Is Grief a Mental Ilness?

Until its fifth and most recent edition of 2013, Diagnostics and Statistics Manual, the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic handbook included a “bereavement exception.”

Perhaps this is what Agnes Callard had in mind at the informal seminar she held on 3/2 at a University of Chicago undergraduate dorm. Callard associate professor of philosophy at The University and author “Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming” (2017, OUP).

We began with an explanation of the Hybrid Theory of Valuing (hence H). H tries to explain what it means to value something. H aims to me a necessary and sufficient condition for “full-fledged-valuing” the disposition that we may have to our friends, or that a classical music lover may have to attending the symphony. On H, it is not enough to simply believe that classical music is valuable. According to H, valuing classical music is different from merely believing that it is valuable.

On H, full fledged valuing of a thing A involves three things

1. Belief that A is valuable (in a general sense)
2. Desire for A
3. Emotional vulnerability towards A (The nature of this disposition was not made abundantly clear, but it may not matter)

Callard claimed that this description of valuing is held by most philosophers working in the field.

The focus of the talk was not the theory of valuing explicity, but an argument which drew reached an “undesirable” conclusion with H as a predicate. Callard presented the argument roughly as follows.

Suppose that we hold the Hybrid Theory of Valuing, H. When we lose something or someone we value, we can no longer fulfill the second condition of H because we cannot desire what we know to be impossible (i.e. the bringing about of that which was lost). This form of valuing is also defective because it causes us pain. Nonetheless, we may sensibly say that we still value what is lost (e.g. I value my relationship with my father, now dead). But, inasmuch as this assertion opposes the truth of H, and causes us pain, it is best described as a form of mental illness.

In speculation, Callard also wondered whether we could thus dub all negative emotions to be a form of mental illness. We can summarize the conclusions thus:

C: Bereavement is a form of mental illness

D: (strong form) all negative emotions are mental illness

Callard invited us to attempt to avoid these conclusions by rejecting a premise or an argument made along the way.

Response

I believe that C and D are both true, inasmuch as the presence of mental illness is a matter of degree rather than of kind. To use Parfit’s apt term, it is an empty question because we may know all the relevant facts about a person’s mental processes without concluding that they are “mentally ill” or “not mentally ill.”

Consider that, even positing that levels of neurotic emotion can be directly compared between minds, the appropriate level of neuroticism is a matter of personal preference. A rational fear of being hit by cars keeps us safe cross the street. An overwhelming fear of being hit by cars might be paralyzing but we all have different tolerances for such fear and such risks.

The same goes for feelings of sadness or anger. Perhaps I feel that my sadness is a rational response to the iniquity of the world, that to feel otherwise would be to live ignorant of the suffering of many. Perhaps such a disposition is my preference. Labeling this extended sadness as a mental illness does not meaningfully add to our understanding of the facts involved.

But while I believe that we should hold C and D on the aforementioned grounds, I believe that we should reject the line of reasoning which Callard presented. We should hold C and D on other grounds.

Valuing the lost

Callard’s argument relies on a notional understanding of valuing that says that one can still value a thing that has been lost, or that is not believed to be impossible. For example, when I say that I valued my relationship with my dead father, I should be able to still value it even now. I believe that this is notionally incorrect.

If I were to say “I value my father,” I have implied that the thing in question is ongoing: my father is persisting. If I were to say “I valued my father” we might be led to believe that my father is not longer alive, or perhaps I no longer value him because I have had some fundamental realization about him, so he no longer meets condition 1 of H.

Tensed statements like these make much more sense. When we pine for the lost relative, we invoke their memory, say “would that my father were here.” We may even try to bring about the recreation of the lost thing: perhaps we fix a broken object or try a seance. These are all ways in which our value is notionally real, but they all appeal to a future potentiality.

Desiring what is impossible

I take issue with the desire clause 2 of H. The clear difference between the classical music concert goer and the person who believes that classical music is merely valuable in the abstract is not desire, it is the reasonable effort to bring the thing about for himself. The non-concert-goer does not try to bring it about for himself, but he may, out of beneficence, gift his ticket to another, so that he might enjoy the concert.

If we believe (mistakenly) that we may bring about the resurrection of a dead relative, we may legitimately try to bring about their presence, and thus legitimately value them.

If we say we value them but do not try to bring about their presence, it is simply more accurate to say that we valued them. More particularly, we valued our time with them, which has drawn to a close. This is notionally acceptable.

If we are mistaken about what is possible, we may be deceiving ourselves. Perhaps if we deceive ourselves into feeling that we may bring a dead person back to life, we are deluded. And this delusion may cause us pain.

Begin deceived

According to Plato, being deceived about the nature of the truth is one of the worst things that can happen to a man. But our priorities differ. To make a universal claim about self-deception is to make a universal claim about what matters. I probably hold mistaken beliefs about many fundamental questions, but I’m not perturbed by this. This is merely a matter of personal values.

Another problem arises from the continuity of identity over time. Take the following situation.

I value my friend Joe. But ever since he suffered a traumatic brain injury a year ago, he has not been himself. I no longer wish to spend time with him. In the abstract, I still love my brother but he is so changed as to make it difficult for me to believe that. Perhaps I don’t really value him at all.

Here are some potential explanations

First suppose that I really do not value Joe since his accident and suppose that he did not die in the accident, that he is essentially the same person as before.

Then

My opinion of Joe changed. Either his identity is the same and it was not in fact his personal identity that mattered to me, but some other extraneous aspect of his being. Or, his identity is what mattered, and I simply changed my mind about whether I valued him as a person.

Both of these explanations seem notionally wrong. Clearly, I valued Joe before his injury, and clearly his personal identity mattered. So we should either reject that I no longer value Joe, concluding that I do in fact value Joe. Or we should reject that Joe is the same person. I believe that we should take the latter response.

The case of my father’s death is similar to that of the “death” of Joe. While it may be distressing to be around Joe in his new state as a person, we should realize that what we valued was a person who is now dead. Accordingly, we can reject that we value Joe sentimentally. We should do the same for my father’s death.

I doubt that there are many objects which are really as continues as the argument of value breakdown requires. Consequently, we should feel free to reject the breakdown of value at any point in time, just as we should feel free to reject the continuous identity of objects.