Exploring compatibilities between the Free Energy Principle and Heideggerian existential phenomenology as alternative dynamic conceptualizations of depression

Summary

The study presents an interdisciplinary theoretical analysis of how individuals with depression relate to the world, focusing on time, mood, and perception. It integrates existential phenomenology and the Free Energy Principle to propose a dynamic understanding of this relationship, suggesting that experiences of connectedness are key predictors of positive outcomes in treatment-resistant depression. This approach challenges traditional views and emphasizes the importance of a dynamic characterization of depression for better understanding and treatment.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This study concerns an interdisciplinary theoretical analysis of the underlying ways the depressed individual is related to the world. Specific aspects of this relation, namely time, mood and perception of affordances will be characterized. By understanding these relations from both an existential phenomenological Heideggerian approach and through the modern neuroscientific paradigm of the Free Energy Principle, we formulate a complementary conceptualization of the depressed person’s relation to the world. Furthermore, we argue that this interdisciplinary approach bears a synergic coupling, despite obvious epistemic and disciplinary differences. In essence The Free Energy Principle conceptualizes any human world relation as a dynamic process in a self-organizing system that attempts to minimize entropy from the surroundings by predicting the states of the world. To Heidegger, the human world relation constitutes Dasein as a being-in-the-world, where the world gets its meaning from Dasein's care. Dasein does this by projecting possibilities of the future based on its facticity. We argue that this interdisciplinary compatible conceptualization constitutes an epistemically useful alternative based on dynamic assumptions, unlike the conceptualization offered by DSM-5, We argue that these underlying assumptions are important to challenge, as recent research in psychedelic treatment of “treatment resistant” depressed patients provides interesting findings challenging our current view of depression. Because experiences of connectedness are the strongest predictor for positive clinical outcomes in these trials, we argue that a dynamic characterization of depression is beneficial. We argue that this dynamic characterization is beneficial to pursue, as it offers an interdisciplinary approach to understand how the depressed individual fundamentally is connected to the world.

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