Re-thinging Embodied and Enactive Psychiatry: A Material Engagement Approach.
Lambros Malafouris, Frank Röhricht
Culture, medicine and psychiatry December 1, 2024 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1007/s11013-024-09872-6 via PubMed
Summary
A theoretical argument that understanding mental illness requires examining the material environment, not just the brain. The paper proposes applying Material Engagement Theory to psychiatry, using schizophrenia and dementia as examples to explore how objects, habits, and environments shape memory, self-awareness, embodiment, and temporality. It suggests that studying socio-material relations can reveal the significance of materials and technical mediations, offering potential for new treatment approaches that complement existing interventions.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Adopting a material engagement approach to embodied and enactive psychiatry can change the understanding of mental disorders and help develop new treatment approaches. |
Abstract
Emerging consensus among enactivist philosophers and embodied mind theorists suggests that seeking to understand mental illness we need to look out of our skulls at the ecology of the brain. Still, the complex links between materiality (in broadest sense of material objects, habits, practices and environments) and mental health remain little understood. This paper discusses the benefits of adopting a material engagement approach to embodied and enactive psychiatry. We propose that the material engagement approach can change the geography of the debate over the nature of mental disorders and through that help to develop theoretical and practical insights that could improve management and treatment for various psychiatric conditions. We investigate the potential role of Material Engagement Theory (MET) in psychiatry using examples of aetiologically different mental illnesses (schizophrenia and dementia) in respect of their shared phenomenological manifestations, focusing particularly on issues of memory, self-awareness, embodiment and temporality. The effective study of socio-material relations allows better understanding of the semiotic significance and agency of specific materials, environments and technical mediations. There is unrealised potential here for creating new approaches to treatment that can broaden, challenge or complement existing interventions and practices of care.