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.