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Subjective Experience, Heterophenomenology, or Neuroimaging? A Perspective on the Meaning and Application of Mental Disorder Terms, in Particular Major Depressive Disorder

Increasing research efforts try to identify biological markers in order to support or eventually replace current practices of diagnosing mental disorders. Inasmuch as these disorders refer to subjective mental states, such efforts amount to their objectification. This gives rise to conceptual as wel...

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Autor principal: Schleim, Stephan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5960702/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29867668
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00702
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author Schleim, Stephan
author_facet Schleim, Stephan
author_sort Schleim, Stephan
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description Increasing research efforts try to identify biological markers in order to support or eventually replace current practices of diagnosing mental disorders. Inasmuch as these disorders refer to subjective mental states, such efforts amount to their objectification. This gives rise to conceptual as well as empirical challenges: What kind of things are mental disorders? And how to deal with situations where subjective reports, clinical decisions, and brain scans contradict each other? The present paper starts out with a discussion of recent efforts to objectify beauty. Such attempts to quantify and localize psychological constructs in the brain are compared to earlier examples from the history of psychology. The paper then discusses personal and social implications of the objectification of subjective mental states, including mental disorders. The construct of Major Depressive Disorder, one of the most prevalent mental disorders, is then analyzed in more detail. It turns out that this is a very complex construct probably associated with highly heterogeneous actual instances of the disorder. It is then shown that it is unlikely to replace these symptoms’ descriptions with patterns of brain activations, at least in the near future, given these patterns’ empirical lack of specificity. The paper then discusses which of the disorder’s core symptoms are more or less amenable to behavioral or neuroscientific investigation and analyses whether the heterophenomenological method can solve the problem. The conclusion is that the disorder construct is neither entirely subjective, nor completely objectifiable, and that clinical experts do well by continuing to take a pragmatical stance.
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spelling pubmed-59607022018-06-04 Subjective Experience, Heterophenomenology, or Neuroimaging? A Perspective on the Meaning and Application of Mental Disorder Terms, in Particular Major Depressive Disorder Schleim, Stephan Front Psychol Psychology Increasing research efforts try to identify biological markers in order to support or eventually replace current practices of diagnosing mental disorders. Inasmuch as these disorders refer to subjective mental states, such efforts amount to their objectification. This gives rise to conceptual as well as empirical challenges: What kind of things are mental disorders? And how to deal with situations where subjective reports, clinical decisions, and brain scans contradict each other? The present paper starts out with a discussion of recent efforts to objectify beauty. Such attempts to quantify and localize psychological constructs in the brain are compared to earlier examples from the history of psychology. The paper then discusses personal and social implications of the objectification of subjective mental states, including mental disorders. The construct of Major Depressive Disorder, one of the most prevalent mental disorders, is then analyzed in more detail. It turns out that this is a very complex construct probably associated with highly heterogeneous actual instances of the disorder. It is then shown that it is unlikely to replace these symptoms’ descriptions with patterns of brain activations, at least in the near future, given these patterns’ empirical lack of specificity. The paper then discusses which of the disorder’s core symptoms are more or less amenable to behavioral or neuroscientific investigation and analyses whether the heterophenomenological method can solve the problem. The conclusion is that the disorder construct is neither entirely subjective, nor completely objectifiable, and that clinical experts do well by continuing to take a pragmatical stance. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-05-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5960702/ /pubmed/29867668 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00702 Text en Copyright © 2018 Schleim. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Schleim, Stephan
Subjective Experience, Heterophenomenology, or Neuroimaging? A Perspective on the Meaning and Application of Mental Disorder Terms, in Particular Major Depressive Disorder
title Subjective Experience, Heterophenomenology, or Neuroimaging? A Perspective on the Meaning and Application of Mental Disorder Terms, in Particular Major Depressive Disorder
title_full Subjective Experience, Heterophenomenology, or Neuroimaging? A Perspective on the Meaning and Application of Mental Disorder Terms, in Particular Major Depressive Disorder
title_fullStr Subjective Experience, Heterophenomenology, or Neuroimaging? A Perspective on the Meaning and Application of Mental Disorder Terms, in Particular Major Depressive Disorder
title_full_unstemmed Subjective Experience, Heterophenomenology, or Neuroimaging? A Perspective on the Meaning and Application of Mental Disorder Terms, in Particular Major Depressive Disorder
title_short Subjective Experience, Heterophenomenology, or Neuroimaging? A Perspective on the Meaning and Application of Mental Disorder Terms, in Particular Major Depressive Disorder
title_sort subjective experience, heterophenomenology, or neuroimaging? a perspective on the meaning and application of mental disorder terms, in particular major depressive disorder
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5960702/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29867668
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00702
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