Understanding Depressive Feelings as Situated Affections

Phenomenologists define social impairments as key aspects of depression and argue that depression is irreducible to the individual. In this article I aim to further elaborate this non-reductionist notion of depression by claiming that depression not only corresponds to an impaired experience of soci...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEmotion Review Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 55 - 65
Main Author Ağören, Güler Cansu
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.01.2022
Subjects
extended affectivity
situatedness
intercorporeality
phenomenology of depression
interaffectivity
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Summary:Phenomenologists define social impairments as key aspects of depression and argue that depression is irreducible to the individual. In this article I aim to further elaborate this non-reductionist notion of depression by claiming that depression not only corresponds to an impaired experience of social relations, but also arises from a socially impaired world. To pursue this goal, I will challenge the understanding of depression as an affective disorder blocking the affective communication between individual and environment. I will redefine feelings of depression as situated affections, and hence suggest that (1) they are products of the individual's situatedness in a depressogenic environment and (2) they function in initiating an active withdrawal from such environment.
ISSN:1754-0739
1754-0747
DOI:10.1177/17540739211057846