The Path-Dependent Mind: Individuation,Vulnerability,and the Ontogenesis of Mental Conditions

Abstract

This paper advances an enactive-ontogenetic framework for understanding mental disorders, challenging static and reductionist models. Drawing on the Simondonian turn in the enactive approach, it conceptualizes mental conditions as developmental conditions, highlighting their dynamic character and their relation to the person’s individuation process. The paper integrates the enactive-ontogenetic perspective with dynamical network models, advocating a shift from symptom-based snapshots to diachronic, individualized models. Central to this approach is the role of character traits—understood as diachronically sedimented sensorimotor patterns—in channeling vulnerability to mental conditions. By situating mental disorders within a broader developmental landscape, the work offers a process-oriented account of mental conditions as emergent from the individuation of the person, emphasizing their variability, path-dependence, and irreversibility. This integrative model has significant implications for diagnosis, treatment, and the ethical framing of mental health, advocating for a vulnerability paradigm over traditional pathology-based views.

Keywords

enactive psychiatry developmental psychopathology network models individuation process ontology

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