What is it about?
Enactive approaches to understanding the mind move beyond the mind-body divide, recognize human values and meaning, and remain biologically and scientifically grounded. As such, an enactive approach to understanding the mind seems to be a good position from which to study mental health problems. Several frameworks have been developed in recent years that attempt to offer a sketch of what mental disorders look like from this position. This paper summarizes three leading frameworks, highlighting differences and strengths, and argues for the continued development of an enactive science of mental disorder.
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Why is it important?
Continued development of an enactive approach to mental health challenges will require greater engagement and collaboration with clinicians and empirical scientists. A key purpose of this paper was to summarize these frameworks in an accessible way for such an audience.
Perspectives
Enactive approaches to studying mental disorder appear to have significant potential to advance understanding, but to realize this potential requires a collaborative and somewhat unified global effort. By sharing my excitement about an enactive approach to psychopathology in a new forum I hope to encourage others with diverse skill sets to begin putting these ideas into scientific practice.
Dr Kristopher Nielsen
Victoria University of Wellington
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Enactive approaches to conceptualising psychopathology, New Ideas in Psychology, December 2025, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101189.
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