Addiction as temporal disruption: interoception, self, meaning Ryan Kemp 1 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Addiction remains a challenging disorder, both to treat and to conceptualise. While the temporal dimension of addiction has been noted before, here the aim is to ground this understanding in a coherent phenomenological-neuroscience framework. Addiction is partly understood as drawing the subject into a predominantly Bnow^ orientated existence, with the future closed or experienced as extremely distant. Another feature of this temporal structuring is that past experiences, which are crucial in advancing intentionally forward, are experienced in addiction as a void. This has implications for the generation of meaning and forming of self, amongst others. While there are areas of the brain that regulate temporal processing, there is no single location. Recent addiction research has implicated the insula and in turn this area is implicated in temporal and interoceptive awareness. Similarly these areas of disruption may affect self processes. Disruption of interoception and thus of self, may help explain why addiction is complex and involves multiple aspects of subjectivity. Keywords Addiction . Phenomenology . Temporality . Time . Interoception . Self 1 Introduction Addiction is a complex phenomenon which could be organised in different ways, for example around brain science, psychology or even a criminal justice perspective. In this contribution addiction will be approached as a form of pathology, attempting to knit the phenomenology and neuroscience of this disorder constructively together. As such it is implicitly argued that addiction can be regarded as a health condition and is amenable to treatment. It is not argued that this is its exclusive characteristic, rather it is the https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9578-7 * Ryan Kemp ryan.kemp@nhs.net 1 Central & North West London NHS Foundation Trust, Regents University London, Stephenson House, 75 Hampstead Road, London NW1 2PL, UK (2020) 19:305–319 Phenom Cogn Sci Published online: 4 June 2018