Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Silence has been a relatively neglected phenomenon despite its significance in psychiatric research. Acknowledging this oversight, there has been a recent move towards systematically describing the first-personal experience of silence in mental disorders within the field of philosophy of psychiatry. This paper contributes to this research effort by highlighting the underexplored interpersonal aspect of silence crucial for both psychopathological and therapeutic research. More specifically, I develop the interpersonal aspect of distressing silence associated with depression, recently coined as ‘empty silence’. Complementing its original analysis, I argue that this distressing silence not only involves the loss of linguistic agency but also the loss of social agency. Having established this claim, I situate it within the wider research context and open an ethical dimension to the current analysis. I explore this by identifying a therapeutic silence others can establish for an individual undergoing a severe depressive episode. I provisionally term it ‘undemanding silence’ and argue that this form of silence can help restore the loss of social agency by providing a distinct form of social affordance that depressed individuals can easily realise at their own pace.
Source: Synthese
Author: Jae Ryeong Sul
Institution: University of Bristol
Language: English
Topic: Mental Health and Psychiatry
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,190
Awards: G1605505745, G1796217717
OpenAlex ID: W4407186111