Using Spinoza to Address Experiences of Selfhood within Existential Anxiety and Self-Referential Processing in Depersonalization-Derealization

Presentations of existential anxiety within depersonalization-derealization disorder both present as symptoms to be reduced and highlight a particular trend for understanding self-referential processes. In offering a possible neurophenomenological conceptualization of how oneself attempts to understand oneself through the course of experiencing existential anxiety, a lens through Spinoza’s conatus may offer insight. This argument seeks to combine Spinoza’s conatus with insights from lived experience in an attempt to better understand the nature of self-referential processes, how one distinguishes who they are as a person amidst the demands of the environment around them. This argument will present a conceptualization of how conatus functions that aligns with the current findings and can be used to inform clinical recommendations and future research into the neurophenomenological program and dissociative disorders as a whole.