Time and Space in Manic Episodes

Temporality and Spatiality have been extensively addressed in philosophy, and their disturbances have been extensivelystudied in psychopathology (e.g. Wyllie 2005). Mental health patients: (1) describe pathological experiences of Timeand Space (Gallagher and Varela 2003); (2) show disturbed timing (Tysk 1984); (3) experience psychopathologicalphenomena that could be the cause of changes in temporality and spatiality. These topics will be discussed in the case ofmood disorders, in particular euphoric and dysphoric mania episodes. Any phenomenological study in mood disordersis delicate as affective disorders are in themselves phenomenologically diverse, because they have obscure meaning,multitude of criteria and inconsistent reference norms. Also, psychoanalytical, colloquial and cognitive psychologieskeep instilling comprehensive and epistemological structures onto both mood and time/space notions. Nevertheless,bridging philosophical phenomenology and epistemology on time and temporality with mood psychopathology andtaxonomy constitutes an on-going project. Theories by Heidegger, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty as well as by Minkowsky,Binswanger, Fuchs, Parnas, and Sass could help to describe this relation deepened into many other Twentieth-Centuryphilosophical papers. A similar account of space and spatiality will be brought about. We will reason about the conceptthat they provide evidence to address current conceptualization of “bipolar” disorder and the hierarchical grouping ofdysphoric and euphoria mania.