Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A Philosophical Investigation

Situated somewhere in no man’s land, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) presents scientific and social issues to those who research, treat and experience it. Living with CFS/ME is profoundly disruptive; it is exceptionally physically, emotionally and socially difficult. This thesis offers the first philosophical analysis of the condition, how it is experienced, and how it is handled. A phenomenological perspective is present throughout this analysis. How does the world of the person with CFS/ME change? How do we understand the sense of loss in CFS/ME, and does it amount to grief, or is grief reserved for bereavement? How does CFS/ME obstruct emotion regulation? How, if at all, are these experiences distinct from depression? How much epistemic privilege, and over which domains, belongs to medical professionals, and how much of it belongs to patients? Which social and political issues can be attributed to distinctive types of injustice, and which have their roots in something else? What does this mean for how we understand the newly-emergent phenomenon of “Long Covid”? The answers to each of these questions are taken to support the view that a significantly improved understanding of CFS/ME is dependent upon the revision of a collection of commonplace distinctions and categories which currently restrict our efforts. A nuanced investigation of CFS/ME reveals the restrictiveness of the distinctions between psychiatric and somatic illness, between functional and organic illness, and between primary and secondary psychopathology. An approach to CFS/ME which is not bound by the confines of these distinctions shows itself to be uniquely illuminating.