SEMIP 2 · Subjectivity and Self-Effectivity. Investigating Self-Determination in Mentally Ill People from the First-Person-Perspective

The fellowship improves Jann E. Schlimme’s scientific and complementary skills in the interdisciplinary field of philosophy and psychiatry. In this research project self-determination in mentally ill people will be investigated in terms of self-effectivity (SE) from the First-Person-Perspective. At first a detailed description of the experiential structure of the process of SE will be achieved by applying a phenomenological method. Then this structure of SE will be investigated more thoroughly in constant comparison with understandings of mental disorders (e.g. addiction, suicidality). It is expected that SE is a crucial process for self-determination and that therefore characteristics of self-determination and of its special impairments in mental disorders can be spelled out in terms of SE. The results will be published. Schlimme is a clinically excellently trained senior registrar and senior lecturer for psychiatry at Hannover Medical School with an interdisciplinary academic education. Though he is an experienced researcher in psychiatry applying methods rooted in humanities, he needs a profound (philosophical) training for reaching professional maturity in this interdisciplinary field. In this fellowship he will be trained under the supervision of Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl at the department of Philosophy (University of Graz) and integrated in her working group. The fellowship enables him to achieve the necessary skills for a professorship. The project’s topic is of principal importance for psychiatry, since regaining, stabilizing and improving the patient’s self-determination is the major goal of psychiatry and needs new attention due to radical changes in our understanding of subjectivity. The detailed description of the experiential structure of the process of SE opens the field of self-determination for further research and helps to improve psychiatric treatment in the EU via describing guidelines regarding the empowerment of mentally ill people.