What Phenomenological Pathology Can Teach Us About Anxiety Disorder: Anxiety Disorder as Self-Disorder with Disrupted Self-Specifying Processes

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Alexandra Jewell of University of British Columbia, Canada   Abstract: Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders and are associated with a high burden of illness. Given the increasing reports of anxiety symptoms in the face of climate change, pandemics, and socio-political relations, anxiety disorders are due additional analysis that might aid our descriptions and explanations. I propose that a phenomenological approach to anxiety disorders can do just that. Specifically, we ought to examine the ways in which the self plays a role in anxiety disorders. While previous accounts have highlighted the importance of the self in the occurrence and maintenance of anxiety disorders, their dealing of the notion lacks the phenomenological richness to capture the multidimensionality of selfhood. Borrowing the notion of self-disorder from phenomenological pathology, I argue that anxiety disorders similarly exhibit an alteration to our most fundamental experience of a self-immersed-in-the-world via disordered/disrupted organization of self-specifying processes. To substantiate my claims, I refer to empirical work on anxiety from clinical psychology and cognitive science regarding disruptions in experience of selfhood, on the one hand, and corresponding alterations of worldly experience, on the other. Next, I consider and respond to reasons theorists might have excluded anxiety disorders from the class of self-disorders. I then propose that interoception, which plays a fundamental role in forming our basic sense of self, is a good place to start when looking for the disruption of self-specifying processes in anxiety disorder. After considering empirical evidence to support this hypothesis, I will suggest a possible, causal explanations for this disruption in interoception by drawing from emotion theory and recent work in neuroscience.   Biography: Alexandra Jewell is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. Under the supervision of both Christopher Mole and Evan Thompson, Alexandra researches the intersection of philosophy of mind, phenomenology, cognitive science, and philosophy of psychiatry. She is interested in bringing the phenomenological approach into our understanding of psychiatric disorders in hopes to improve our descriptions and explanations within psychiatry. Having a background in Tibetan Buddhism, Alexandra also incorporates this worldview in her investigations of the subjective experience in cases of psychiatric disorder.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/