Bodily saturation and social disconnectedness in depression

Osler, Lucy 2021. Bodily saturation and social disconnectedness in depression. Phenomenology and Mind 21 , pp. 48-60. 10.17454/pam-2104

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Abstract

Individuals suffering from depression consistently report experiencing a lack of connectedness with others. David Karp (2017), in his memoir and study of depression, has gone so far to describe depression as “an illness of isolation, a disease of disconnectedness” (p. 73). It has become common, in phenomenological circles, to attribute this social impairment to the depressed individual experiencing their body as corporealized, acting as a barrier between them and the world around them (Fuchs, 2005, 2016). In this paper, I offer an alternative view of the experience of social disconnectedness in depression, suggesting that rather than necessarily experiencing their body as object-like, the depressed individual’s bodily is saturated with experiences of lethargy, tiredness, heaviness, sadness, hopelessness and so on, to the exclusion of being able to bodily connect to others. I suggest that depression does not involve a complete social impairment but a specific impairment of affective forms of interpersonal experience.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Rosenberg and Sellier
ISSN:	2239-4028
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	19 January 2023
Last Modified:	03 May 2023 08:42
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/155944

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