Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Second, biomedical developments have not only made it possible to
understand and plot the causal networks of our biology in a much more
sophisticated way, they have also made it possible to
change
them. This
change from chance to choice in the make-up of our bodies will likely have
vast effects on future genetic treatments (Buchanan
et al
. 2000), as it has
already had in plastic surgery and psychopharmacology (Elliott 2003). Will
genetics go down the alley of enhancement (rather than cure for diseases and
defects) in the same way plastic surgery already has? And, most important
to us here, has psychopharmacology already done so by the aid of SSRIs?
Are SSRIs taken to enhance the self, rather than to cure it from diseases and
defects?
I have already tried to explain why I think this question is a complex,
if not unanswerable, one, since it is far from clear in all cases what is to
be taken as a disease or defect, and what is to be taken as an aspect of the
self - also from a phenomenological point of view. But let me, as a kind
of conclusion, point towards three issues, which I think are necessary to
address and understand in order to answer this question. The fi rst issue is
that matters of self-enhancement, in the case of SSRIs, are best understood
as matters
self-revelation
and
self-adaptation
. Prozac is not a “happy pill”, it
does not make you cheerful, but it might make you more or less of yourself,
so to say. Prozac takes something away that I feel not to be mine (in some
cases we prefer to call this “something” a depression, in other cases we
should perhaps rather call it a character trait), and in doing this it might
be said either to reveal myself the way I really am beneath the disguise of
disease, or to help adapt myself to a world in which I could not feel at home
the way I was before. Self-creation is always played out and realized in the
meaning patterns of society and culture, in which we fi nd ourselves and judge
ourselves in different ways. We engage in the norms of what is a normal
and good life through our daily activities, striving towards self-fulfi llment
- authenticity and happiness - together with others. These norms, needless
to say, are not only established by psychiatry. They are certainly related to
the high-speed, commercial culture of late modern capitalism.
The second point to highlight is that transforming one's life pharma-
cologically, rather than by way of therapy and will, has become a more
powerful and tempting alternative with the advent of SSRIs. It has certainly
in many ways become a more
correct
alternative, since self-doubt, self-
scrutiny and self-talk cost a lot of money, not only to the individual, but also
to society, in terms of treatment and sick leave. And yet, of course, people do
not stop talking about their lives, just because they get Prozac. They continue
to do so, and now the issue of SSRIs enters these everyday talks. This would
be my third and fi nal point: we should start to listen more systematically, not
only to Prozac, but also to people talking
about
Prozac, in order to better
understand the issues of normativity and authenticity. Is all the talk going on
about Prozac an example of what Jürgen Habermas calls the “colonization of
the life-world”, whereby we medicalize questions properly belonging to the
