So I'm watching Louis Theroux on Netflix, the episode about America's medicated kids, kids diagnosed with various psychiatric disorders. And he keeps asking, well, how much of it who the children is is due to their personality and how much is the disease's affliction.
But just as we dealt away with Cartesian dualism, we should abandon psychopathological dualism. Meaning, there is no personality suddenly overridden by an illness. There is one brain, and a mind emerging from that brain. Whatever happens, is in the soup.
I have depression in the way I have two arms. It's not that some chemicals just turned bonkers but there's some Real Me underneath, simply clouded by depression. No, it's the same eintopf. Getting rid of depression means changing who I am, not uncovering some platonic fucking ideal.
And I'm doing bad enough, that I don't mind, I don't care about whatever virtues come with depression (say, intelligence - but purely as a correlation, not a causation, there cannot be causation, see above) I don't mind being changed by the medicines or therapists, I am willing to become someone else because I just can't live with myself.
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