New on The Wider Existence: agency, responsibility and the ‘chaotic self’

The Wider Existence, by David Gray-Hammond and Helen Edgar, published a new essay on 11 November 2026 called What Your Head Was In: The Chaotic Self, Agency and Responsibility. It is Part 4 of a five-part series. This is our own content, not independent news.

The piece comes with a content note. It discusses the criminal justice system, restraint and detention.

Where it fits

The essay builds on earlier parts of the series. According to its opening, Parts 1 and 2 argued that distress is produced by an “ecosystem”. Part 3 described burnout and crisis as what that ecosystem does to a “monotropic bodymind” over time.

The question it takes on

This instalment opens by naming an objection the author expects readers to raise:

“By now an objection may be forming.”

The objection runs like this. If distress comes from the world around a person, where does the person fit in? Does anyone choose anything at all?

The title suggests the essay goes on to look at agency and responsibility. Agency means a person’s ability to act and make their own choices. Its subtitle says the answer “needs a different theory of the self”. The public preview stops after the opening lines, so we can’t summarise the argument itself here.

Reading it

The full essay is on The Wider Existence. Please read the content note before you start, especially if detention or restraint are hard topics for you.

This is a From NeuroHub piece: an AI-written summary of our own content. Read the original.