Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry & the Culture, Mind and Brain Speaker Series
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Recalcitrant Emotion: Relocating the Seat of Irrationality
By Somogy Varga and Asbj酶rn Steglich, PhDs, Professors of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and the History of Ideas, Aarhus University.
Abstract: It is widely agreed that obsessive-compulsive disorder involves irrationality. But where in the complex of states and processes that constitutes OCD should this irrationality be located? A pervasive assumption in both the psychiatric and philosophical literature is that the seat of irrationality is located in the obsessive thoughts characteristic of OCD. Building on a puzzle about insight into OCD (Taylor 2020), we challenge this pervasive assumption, and argue instead that the irrationality of OCD is located in the emotions that are characteristic of OCD, such as anxiety or fear. In particular, we propose to understand the irrationality of OCD as a matter of harbouring recalcitrant emotions. We argue that this account not only solves the puzzle about insight, but also makes better sense of how OCD sufferers experience and describe their condition and helps explain some otherwise puzzling cognitive processes and patterns of behavior associated with OCD.
Bio: Somogy Varga is professor of philosophy at Aarhus University. He completed his PhD in philosophy at the Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. He previously worked at the University of Memphis (2012-2019), the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabr眉ck (2009-2012), and the Institute of Social Research at Goethe University Frankfurt (2007-2009). He is the author of Authenticity as an Ethical Ideal (Routledge, 2011), Naturalism, Interpretation, and Mental Disorder (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Scaffolded Minds (MIT Press, 2019).
Bio: Asbj酶rn Steglich-Petersen (PhD Cambridge 2008) is professor of philosophy and head of department at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research focuses on issues in epistemology and philosophy of psychology, and has appeared in journals such as Mind, Philosophical Studies, Mind and Language, and Philosophical Quarterly.
