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1 - Introduction – Time and Body

Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2020

By
Christian Tewes  and
Giovanni Stanghellini
Edited by
Christian Tewes  and
Giovanni Stanghellini
Christian Tewes
Affiliation:
Heidelberg University Hospital
Giovanni Stanghellini
Affiliation:
Chieti University
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Summary

The relations between embodiment and temporality reach from the micro-temporality of conscious experience to the enactment of human existence. First, the basic internal time consciousness is marked by the rhythmicity of vital processes (heart beat, respiratory rhythm, daily periods, etc.). Moreover, the bodily drives, urges, and needs, which may be subsumed under the term conation, crucially determine the future-directed temporality of primary experience. On the other hand, the body forms an extract of sensorimotor and affective experience which are sedimented in implicit or body memory, thus shaping an individual's capacities and dispositions. Finally, existential temporality is essentially characterized by the vital processes of birth, growth, aging, and dying.

Body, time, and intersubjectivity are equally interconnected. First, interbodily resonance establishes the primary experience of the shared present, beginning in the child's early development. Thus, a basic contemporality emerges, which later continues in social synchronizations and temporal orders as the basis of social life. However, this temporal alignment is also subject to desynchronizations, for example, in backlogs of tasks, in guilt, remorse, or grief – situations that require processes of psychosocial resynchronization.

All these interconnections are subject to various kinds of disturbances which are also found in psychopathology and thus crucially determine the emergence and course of mental disorders.

Keywords

TemporalityResonanceEmbodimentIntersubjectivitySynchronizationBody MemoryAutismSchizophreniaDepressionAnorexiaTrauma
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Time and Body
Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches
 , pp. 1 - 11
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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