A Phenomenological Study of Interpersonal Relationships in Experiences of Depression

In this thesis, I conduct a phenomenological investigation of the intricate and often perplexing dimensions of experiences of depression, with a specific focus on disruptions that occur in the interpersonal relationships of depressed individuals. Central to this exploration are key facets of the subjective experience of depression, such as the pervasive sense that depression manifests as an unhomelike state of being-in-the-world. Within this framework, I analyse first-person depression accounts which report both that the experience of depression cannot be effectively articulated or described in ordinary language, and that other people cannot understand the experience of depression unless they have experienced it themselves. In doing so, I examine the disrupting implications of such reports for depressed individuals’ interpersonal relationships. An additional aspect of the experience of depression which I explore in this thesis concerns claims in the literature which support that the experience of depression is characterised by a complete loss of mood and a total loss of attunement to other people and the world. In evaluating these claims, I argue that the depressed individual, as a mooded being, retains the ability to attune to the world in distinct ways. Within this context, I further suggest that we can characterise the depressed individual’s world-experience as spectatorial - that is, as involving the sense of spectating toward other people actualising worldly possibilities which the depressed individual cannot actualise herself. In this respect, I propose that the metaphor of being a spectator in the world can illuminate other kinds of metaphors that individuals use to describe their experience such as “suffocating”, “incarcerated”, or “living in a bubble”. In this regard, via the metaphor of being a spectator, I introduce the distinction between possibilities-for-others and possibilities-for-me, which elucidates the depressed individual’s lack of connection to other people and belonging in the world. In these terms, through a comprehensive analysis of first-person accounts of depression, I argue that phenomenology can provide us with a nuanced and thorough understanding of disruptions that occur in depressed individuals’ interpersonal relationships.