Announcement of the next talk of the series – 28 Feb. Organized on behalf of the Network for Phenomenological Research.
MONTHLY PHENOMENOLOGY
An online forum of discussion on recent work in phenomenology
Description: This series of talks gathers together scholars interested in phenomenology and its relation to contemporary issues in philosophy, especially in the philosophy of mind. It establishes a forum of discussion where people can meet on a regular basis and present their work-in-progress or recent publications. The topics addressed will stretch from the history of early phenomenology to the systematic application of phenomenological insights in recent debates in analytic philosophy.
Schedule: The talks will take place once a month on a Friday from October to May. Time: 10:15am ET, 3:15pm GMT/GMT+1, 4:15pm CET. Talks last 90 minutes, including a 45 minutes Q&A.
Participation: Talks are held on zoom. To participate, please send an email to [email protected] with the heading “Registration Monthly Phenomenology”. A zoom link will be sent to you the day preceding each talk.
Programme:
Next talk
Adriana Alcaraz-Sánchez (University of Edinburgh)
Dreaming while Awake? The Case of Maladaptive Daydreaming
Friday, 28 February 2025
10:15am ET, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET
Abstract: We spend roughly half of our waking hours engaged in thoughts unrelated to our immediate task (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). On some occasions, we might become rapt to those thoughts, and lose ourselves in our imagined worlds, yet come back to our usual activities. In some others, we might get stuck in those worlds. This is the case in “maladaptive daydreaming” (MDD; Somer, 2002), a very compelling and extensive sort of fantasising. MDDers report engaging in highly realistic waking fantasies for hours at the expense of their daily responsibilities and interpersonal relationships. Such is the disruption of MDD that some researchers have advocated for its inclusion in the DSM-V, considering it a form of “daydreaming disorder” (Somer et al., 2017) or “compulsive fantasising” (Bigelsen & Schupak, 2011). Despite those calls, MDD has not been acknowledged by the medical and psychological establishment, preventing MDDers from receiving adequate support and treatment (Bersthling & Somer, 2018). Similarly, in academic spheres, some have shared their scepticism about the alleged pathologisation of what is considered a normal mental activity (Zepps, 2015). Is MDD just an excessive engagement in fantasising, or is it indeed a qualitatively distinct form of imagination? Does MDD constitute an imagination-related mechanism going awry? Here, I propose that what makes MDD distinct is the mode of consciousness that it instantiates, one that is more similar to a dream-like state than an ordinary form of waking imagination (including daydreaming and mind wandering). Like dreaming, MDD involves a significant shift of attention to the imagined world, leading to a breakdown of the ordinary form of self-awareness in imaginative experiences. Yet, unlike dreaming, MDD does not involve a conflation between the actual and imagined world. I motivate this proposal by examining recent proposals in the psychological literature characterising MDD as a state of dissociative absorption (Soffer-Dudek and Somer, 2018)—a state where our attention is directed to the imagined world to the extent of disregarding the factual world. I then examine what distinguishes MDD from other immersive forms of imagination and fantasising by arguing that, in the case of MDD, there is an inability to shift one’s attention back to the factual—in a way, one’s attention is stuck in the imagined world.
Upcoming talks
Joan González Guardiola (University of the Balearic Islands)
A Contribution to Phenomenology of Spatial Orientation: A Phenomenological Description of Laterality Phenomena
28 March 2025
Julio De Rizzo (University of Vienna)
Husserl on Perception (1894–1907)
25 April 2025
Maja Spener (University of Birmingham)
Introspective Methods in Early Experimental Psychology
9 May 2025
Convenors:
Guillaume Fréchette (University of Geneva)
Marta Jorba (Pompeu Fabra University)
Alessandro Salice (University College Cork)
Hamid Taieb (Humboldt University Berlin)
Íngrid Vendrell-Ferran (Philipps University Marburg)
Organized on behalf of the Network for Phenomenological Research