RESUMO
Habits are the topic of a venerable history of research that extends back to antiquity, yet they were originally disregarded by the cognitive sciences. They started to become the focus of interdisciplinary research in the 1990s, but since then there has been a stalemate between those who approach habits as a kind of bodily automatism or as a kind of mindful action. This implicit mind-body dualism is ready to be overcome with the rise of interest in embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (4E) cognition. We review the enactive approach and highlight how it moves beyond the traditional stalemate by integrating both autonomy and sense-making into its theory of agency. It defines a habit as an adaptive, precarious, and self-sustaining network of neural, bodily, and interactive processes that generate dynamical sensorimotor patterns. Habits constitute a central source of normativity for the agent. We identify a potential shortcoming of this enactive account with respect to bad habits, since self-maintenance of a habit would always be intrinsically good. Nevertheless, this is only a problem if, following the mainstream perspective on habits, we treat habits as isolated modules. The enactive approach replaces this atomism with a view of habits as constituting an interdependent whole on whose overall viability the individual habits depend. Accordingly, we propose to define a bad habit as one whose expression, while positive for itself, significantly impairs a person's well-being by overruling the expression of other situationally relevant habits. We conclude by considering implications of this concept of bad habit for psychological and psychiatric research, particularly with respect to addiction research.
RESUMO
O lúpus eritematoso sistêmico (LES) é uma doença crônica e auto-imune que gera diversos quadros clínicos que se tornam uma ameaça à vida da pessoa. Sua etiologia aponta para a combinação de fatores genéticos, hormonais e ambientais, e sua incidência recai principalmente em mulheres. Acredita-se que os sentidos atribuídos ao processo de adoecer influenciam no tratamento do LES e na forma de lidar com as dificuldades desse processo. Objetivando aprofundar os processos de significação e geração de sentidos relacionados à experiência de LES, foram entrevistadas oito mulheres portadoras da doença. A análise das narrativas evidencia que não é só o LES que tem inúmeras maneiras de se apresentar, mas a experiência da doença é subjetiva e dinâmica, tendo diversas formas de significação conforme as condições advindas do processo de adoecer e suas implicações. Ratifica-se, assim, a necessidade de uma abordagem interdisciplinar que abarque essa complexidade, considerando a dimensão biopsicossocial envolvida no processo.
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic and auto-immune disease which causes different clinical syndromes that can put in risk the person's life. Its etiology indicates the combination of genetic, hormonal and environmental factors, presenting a higher incidence among women. It is believed that meanings attributed to the illness process influence its treatment, as well as the person's capacity to cope with the difficulties implicit in the illness process. Aiming a study in depth of meanings and sense making process related to the experience of SLE, eight women affected by the disease were interviewed. The analysis of their narratives shows not only the different symptoms and complex clinic evidences related to SLE, but also the diverse subjective and dynamic ways the illness is experienced. This ratifies the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach to embrace the SLE complexity.