Abstract

The goal of the paper is to offer a model of self-awareness that fits the testimony of both good and bad responders to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), of which fluoxetine (Prozac; Lilly, Indianapolis, IN) is probably the most well known. After a review of troubling current uncertainties concerning how and for whom SSRIs are therapeutic, it is argued that SSRIs, as a rule, lessen the emotionality of SSRI subjects in favor of an increased cognitive and volitional orientation. Traditional empiricist and rationalist accounts self-awareness fail to provide models that adequately explain how such a shift from an active emotional response to an increased cognitive/volitional orientation is possible. Instead, notions of self-awareness, as understood by founding phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl, fit the testimony of SSRI subjects.