Existential feelings and body memory: two cases in philosophy of psychiatry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24215/2422572Xe091Keywords:
Existential feelings, Body memory, Phenomenology, PsychiatryAbstract
The question that guides this work concerns the relationship between affectivity and memory from its corporal configuration. My aim is to evaluate the relationship between these two phenomena under the heading of two concepts: existential feelings and body memory, as present in contemporary phenomenology. In the current framework of interaction between phenomenology and psychiatry, the concept of existential feelings designates an important descriptive category related to the bodily structure of our affective experience and suggests a central role of certain bodily feelings that influence self-description (Ratcliffe, 2005; 2008; 2015). On the other hand, the notion of body memory describes how dispositions, capacities, and habits shape our experience without the need for explicit recollection (Fuchs, 2012; 2018). I maintain that the bodily element present in the formulation of these two concepts allows for a fruitful approach to the historical and affective conditioning aspects of our experience. In the last part, I examine two psychiatric cases that make explicit the mutual interaction between these phenomena on a pre-reflexive level, and I highlight the determining role of these phenomena in the emergence of anomalous experiences.
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