| This dissertation proposes an original theoretical perspective on the phenomenology of social anxiety disorder and related clinical presentations, inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of the existential predicament of "being-for-others" ("etre-pour-autrui" ). In Sartre's phenomenological ontology, "being-for-others" refers to the persistent awareness of the self as the actual or potential object of a conscious Other. Sartre posits that to find oneself the object of the Other's "look" entails profound changes in the basic conditions of self-experience, broadly characterized by a diminished sense of the self as freely self-determining, and by extension, a heightened feeling of vulnerability to the judgments and projects of the Other. It is argued that Sartre's conception of the social object position as inherently vulnerable and incapacitating reflects the anomalous self-experience at the heart of social anxiety pathology. The paper proceeds as follows: First, the concept of pathological social anxiety is examined from historical, nosological, and theoretical perspectives, with the aim of distilling a contemporary consensus definition. Next, the new phenomenological account of social anxiety disorder is presented. Aspects of Sartre's analysis of the encounter with the Other are introduced and explicated in relation to three central features of social anxiety pathology: a sense of powerlessness over the way one is perceived by others; anticipation of negative evaluation by others; and enactment of patterns of self-protective interpersonal behavior. Through analysis of both empirical literature and multiple first-person descriptions of the experience of chronic social anxiety, each of these pathological features is shown to be rooted in an anomalous experience of the self as bereft of existential freedom when in the presence of other people. Implications of the theory for the classification and treatment of social anxiety disorder are considered, along with avenues for future phenomenological research. |
