The article aims at expanding the horizon of phenomenological psychopathology of depression
from a social theoretical perspective. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological ontology,
in the first section, depression is reinterpreted as a disruption of chiasm: it is
not merely the illness of the body, the disorder of the mind, or a specific form of
social suffering, but the interrelated distortion of time consciousness, agency, and
interaffectivity. The phenomenological clarification of these components provides
opportunity for connecting sociological and psychopathological insight. In the second
part, contemporary critical theories of acceleration, globalization, biopolitics,
and system colonization are reinterpreted to highlight the structural and cultural
context of late modern time consciousness, agency, and interaffectivity. In the third
section, it is analyzed, how these social constituents shape the space of contemporary
socialization processes, including the emergence of those intersubjective distortions,
which potentially affect the entirety of chiasm in a depressive way. In the final
section, the conclusions for therapy are explored, including the potentials for expanding
the epistemological, substantive, and emancipatory horizon of phenomenological psychopathology.
