Yes! And for someone who has lived their whole life confused as to why they struggle so much, a diagnosis can provide a lot of relief, even if that relief is only a starting point. Of course, the ideal version of getting a diagnosis or identifying with a disorder like ADHD is that it gives you tools to actually improve your life via medication or new coping strategies, not to provide an all purpose excuse for anything bad you do. This is why I do think that diagnoses, as flawed as they are, can still be useful (that and insurance rebates). I'm also wary of going too far in the other direction towards the RFK Jr. banning SSRIs or the "mental illness is all fake" camp. But that's the constant grey area we have to live in, as you say!
The Carmela anecdote reminds me of a line I just heard during my 37th Mad Men rewatch: Don and Betty's neighbor Helen, a divorcee everyone judges for being a divorcee, tells Betty that the hardest part about divorce is "realizing you're in charge."
Recognizing you have agency to change your life and that doing so is hard because of societal factors to me is key to blending the "individual" mindset that right wing loves to tout with a systems level mindset.
As you have the power to do so, it is the privilege of your existence on this earth to harness your agency and use it shape your life.
One of my recent Autistic special interests has been Western Europe's so-called "Age of Enlightenment", and comparing its individualism, "universalism", linear time, etc to other peoples/worldviews/etc.
The attempt to keep our minds away from recognizing environmental/systemic problems and fixated on individualized "trauma" and "victim hood" seems like a very logical outcome of these Western Europen ideologies.
I really enjoyed doing further research on the earlier interview:
It seems to me that the pathologies aren't in individual humans, but in "Age of Enlightenment" ideologies themself.
I'm not trying to absolve individual responsibility, but I also have moved in recent years away from being angry at individual humans for simply being more blindly "loyal" or "patriotic" to the worldviews which are embeded in (and agressively promoted by) institutions such as settler-colonial Canada and the USA.
Note: I'm Autistic, and want to learn more. This note is not intended to be interpreted as a challenge, critique or a request to "debate", but I do want to offer the lens I am coming from so we can each share. I believe situatedness provides critical context for clear communication.
Can you share more of your thoughts on the book? What made it come to mind?
I've personally been skeptical of what I see as Karl Marx's minor critiques of Capitalism -- is this author looking at this from outside a Western European "Enlightenment" lens? I'm open to hearing more, especially from those who use the term "Marxism" only to connect with Western European thinkers, but who reject Eurocentrism, individualism, "universalism", linear time, etc.
As one example, I was recently suggested to look at the works of Jacques Derrida.
How does Marshall Berman fit into that context? Does it help with understanding where some of what is now individualized as "trauma" and "victimhood" comes from?
On a spirituality/philosophy level I am investigating Indigenous peoples who originated near where I live (Great Lakes, Dish With One Spoon Territories) as well as South/East Asian (Advaita Vedanta, etc).
When I asked an LLM about the book it suggested the form of "self" that Berman discusses is in many ways the opposite concept of "self" from the Vedantic Self (Atman). This is one of the things I have noticed with English (the only human language I know well) is that the words are not deterministic, and different people use the same words to mean entirely different (sometimes opposite) meanings.
*****
This video may be of interest, as it feeds into where Marx received some of the ideas that are attributed to him, and how some of the value of the original philosophy was lost in Western European translation/compression.
Stolen Anarchy: Playing Indian & The Roots of Collectivism | TwinRabbit
I'm of Scottish, Irish and French descent -- but have an interest in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (governance, philosophy/spirituality, etc) given where I was born and have always lived (My mother was even born in a town that is part of the Haldimand Tract).
Y'know, it's been so long since I've read the book (and did such a bad job annotating it then) that I likely won't do it justice, BUT: Berman's main focus is how "the abstractions of seventeenth-century natural law collapse[d] in the eighteenth century's encounter with empirical reality." Empiricism revealed "Nature [to be] devoid of all normative content": Just atoms bouncing off of atoms.
But without the arguments of Natural Law, on what basis could one resist an oppressive social order? Berman interprets this question through Montesquieu's epistolary novel The Persian Letters: "Natural-law theory might vent moral indignation against Usbek [the titular Persian] for violating the rights of man; but he could dismiss such criticism as mere dogmatism, based on moral values imposed arbitrarily on his system from 'outside.' Montesquieu's own critique of a repressive society is much more complex. A repressive system, he argues, fails to fulfill its own immanent standard: It is incapable of satisfying any of its members, even the most privileged; precisely when it appears most stable, it is actually decomposing from within...No social system, Montesquieu tries to show, can provide human happiness, unless it posits, and its government guarantees, a basic human right: the right of every man *to be himself.*"
The discovery of this "basic human right" to self-discovery and -development both opens the door to the sort of atomized individualism necessary for capitalist modernity *and* authorizes resistance against the alienation this individualism causes by erasing the ground of community/interconnectedness on which individualism ultimately rests. From what I can tell, you may not come to the same conclusions and potential steps forward that Berman did, but I think the book makes a good attempt to explain how modern individualism developed.
So... I don't trust LLMs, and they are extremely dependent on humans noticing when they as research assistant go wrong.
I am curious what you (or anyone else that notices this thread) think about the following (the end of a longer chat session).
*****
Is Berman's book "Worldview-Expanding"?
Berman’s book is excellent for understanding why Westerners feel so "alienated" and "fake." It explains the origin of the itch that modern Westerners feel—the sense that "this isn't the real me."
However, if you are looking for a philosophy that treats community as the starting point (rather than a lost ground to be reclaimed), you might find more resonance in Communitarian philosophers like Charles Taylor (who wrote The Ethics of Authenticity) or in the Indigenous scholars who discuss the "Relational Self," such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson or Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Berman shows you the exit from the Enlightenment's trap, but he is still standing in the hallway of Western history. He authorizes "resistance," but he doesn't necessarily provide the "interconnected protocols" that Indigenous worldviews have maintained for millennia.
Is this a past interest, or a current one? I don't want to intrude if this is just something you were interested in long ago, and just wanted to share a quick link.
"authorizes resistance against the alienation this individualism causes by erasing the ground of community/interconnectedness on which individualism ultimately rests."
This I would love to explore.
Within the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe, there is an "ethic of non-interference" which applies not only within communities (it is part of their educational methodologies) but also between nationalities. That doesn't mean people are "free to do anything they want" ("freedom" from responsibility), but that they are free to be themselves as long as it doesn't interfere with others.
This can be complex for those who want to interfere/control/etc (such as the subjects of European Christian Monarchies that started to visit), but in my reading it allows people to find and harness their gifts for the betterment of the community/nationality/etc.
The idea that "individualism" can rest upon community/interconnectedness is something I have not heard before in a Western context. So much of what I read pits "individualism" in opposition to anything that in any way is grounded in community, relationality (whether strictly within the species, or beyond), or collectivism.
I threw some of this into Gemini, and it suggested I look more into "Marxist Humanism".
BTW: I have had a hard time with the use of the term "natural law" by Western philosophy (politically this is ongoing, not the past) given what they appear to refer to feels so unnatural from the perspective of the natural world (which humanity is part of and the most dependent on, clearly not separate no matter what these ideologies claim).
I went through Berman's three main books (Politics of Authenticity, All That Is Solid, and Adventures in Marxism) almost a decade ago, long enough that I'm due for a reread (if I can find some fresh copies). In that sense, it's a "past interest," but of course the formation of the "modern" western mind is a perennial interest. I'd definitely put him under the Marxist Humanism heading, and I think a lot of recent American socialist (not always rigorously "Marxist") writing takes some influence from him.
I love this ! we live in this through 12 steps in AA. where have we harmed another and what was our part in the situation. also it does feel good to admit that it's okay to be a human being and it's okay to not be perfect and to be flawed and sometimes be the asshole*. Thank you so much for this article.
I loved reading this. I have a couple comments around some of this stuff - not saying they're perfect, but they are informative.
The first is a rule of thumb: when someone is truly traumatized, it is more often than not the case that I find out about it almost by accident in casual conversation. In other words, true, real violence is spoken in the same sentence and cadence as "what type of wine would you like for dinner?" obviously there can be a spectrum of violence and trauma, and people react to these things differently, but in 32 years of livingm that rule of thumb has never failed me
Also, your etymologies are really interesting. I think you should look up the etymology of the word melancholy as well because it really fits so interestingly into your argument, how mutable its use has been across time.
Thank you. As someone who has been in and out of therapy for 40 years and seeing my daughter in therapy now, this new approach is really hard to watch.
it's never fully the symptoms that are the problem, but the worldview by which things are valued or not. and by that worldview, defined into always inaccurate "things". Daoism plus decoloniality is how i worked through much of my own pathologization by the systems of control we are forced into.
Thank you for writing this! So thoughtful and thought provoking. Every teacher I had as a kid told my boomer parents that I was probably adhd, but they insisted that I was cool and successful the way I was. They never medicated me or made it a part of my identity and I’m so grateful for that. They also didn’t tell me until I got myself diagnosed in my late 20s.. which kind of sucks. But after a few years of medication, I realized that the other tools I’d relied on (results of my own agency, I’m learning right now tysm) when I didn’t know I had a diagnosis felt much healthier. I’ve now made a life that works with my brain. And after experiencing all that, I find it especially irritating when I see people all around me using adhd as an excuse to be irresponsible, inconsiderate, or worse.
All that is just to say that this essay should be like, idk, taped to Adderall bottles or assigned as reading in psych 101 because this was such a good way of saying how I’ve been feeling 👏👏👏
I read the entire thing. Thanks to whoever sent this to me 😉 I’d like to acknowledge two things. One being that “victimhood” doesn’t really exist. There are actual victims of crime globally, a majority even, who not only get zero justice but also get villainized for seeking justice (see Epstein files). The other point being that having words and language to describe our realities and responses gives us agency whereas we had no language to describe our systemic oppression.
This perspective has value and I will process (likely for days maybe week’s due to my neurodivergence 🙃)
So true! Your essay is of capital importance. Thank you. By externalizing, and thus isolating ourselves, we no longer form a society; we become prisoners of our own boundaries. Disconnected from one another, we become objects: easy to manipulate, and yet intensely connected to the economic machine that feeds on us.
I agree with a lot of this, but not all of it. Basically, yes, pathologization is generally bad, and doesn't help with understanding our own experiences either. But I don't think that you can as easily oppose agency and the use of say a diagnosis for social power. For me it was always an active decision, a true expression of agency, when to use the diagnosis I otherwise wouldn't call on. When you are sometimes simply not able to compete with a world demanding too much of you, I think it is fine to rely on things like that, as a tool. But I do agree that that's different than _identifying_ with that diagnosis, something I always avoided doing, as it then also becomes difficult to distinguish between it and your life, and self-pathologization of all of life can't be a good goal. Yet, I do deeply believe that there is a kind of truth of pathos in pathology beyond pathologization, that does relate to trauma, depression, anxiety, meltdown etc. as _experience_; and I think that any phenomenology of subjective life is poorer if it abandons these topics for their names. (I don't know if I really disagree with the text then, after all; but there is something still incommensurable, something I can't quite put a finger on, maybe something like an idea of the inherent positivity of that _what agency should be for_, or a subject assumed to have it, that doesn't quite seem to be there in my view, but it's definitely something to keep thinking about.)
Another slightly related point: There is a question of how this self-pathologization as well as -depathologization functions, namely, that precisely the people who actually are the most excluded, in pain etc, are often forcefully officially depathologized, their experience proclaimed as not painful enough to qualify for help, but rich people's self-pity acts as a form of self-pathologization. There is a deep difference in means of whose self-described trauma is believed, one side that is dismissed, no matter how horrible the description, and the other where it is blindly believed out of convenience to the kind of abdication you describe. This first group then fighting against its external depathologization is something else than abdication, as much as it obviously still has the danger of becoming that if it is not done with the reflection of the societal situation it happens in.
Yes! And for someone who has lived their whole life confused as to why they struggle so much, a diagnosis can provide a lot of relief, even if that relief is only a starting point. Of course, the ideal version of getting a diagnosis or identifying with a disorder like ADHD is that it gives you tools to actually improve your life via medication or new coping strategies, not to provide an all purpose excuse for anything bad you do. This is why I do think that diagnoses, as flawed as they are, can still be useful (that and insurance rebates). I'm also wary of going too far in the other direction towards the RFK Jr. banning SSRIs or the "mental illness is all fake" camp. But that's the constant grey area we have to live in, as you say!
Btw this recent op ed in the Times by fellow substacker Awais Aftab was fantastic. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opinion/adhd-autism-depression-diagnoses.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hlA.cHvg.rCXtWWVGxfgJ&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The Carmela anecdote reminds me of a line I just heard during my 37th Mad Men rewatch: Don and Betty's neighbor Helen, a divorcee everyone judges for being a divorcee, tells Betty that the hardest part about divorce is "realizing you're in charge."
yesssss.
Recognizing you have agency to change your life and that doing so is hard because of societal factors to me is key to blending the "individual" mindset that right wing loves to tout with a systems level mindset.
As you have the power to do so, it is the privilege of your existence on this earth to harness your agency and use it shape your life.
I love this! It's a very existentialist way of thinking
So...
One of my recent Autistic special interests has been Western Europe's so-called "Age of Enlightenment", and comparing its individualism, "universalism", linear time, etc to other peoples/worldviews/etc.
The attempt to keep our minds away from recognizing environmental/systemic problems and fixated on individualized "trauma" and "victim hood" seems like a very logical outcome of these Western Europen ideologies.
I really enjoyed doing further research on the earlier interview:
https://r.flora.ca/p/age-of-enlightenment-psychiatry
It seems to me that the pathologies aren't in individual humans, but in "Age of Enlightenment" ideologies themself.
I'm not trying to absolve individual responsibility, but I also have moved in recent years away from being angry at individual humans for simply being more blindly "loyal" or "patriotic" to the worldviews which are embeded in (and agressively promoted by) institutions such as settler-colonial Canada and the USA.
oooh such an interesting point! gonna dive down this rabbit hole
You might like Marshall Berman's "The Politics of Authenticity"
Note: I'm Autistic, and want to learn more. This note is not intended to be interpreted as a challenge, critique or a request to "debate", but I do want to offer the lens I am coming from so we can each share. I believe situatedness provides critical context for clear communication.
Can you share more of your thoughts on the book? What made it come to mind?
https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/2106-the-politics-of-authenticity
I've personally been skeptical of what I see as Karl Marx's minor critiques of Capitalism -- is this author looking at this from outside a Western European "Enlightenment" lens? I'm open to hearing more, especially from those who use the term "Marxism" only to connect with Western European thinkers, but who reject Eurocentrism, individualism, "universalism", linear time, etc.
As one example, I was recently suggested to look at the works of Jacques Derrida.
How does Marshall Berman fit into that context? Does it help with understanding where some of what is now individualized as "trauma" and "victimhood" comes from?
On a spirituality/philosophy level I am investigating Indigenous peoples who originated near where I live (Great Lakes, Dish With One Spoon Territories) as well as South/East Asian (Advaita Vedanta, etc).
When I asked an LLM about the book it suggested the form of "self" that Berman discusses is in many ways the opposite concept of "self" from the Vedantic Self (Atman). This is one of the things I have noticed with English (the only human language I know well) is that the words are not deterministic, and different people use the same words to mean entirely different (sometimes opposite) meanings.
*****
This video may be of interest, as it feeds into where Marx received some of the ideas that are attributed to him, and how some of the value of the original philosophy was lost in Western European translation/compression.
Stolen Anarchy: Playing Indian & The Roots of Collectivism | TwinRabbit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBFvxkvpi2w
I'm of Scottish, Irish and French descent -- but have an interest in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (governance, philosophy/spirituality, etc) given where I was born and have always lived (My mother was even born in a town that is part of the Haldimand Tract).
Y'know, it's been so long since I've read the book (and did such a bad job annotating it then) that I likely won't do it justice, BUT: Berman's main focus is how "the abstractions of seventeenth-century natural law collapse[d] in the eighteenth century's encounter with empirical reality." Empiricism revealed "Nature [to be] devoid of all normative content": Just atoms bouncing off of atoms.
But without the arguments of Natural Law, on what basis could one resist an oppressive social order? Berman interprets this question through Montesquieu's epistolary novel The Persian Letters: "Natural-law theory might vent moral indignation against Usbek [the titular Persian] for violating the rights of man; but he could dismiss such criticism as mere dogmatism, based on moral values imposed arbitrarily on his system from 'outside.' Montesquieu's own critique of a repressive society is much more complex. A repressive system, he argues, fails to fulfill its own immanent standard: It is incapable of satisfying any of its members, even the most privileged; precisely when it appears most stable, it is actually decomposing from within...No social system, Montesquieu tries to show, can provide human happiness, unless it posits, and its government guarantees, a basic human right: the right of every man *to be himself.*"
The discovery of this "basic human right" to self-discovery and -development both opens the door to the sort of atomized individualism necessary for capitalist modernity *and* authorizes resistance against the alienation this individualism causes by erasing the ground of community/interconnectedness on which individualism ultimately rests. From what I can tell, you may not come to the same conclusions and potential steps forward that Berman did, but I think the book makes a good attempt to explain how modern individualism developed.
So... I don't trust LLMs, and they are extremely dependent on humans noticing when they as research assistant go wrong.
I am curious what you (or anyone else that notices this thread) think about the following (the end of a longer chat session).
*****
Is Berman's book "Worldview-Expanding"?
Berman’s book is excellent for understanding why Westerners feel so "alienated" and "fake." It explains the origin of the itch that modern Westerners feel—the sense that "this isn't the real me."
However, if you are looking for a philosophy that treats community as the starting point (rather than a lost ground to be reclaimed), you might find more resonance in Communitarian philosophers like Charles Taylor (who wrote The Ethics of Authenticity) or in the Indigenous scholars who discuss the "Relational Self," such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson or Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Berman shows you the exit from the Enlightenment's trap, but he is still standing in the hallway of Western history. He authorizes "resistance," but he doesn't necessarily provide the "interconnected protocols" that Indigenous worldviews have maintained for millennia.
Is this a past interest, or a current one? I don't want to intrude if this is just something you were interested in long ago, and just wanted to share a quick link.
"authorizes resistance against the alienation this individualism causes by erasing the ground of community/interconnectedness on which individualism ultimately rests."
This I would love to explore.
Within the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe, there is an "ethic of non-interference" which applies not only within communities (it is part of their educational methodologies) but also between nationalities. That doesn't mean people are "free to do anything they want" ("freedom" from responsibility), but that they are free to be themselves as long as it doesn't interfere with others.
This can be complex for those who want to interfere/control/etc (such as the subjects of European Christian Monarchies that started to visit), but in my reading it allows people to find and harness their gifts for the betterment of the community/nationality/etc.
The idea that "individualism" can rest upon community/interconnectedness is something I have not heard before in a Western context. So much of what I read pits "individualism" in opposition to anything that in any way is grounded in community, relationality (whether strictly within the species, or beyond), or collectivism.
I threw some of this into Gemini, and it suggested I look more into "Marxist Humanism".
BTW: I have had a hard time with the use of the term "natural law" by Western philosophy (politically this is ongoing, not the past) given what they appear to refer to feels so unnatural from the perspective of the natural world (which humanity is part of and the most dependent on, clearly not separate no matter what these ideologies claim).
I went through Berman's three main books (Politics of Authenticity, All That Is Solid, and Adventures in Marxism) almost a decade ago, long enough that I'm due for a reread (if I can find some fresh copies). In that sense, it's a "past interest," but of course the formation of the "modern" western mind is a perennial interest. I'd definitely put him under the Marxist Humanism heading, and I think a lot of recent American socialist (not always rigorously "Marxist") writing takes some influence from him.
I love this ! we live in this through 12 steps in AA. where have we harmed another and what was our part in the situation. also it does feel good to admit that it's okay to be a human being and it's okay to not be perfect and to be flawed and sometimes be the asshole*. Thank you so much for this article.
I loved reading this. I have a couple comments around some of this stuff - not saying they're perfect, but they are informative.
The first is a rule of thumb: when someone is truly traumatized, it is more often than not the case that I find out about it almost by accident in casual conversation. In other words, true, real violence is spoken in the same sentence and cadence as "what type of wine would you like for dinner?" obviously there can be a spectrum of violence and trauma, and people react to these things differently, but in 32 years of livingm that rule of thumb has never failed me
Also, your etymologies are really interesting. I think you should look up the etymology of the word melancholy as well because it really fits so interestingly into your argument, how mutable its use has been across time.
Anyway, thanks for an interesting read.
Thank you. As someone who has been in and out of therapy for 40 years and seeing my daughter in therapy now, this new approach is really hard to watch.
it's never fully the symptoms that are the problem, but the worldview by which things are valued or not. and by that worldview, defined into always inaccurate "things". Daoism plus decoloniality is how i worked through much of my own pathologization by the systems of control we are forced into.
Thank you for writing this! So thoughtful and thought provoking. Every teacher I had as a kid told my boomer parents that I was probably adhd, but they insisted that I was cool and successful the way I was. They never medicated me or made it a part of my identity and I’m so grateful for that. They also didn’t tell me until I got myself diagnosed in my late 20s.. which kind of sucks. But after a few years of medication, I realized that the other tools I’d relied on (results of my own agency, I’m learning right now tysm) when I didn’t know I had a diagnosis felt much healthier. I’ve now made a life that works with my brain. And after experiencing all that, I find it especially irritating when I see people all around me using adhd as an excuse to be irresponsible, inconsiderate, or worse.
All that is just to say that this essay should be like, idk, taped to Adderall bottles or assigned as reading in psych 101 because this was such a good way of saying how I’ve been feeling 👏👏👏
put into words what i’ve been seeing and feeling for years, thank you
I read the entire thing. Thanks to whoever sent this to me 😉 I’d like to acknowledge two things. One being that “victimhood” doesn’t really exist. There are actual victims of crime globally, a majority even, who not only get zero justice but also get villainized for seeking justice (see Epstein files). The other point being that having words and language to describe our realities and responses gives us agency whereas we had no language to describe our systemic oppression.
This perspective has value and I will process (likely for days maybe week’s due to my neurodivergence 🙃)
So true! Your essay is of capital importance. Thank you. By externalizing, and thus isolating ourselves, we no longer form a society; we become prisoners of our own boundaries. Disconnected from one another, we become objects: easy to manipulate, and yet intensely connected to the economic machine that feeds on us.
I agree with a lot of this, but not all of it. Basically, yes, pathologization is generally bad, and doesn't help with understanding our own experiences either. But I don't think that you can as easily oppose agency and the use of say a diagnosis for social power. For me it was always an active decision, a true expression of agency, when to use the diagnosis I otherwise wouldn't call on. When you are sometimes simply not able to compete with a world demanding too much of you, I think it is fine to rely on things like that, as a tool. But I do agree that that's different than _identifying_ with that diagnosis, something I always avoided doing, as it then also becomes difficult to distinguish between it and your life, and self-pathologization of all of life can't be a good goal. Yet, I do deeply believe that there is a kind of truth of pathos in pathology beyond pathologization, that does relate to trauma, depression, anxiety, meltdown etc. as _experience_; and I think that any phenomenology of subjective life is poorer if it abandons these topics for their names. (I don't know if I really disagree with the text then, after all; but there is something still incommensurable, something I can't quite put a finger on, maybe something like an idea of the inherent positivity of that _what agency should be for_, or a subject assumed to have it, that doesn't quite seem to be there in my view, but it's definitely something to keep thinking about.)
Another slightly related point: There is a question of how this self-pathologization as well as -depathologization functions, namely, that precisely the people who actually are the most excluded, in pain etc, are often forcefully officially depathologized, their experience proclaimed as not painful enough to qualify for help, but rich people's self-pity acts as a form of self-pathologization. There is a deep difference in means of whose self-described trauma is believed, one side that is dismissed, no matter how horrible the description, and the other where it is blindly believed out of convenience to the kind of abdication you describe. This first group then fighting against its external depathologization is something else than abdication, as much as it obviously still has the danger of becoming that if it is not done with the reflection of the societal situation it happens in.