Premium
Anorexia nervosa: Illusion in the sense of agency
Author(s) -
Evans Amanda
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/mila.12385
Subject(s) - anorexia nervosa , illusion , psychology , feeling , sense of agency , agency (philosophy) , feature (linguistics) , social psychology , developmental psychology , eating disorders , cognitive psychology , clinical psychology , epistemology , philosophy , linguistics
This paper first identifies and then provides a novel analysis of a feature of anorexia nervosa (AN) that has gone overlooked in the philosophy of psychiatry literature. This feature is the discrepancy between first‐personal experiences of anorexic food restriction and the clinical descriptions of these same behaviors at the level of agentive awareness. I develop a positive account of the sense of agency in AN that accommodates current empirical findings while also providing valuable insight into how it is that anorexics can sincerely report feeling fully in control over their food restriction.