Dissertation Defense: Melayna Schiff
Candidate: Melayna Schiff
Major: Philosophy
Advisor: Quill R. Kukla, Ph.D.
While mental health professionals describe anorexia as a mental disorder, individuals with anorexia often describe it as an identity. By centering the lived experiences of individuals with anorexia, I take seriously the claim that being an anorectic is an identity in order to uncover its philosophical, bioethical, and clinical utility. I build Martin Heidegger’s analysis of “being-in-the-world” into an account of identity, and I demonstrate that being an anorectic is such an identity. I also show that, as an identity, being an anorectic often takes over individuals’ lives in a way that ultimately results in a harmful loss of meaning and value. While being diagnosed with and treated for anorexia can give rise to anorexic identities that can be used to counter the totalizing grip of being an anorectic—such as being someone who has anorexia or being an anorexia patient—I reveal that the current diagnostic criteria for anorexia are not broad enough to account for all anorectics. I thus propose that we should determine whether the general identitive phenomenon of being an anorectic calls for medical intervention, but because of the potential harms of inhabiting an identity structured by medical norms, I urge that we should put long-term effort into developing non-medical conceptions of anorexia that are coupled with non-medical interventions. I conclude by showing that my analysis illuminates potential pathways to treatment, reveals barriers to treatment, and offers insight into how such barriers may be overcome.