In an account of clinical neuroscience and subjectivity, Gillett (2009) provides three examples of neurological conditions that dramatically affect the lived experience of the individual: locked in syndrome, persistent vegetative state, and minimally conscious state. Yet for individuals with mental illnesses such as severe addiction, embodied subjectivity may have different implications for human identity. Because attitudes towards individuals with addiction are heavily moralized, being somebody somewhere with an addiction may result in both self-and other-labeling, and consequently, a development of a ‘spoiled’public identity.

Our response will briefly focus on the potential implications of neuroscience and human subjectivity in addiction. Using the so-called brain disease model of addiction as an illustrative example, we argue that the development of a stigmatizing identity of an ‘addict’is gradual, and emerges through a complex process which includes, but is not limited to, the individual’s narrative history, social lived experience, neuro-genetics, and a self-labeling process. Since identity emerges from, in part, and is preserved through relationships, a stigmatizing illness identity considerably affects the being-in-the-world-with-others for ‘the addict.’