Mental health problems among professional actors are twice as common as in the general population (The Australian Actors’ Wellbeing Study). Reasons for this phenomenon are not well understood, with several occupational factors being cited, but one factor stands out as the likely core cause: acting often involves blurring the lines between the identity of an actor and the characters played. In this essay I draw on ideas from Kantian meta-ethics and Thomas Nagel’s phenomenology of consciousness to explain how immersive role-play could account for the disproportionately high prevalence of mental health problems among actors.

Christine Korsgaard (2009), building on the work of Immanuel Kant, has developed a system of ethics combining the premise that rational agency is conditional on social-reflexivity (seeing others as beings of the same ontological kind) and the idea of ‘integrity’ of consciousness. “The function of the normative principles of the will”, writes Korsgaard (1996, 229), “is to bring integrity and therefore unity – and therefore, really, existence – to the acting self.” The relevant sense of the term ‘integrity’ combines both ethical and ontological aspects: integrity of conduct and self-integration (of a unified, individual being). “When an action cannot be performed without loss of some fundamental part of one’s identity” (Ibid. 102) we dis-integrate, become fragmented and thus progressively lose our capacity for conscious, rational action. This, in turn, is a metaphysical death of the self. The relevant hypothetical normative imperative is therefore: if we value our existence as conscious rational agents then we are rationally committed, in self-interest, to act in such a way as to avoid losing our integrity.

The second step is Korsgaard’s argument was to show that we identify as Human (in the Kantian sense this is taken to mean just ‘rational agents’) only by regarding humanity of others in the same way we regard our own humanity. This element of social-reflexivity or reciprocal recognition of personal value is then of ontological importance to all agents, creating a system of mutually dependent interests. This essentially Kantian approach is inadequate in at least one respect; self-consciousness involves much more than just recognition of other rational agents as rational agents. The status of rational agency is not self-evident but, rather, is inferred from phenomenological content. This does not undermine Korsgaard’s theory but merely calls for an extension of the argument from ‘integrity’ to other properties. Incidentally, research in phenomenology suggests that the condition of reflexivity applies to every aspect of conscious identity.

Thomas Nagel (1974, 436) has argued that for an organism to have “conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism.” More generally, the question of ‘what it is like to be me’ exemplifies a fundamental property of self-consciousness, and it cannot be meaningfully answered just in terms of ‘me’, as ‘I am me’ or ‘I am like me’, without falling prey to circular reasoning or triviality. Unless I can compare myself to something else there is literally nothing like ‘being me’, or at least no sense to the belief that I am a definite something. Another way, ‘being me’ entails awareness that in some crucial respect I am like someone else. Moreover, every meaningful aspect of my identity entails awareness that in that particular respect I am in fact like someone or something else. For a more detailed discussion of the phenomenological thesis see: What is it Like to be ‘Me’?: Ontology of the Subject.

Returning to Korsgaard, if every aspect of what we think our identity consists of is integrated, we are maximally human. The phenomenological conception of identity further implies that the normative scope of ‘integrity’ extends not only to regarding other humans as human (and, arguably, any non-humans as non-human) but to regarding our identity as composed only of those properties of which we are aware as in fact being our properties. In case of role-play, some actors may act with contemporaneous awareness that they are merely pretending to be someone else, therefore still regarding the played character as not oneself, and this may be consistent with the idea of integrity (although not necessarily). Others, especially those practicing method-acting, train to act in awareness of not really being themselves, or some former version of themselves that does not reflect what they are Now. This, if successful, would entail the loss of integrity, leading to secondary consequences which may include prolonged confusion about identity, mood instability, psychosis, loss of meaning, self-harm, depression. There is a growing body of research supporting this conclusion. A recent survey of actors conducted by Alison Rob and others (2016) suggests that “actors are vulnerable to depression, generalised anxiety symptoms, vicarious trauma”. “Playing a character is a complex process that cannot be separated from the life of the actor” argues performing arts scholar Mark Seton. “Sometimes actors are unable to let go of the emotions associated with their characters. This boundary blurring can result in them carrying the role into everyday life – with negative effects.” If the phenomenological connection I have attempted to substantiate is right, then the relevant effect is primarily ontological and only secondarily psychological. It is therefore unlikely that actors can be effectively treated for the loss of ‘integrity’ without abandoning their art or, at least, abandoning the more immersive methods of acting.

It is plausible that even those actors who are always aware of just acting, aware of being themselves and only ‘pretending’ to be someone else, may still somatically train themselves to disassociate from their true identity, by regularly acting ‘out of character’. The same my apply in case of intentional, enduring strategies of deception. If any untrue claim that we know to be a untrue would be internalised as the truth, the result would obviously be a loss of integrity, but perhaps even just the practice of lying or pretending is already conditioning us habitually to disassociate from the truth about ourselves and thereby damage our metaphysical ‘integrity’. Finally, it is perhaps the case that we are never really acting as anyone else, real or imaginary, but always only acting as ourselves but without integrity, lying to ourselves and others about ourselves.

Korsgaard, Christine. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Nagel, Thomas. What is it Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, 1974.

Robb, A. E., Due, C. and Venning, A. Exploring Psychological Wellbeing in a Sample of Australian Actors. Australian Psychologist, 2016.

Seton, Mark C. ‘Post-Dramatic’ Stress: Negotiating Vulnerability for Performance. Proceedings of the Australasian Association for Drama, 2006.

218 views