (3): 314-318. 2022.In a compelling and provocative paper, ‘Solving the Self-Illness Ambiguity: The Case for Construction Over Discovery,’ Sofia M.I. Jeppsson distinguishes two ways of addressing the self-illness ambiguty problem. The first is the Realist Solution, which postulates a pre-existing border between the self and the illness and frames the goal of treatment in psychiatry as helping the patient ‘discover’ this boundary. Addressing the shortcomings of the Realist Solution, both in terms of its feasibility …Read more
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29Against the Drug Cure Model: Addiction, Identity, and PharmaceuticalsIn Dien Ho (ed.), Philosophical Issues in Pharmaceutics: Development, Dispensing, and Use, Springer. 2017.Recent advances in brain imaging methods as well as increased sophistication in neuroscientific modeling of the brain’s reward systems have facilitated the study of neural mechanisms associated with addiction such as processes associated with motivation, decision-making, pleasure seeking, and inhibitory control. These scientific activities have increased optimism that the neurological underpinnings of addiction will be delineated, and that pharmaceuticals that target and change these mechanisms …Read more
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27Not with narratives, not without narratives: A review of “Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, The Self, etc.” Galen Strawson (review)Philosophical Psychology 33 (4): 648-652. 2020.In this short article I will review Galen Strawson’s most recent book, “Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, The Self, etc.“ As it is impossible to do justice to the full collection in a review,...
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22Review of "No Child Left Different" (review)Journal of Developmental Processes 2 (2): 123-126. 2007.
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22Listening to Patients: A Pillar for the Epistemology of NeurointerventionsAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 9 (4): 239-241. 2018.In their article, “Patients’ beliefs about deep brain stimulation (DBS) for treatment resistant depression,” Lawrence, Kaufmann, DeSilva, and Appelbaum analyze the responses of 24 psychiatric inpat...
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17Oxford Handbook of Psychotherapy Ethics (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2021.Psychotherapy is a well-established, efficacious, and fully accepted treatment for mental disorders and psychological problems. Psychotherapy is an interpersonal practice engaging patient values, interests, and personal meanings at every step. Thereby, psychotherapy abounds with moral issues. In psychotherapy ethics, numerous moral issues converge, including self-determination or autonomy, decision-making capacity and freedom of choice, coercion and constraint, medical paternalism, boundaries be…Read more
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15Mad Narratives: Exploring Self-Constitutions Through the Diagnostic Looking GlassDissertation, York University. 2010.In “Mad Narratives: Self-Constitutions Through the Diagnostic Looking Glass,” by using narrative approaches to the self, I explore how the diagnosis of mental disorder shapes personal identities and influences flourishing. My particular focus is the diagnosis grounded on the criteria provided by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). I develop two connected accounts pertaining to the self and mental disorder. I use the memoirs and personal stories written by the subjects w…Read more
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14Review of "Body-Subjects and Disordered Minds" (review)Metapsychology Online Reviews 11 (11). 2008.
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State University of New York (SUNY)Upstate Medical University, Center for Bioethics and HumanitiesAssociate Professor
Syracuse, NY, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |