Too sad to be true: hypo- and hyperreality in experiences of depression

Abstract

ABSTRACT In addition to pronounced feelings of bodily estrangement and loss of practical significance, depressive narratives sometimes convey a sense of the world as looking somehow flatter or grayer. Because of these alterations, experiences of depression can take the shape of being “strangely unreal” or even “more real” than ordinary, common experiences (Ratcliffe, 2009). For the depressed individual, disproportionate sadness can alter not just the specific intentional encounters in the world but also the very sense of reality, as described in autobiographical and phenomenological accounts of depression. However, the status of this altered sense of reality is still an open question. In the context of psychosis experiences, Kusters (2020) describes mad pararealism as comprising both experiences of realness (hyperreality) and unrealness (hyporeality) through an altered sense of reality. By approaching depression through the lens of Kuster’s mad pararealism, I propose that depressive pararealism stands as an important concept to describe the altered sense of reality in some depressive narratives, thereby contributing to a more phenomenologically oriented approach to depression. The concept of depressive pararealism suggests that the altered sense of reality in depression is not only a cognitive distortion but a structural change in nature, altering not just perceptual capacities but the whole intentional relation between depressed subjects and their worlds.