Interpersonal relationships in depression: the depressed individual as a spectator

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Angelos Sofocleous of University of York, UK   Abstract: In the field of the phenomenology of depression, depressed individuals have reported feeling disconnected, isolated, incarcerated, detached and alienated from other people and the world. I argue that such descriptions of one’s experience of depression can be examined through understanding the depressed individual as a ‘non-participant spectator’ in the world.  I begin by examining the structure of interpersonal relationships and suggest that an interpersonal relationship is characterized by the following constitutive aspects: i) Reciprocity, ii) Interaffectivity, and iii) A sense of the other as a person. An interpersonal relationship involves turn-taking and, as such, is a reciprocal interaction in which agents respond to the other’s actions and behaviour. Additionally, such interactions are interaffective in nature as participants have the ability to ‘affect and be affected’. An interpersonal relationship also involves a sense of the other as a person - that is, as an individual who offers the possibility of engaging in contingent interactions, with whom one can interact in a reciprocal and interaffective manner. By focusing on the above three constitutive aspects of an interpersonal relationship, I describe how each of these is disturbed in depression, subsequently affecting the individual’s being-in-the-world. Due to these disturbances, depressed individuals describe themselves as inhabiting ‘another world’, being alienated, isolated, and incarcerated in the world, and also as experiencing a diminished sense of being-with other people.  Testimonies from depressed individuals demonstrate that the depressed individual feels that they adopt a third-person detached perspective toward the world and feels that they cannot actively participate in it. As the depressed individual cannot establish interpersonal relationships which are reciprocal, interaffective and which involve a sense of the other as a person, the world for them takes the form of a world being a world-for-others toward which they merely spectate.     Biography: I obtained a BA in Philosophy and Psychology and an MA in Philosophy from Durham University (UK). I am a 3rd-Year PhD Researcher in Philosophy at the University of York (UK), working on the philosophy of mental health, specifically on phenomenological experiences of depression, under the supervision of Prof Matthew Ratcliffe and Prof Keith Allen. My research focuses on first-person experiences of depression, especially on individuals' experience of the world as alienating, isolating, and incarcerating. I argue that such descriptions of one's experience of depression can be understood using the notion of being a 'non-participant spectator' in the world.     Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/