Depression:Diagnosis and suffering as process

The high rates of depression – as well as the widespread diagnosis of depression – are both controversial and contested in contemporary late-modern society. Issues of flawed definition have been voiced to account for the bourgeoning rates of depression and the diagnosis has been subject to criticism of medicalization and pharmaceuticalization. Others have stated that the actualization of depression is to be seen in light of societal and structural transformations. Be that as it may, depression is affecting more and more people and the diagnosis is prevalent. In this context, a more nuanced understanding of how people relate to, experience and ascribe meaning to their suffering as depression and being diagnosed as such is needed. This article draws on qualitative interviews from Denmark and Norway to explore lay accounts of depression in contemporary late-modern society. The findings reveal that lay accounts of suffering, including living with the diagnosis of depression is a dynamic process, meaning that people vacillate in and out of various perspectives of suffering and categorization to make it fit their specific life situation and prospects of the future. In this article we thus highlight the perspectives of thoroughly analyzing suffering and the diagnostic experience by applying the overall concept of process, which takes on different meanings in the course of the analysis. The final version of this research has been published in Nordic Psychology. © 2017 Taylor & Franci

The artifactual mind: overcoming the ‘inside–outside’ dualism in the extended mind thesis and recognizing the technological dimension of cognition

This paper explains why Clark’s Extended Mind thesis is not capable of sufficiently grasping how and in what sense external objects and technical artifacts can become part of our human cognition. According to the author, this is because a pivotal distinction between inside and outside is preserved in the Extended Mind theorist’s account of the relation between the human organism and the world of external objects and artifacts, a distinction which they proclaim to have overcome. Inspired by Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of mind, in particular, the author tries to find a way out of this ‘inside–outside’ fallacy. External objects, artifacts or processes should, according to him, not be conceived as inanimate and unintelligent matter utilised by a separately living, inner mental sphere that has set certain pre-established goals for itself. Mind has rather an artifactual character. It is not extended by an inner biological cognitive core but rather unfolds itself through objects and artifacts. Mind as such is, especially in our modern technological culture, shaped by virtue of and through technical artifacts. Recognizing this artifactual dimension of mind will, the author concludes, enable a more critical analysis of contemporary claims that ascribe certain original and irreducible features to thinking