UQAM’s Department of Philosophy, in collaboration with the Institut Santé et Société (ISS), is pleased to invite you to the 2nd departmental conference of 2024-2025, for Anya Plutynski’s (Washington U. in Saint Louis) presentation entitled “The Power and Peril of Personality in Mental Health”.

Summary

The notion that personality is closely tied to mental health has a long history. This talk will in part review that history – pointing to the perils as well as the possibilities of drawing links between personality traits and mental health. First, there’s a long history of debate over personality as a psychological construct. Such debates are ongoing, making any connection to mental health likewise fraught. Second, the normativity implicit in concepts of mental health and personality mean that appeals to one to explain or justify claims about the other run the risk of either circularity, or “healthism,” the imposition of normative ideals in the guise of health proscriptions. Third, mental health is itself clearly a “big tent”. So, any concept of mental health must work to (within reason) accommodate this heterogeneity, and appeals to personality may seem reductive. Nonetheless, personality can teach us about mental health, or so this talk will argue, drawing in part on the clinical literature.