Looking for places to be alone: Lived space in social anxiety disorder

Abstract

In this paper, I elucidate how lived space is transformed in social anxiety disorder. The cognitive–behavioral framework that dominates the field conceptualizes the disorder as an intrapsychic dysfunction and sidelines concrete experience. The omnipresent sense of threat as it expresses itself “out there” in the patient’s experiential world thus remains unexplored. Looking to first-person descriptions of social anxiety, I argue that the felt presence of the Other constantly threatens the patient’s sense of autonomy and ownership of the places they inhabit. They experience others violating the boundaries of their intimate spaces and banishing them from public spaces. These experiences point to an altered mode of inhabiting space I term intersubjective overdetermination. The patient is condemned to live in the space of the Other. I compare this conceptualization to the commonplace cognitive–behavioral account. I end by discussing the treatment implications of this account of socially anxious lived space.