Seminar – 5th November 2025
A change of heart: exploring the psychiatric remaking of our emotional lives
Modern psychiatry has given us novel ways of thinking and talking about human experience. The resulting transformation in our self-understanding is especially evident in the domain of emotional experience. Over the past five decades, the notion has grown increasingly pervasive that much of our emotional distress signifies a condition of pathology. This notion has had far reaching consequences, shaping—amongst other things—our understanding of ourselves and our sense of what it means to live well. But what if, as is suggested in The Concept of Emotional Disorder (OUP 2024), this conceptual edifice rests upon a fundamental choice we have (perhaps inadvertently) made, and what if this choice occludes other ways of making sense of emotional experiences in a distinctly human life? What if, furthermore, it is only by reference to these alternative interpretative frameworks that we are able to fully grasp the idea of a normal and meaningful emotional response to circumstances involving injustice, adversity, alienation, or personal loss – indeed, what if the very idea of wisdom itself derives its intelligibility from these occluded interpretative frameworks? We will explore these questions in this symposium, with the aim of situating the trend towards medicalisation within the wider philosophical context of reflecting upon the nature of human emotional experience.
