Socialized into depression – toward a social phenomenological psychopathology

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article aims at expanding the horizon of phenomenological psychopathology of depression from a social theoretical perspective. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological ontology, in the first section, depression is reinterpreted as a disruption of chiasm: it is not merely the illness of the body, the disorder of the mind, or a specific form of social suffering, but the interrelated distortion of time consciousness, agency, and interaffectivity. The phenomenological clarification of these components provides opportunity for connecting sociological and psychopathological insight. In the second part, contemporary critical theories of acceleration, globalization, biopolitics, and system colonization are reinterpreted to highlight the structural and cultural context of late modern time consciousness, agency, and interaffectivity. In the third section, it is analyzed, how these social constituents shape the space of contemporary socialization processes, including the emergence of those intersubjective distortions, which potentially affect the entirety of chiasm in a depressive way. In the final section, the conclusions for therapy are explored, including the potentials for expanding the epistemological, substantive, and emancipatory horizon of phenomenological psychopathology.