In the lecture held on June 7, dr Sanneke de Haan (Socrates Professor of Psychiatry and Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam) discussed the notion of ‘self-illness ambiguity’, specifically regarding the relation between depression and being yourself. Psychiatric disorders concern your experiences: your feelings, thoughts, perceptions and/or actions.
Psychotropic drugs affect your experiences, too. How, then, can you tell if, or to what extent, your experiences are coloured by your disorder and/or the medication you are taking? As Karp put it: ‘‘If I experience X, is it because of the illness, the medication, or is it ‘just me’?’. Such so-called self-illness and self-medication ambiguities are common in psychiatry. Her research focuses on people with recurrent depression and how they navigate these difficulties. In this talk, she (i) presented some critique and refinements regarding the notion of ‘self-illness ambiguity’, (ii) presented some preliminary findings from my qualitative interview study, and (iii) offered some points for discussion regarding the relation between depression and being yourself.
Sanneke de Haan`s lecture is the twenty-second in the series of seminars on Philosophy and Psychiatry organized by the Center for Philosophy at the Institute of Social Sciences.
