The alteration of embodiment in melancholia

Stefano Micali

pp. 203-219

in: Dermot Moran (ed), The phenomenology of embodied subjectivity, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

This study endeavors to describe the transformation of embodiment in melancholia, conceived as a severe form of depression, from a phenomenological point of view. The article is divided into three sections: the first part illustrates several particular disturbances of the embodied experiences in melancholia. This investigation of the disorder is not only focused on the relation of the body with the surrounding environment, but also concentrates on the way in which the body feels itself. The research on these particular phenomena will lead us to consider the transformation of the embodied experience in more general terms. In the phenomenological literature, the alteration of the embodiment in melancholia has principally been described as a disturbance of the relationship between the lived body (Leib) and the objective body (Körper), or more precisely, as a process of corporealization. In this section, different interpretations of the notion of corporealization given in phenomenologically-oriented psychiatry are examined. In the third section the notion of corporealization is revised in light of the experience of the void. The experience of void is investigated with respect to the temporal dimension as a modification of the inner time consciousness and in relation to an originary spatialization as the emergence of a despaired sense of detachment from oneself, from the world and from the other.