Narratives and delusion

Narratives and delusion

Please note: this talk will commence at 8pm sharp, and there will be no break for refreshments. Those who wish to have a drink with the talk are advised to arrive early enough to order.
The talk will be followed by questions to the speaker; and later, a more broad-ranging discussion of the issues raised.

As the Cafe Sci's contribution to Nottingham's Mental Health Awareness Week programme, Lisa Bortolotti will be describing her work on internal speech - "narratives" - and the light that this approach may shed upon issues such as delusions, as they are currently conceived in psychiatry.

She writes:

"We all construct narratives of our own lives in which we play the role of the protagonist and of the narrator. When these narratives are both broadly accurate and largely coherent, this results into our forming a well-balanced concept of ourselves, our dispositions, goals and interests, and translates into directives that shape future decisions and actions.

When the narrative diverges substantially from reality or from the way other people see us, the risk is that we don’t manage to interact meaningfully with the surrounding physical or social environment, and remain isolated. When the narrative is incoherent or fragmented, our concept of ourselves is unstable, and we may find it difficult to identify a direction in our lives that is likely to make us happy.

I shall ask whether people affected by psychiatric disorders that manifest with delusions and confabulations are reliable autobiographers and whether they retain the capacity to “govern themselves” successfully and make autonomous decisions."

Dr Bortolotti is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Philosophy Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. Since 2010, she has been an Honorary Associate at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (Australia). For more backgriund, her Home page is: https://www.lisabortol... (https://www.lisabortolotti.com/)