What does a phenomenological understanding of depression involve, and how does this condition shape the way individuals experience themselves, their own life stories, and the world around them? These questions will be explored in a lecture by Matthew Ratcliffe, Professor of Philosophy at the University of York.
The lecture will focus on two key dimensions of the experience of depression. The first concerns the relationship between changes in the experience of reality and an individual’s personal experiences and life history. The second explores how depression can involve a withdrawal from an unpredictable and threatening world into a more stable, yet more limited, sphere of experience.
The lecture will also consider depression not only in terms of individuals’ immediate experiences but from a broader temporal perspective, examining how people relate to their own past and understand the course of their lives. Particular attention will be paid to the sense that one’s life story has led to a kind of exile, which may contribute to feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and failure often associated with depression, although these feelings are not experienced by everyone living with the condition.
Matthew Ratcliffe is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, UK. Most of his recent work addresses issues in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychiatry. He is author of Rethinking Commonsense Psychology: A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation (Palgrave, 2007), Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality (Oxford University Press, 2008), Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Real Hallucinations: Psychiatric Illness, Intentionality, and the Interpersonal World (MIT Press, 2017), Grief Worlds (2022/2023).
You can also attend the lecture online via the following link:
https://zoom.us/j/95970812643?pwd=4gZgaIWM0rmxviZrcE5eh3aRfZW2aa.1
Meeting ID: 959 7081 2643
Passcode: 830841