my self, my disease

let's think about one of the most basic assumptions of contemporary psychology: there is a self, and then there are diseases or dysfunctions that distort, interrupt, or encrust this self. the illnesses could be removed from the self - with medication, for example - leaving the self free and unencumbered. this appears to be completely uncontroversial within psychology and its neuroversions and also kind of the basic cultural stance. but particularly in any very clear or simple form, it's just false. at least in many cases, what we perceive as mental illness is, i believe, as essential or integral to the selfhood of the person involved as any other basic trait of personality. the relation of a person to their so-called mental illness is not at all like the relation of a person's body to a tumor, for example. i don't think i'm a crispy with an addict module added on; i think i am an addict. we think of illnesses as some sort of humunculus or demon, or sheer neurological mistake. but take the neurosis out the neurotic or the bipolar out of the bipolar, or the adhd out of the boy, and you do not release the true or free self within, you re-make the self on the surface. possibly, you mess with the essence of the patient, which might of course be needful. no doubt it is possible to feel that your mental illness is oppressing you, or is an alien entity occupying you like a demon. but i think that our psychological institutions enforce that account, and make it a condition of treatment, etc. i don't think that's the way it's usually actually experienced. and the idea that you could get a picture like that out of the brain scanning is ridiculous: y'all brought that to every research project, and didn't problematize it for an instant.