Addicted to Autonomy

In his book on Hands, Darian Leader notes the “paradox at the heart of the modern notions of agency and choice.” We strive for autonomy and self-determination, but this “obligation to be free and to make our own choices is framed within a network of imperatives that come from without, ordering us to be free.” This can only produce pathologies: “the more that autonomy and self-termination are valorized, the more that all basic human activities that fail to come under complete conscious control become pathologized” (10).

That, he claims, is the source of the expansion of the field of “so-called ‘addictions’”: “The shopping addictions, sex addictions, Internet addictions and phone addictions that fill the diagnostic marketplace have become seen as addictions because they are apparently not under conscious control. But the real addiction that lies behind them is autonomy addiction: the illusion that we can be fully masters of ourselves. The more we buy into this, the more disorders there will be” (10).

Don’t skip over this. Read it three times.