From Aeon: “We take mental disorder to be is intimately related to how we think the human body and mind work, in a general sense. For example, a cellular biologist is more likely to take the view that mental disorders are brain diseases, compared with a sociologist, who might see the entire concept of mental disorders as a social construct. One’s understanding of how humans work influences one’s understanding of what it means for humans to be ‘dysfunctional’…
This observation points to some interesting questions: might certain frameworks of human functioning be better than others at helping us to think about mental disorder? Might a more helpful view of human functioning produce a richer understanding of mental disorder? Narrowing the scope of my research, these questions brought me to a position known as ‘embodied enactivism’.”