TY - JOUR AU - Sik, Domonkos TI - Socialized into depression – toward a social phenomenological psychopathology JF - PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY J2 - PHILOS PSYCHOL VL - 38 PY - 2025 IS - 1 SP - 100 EP - 125 PG - 26 SN - 0951-5089 DO - 10.1080/09515089.2024.2331011 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34748825 ID - 34748825 AB - 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. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Sik, Domonkos TI - Critique and consolation: Countering ‘activist fatigue’ in a non-therapeutic way JF - THESIS ELEVEN J2 - THESIS ELEVEN VL - Early Access PY - 2025 SP - - SN - 0725-5136 DO - 10.1177/07255136251331992 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/36118659 ID - 36118659 AB - Contemporary emancipatory praxis is undermined by ‘activist fatigue’ related to the uncertain efficiency of collective action. The article investigates the phenomenon from a critical theoretical perspective. The crisis of praxis is inseparable from the crisis of theory: to resolve them, critical theory's relation to suffering needs to be revised. To provide an alternative framework, the perspective of consolation is proposed as a counter to activist fatigue. Consolation does not aim at eradicating the activists’ existential suffering; instead, it provides tools to live with the uncertainties of activism. To elaborate a version of consolation capable of resolving the crisis of emancipatory praxis, four questions are analysed: what is the relationship between critique and consolation; how can the phenomenological space of consolation be described; what are the contemporary constraints surrounding consolation; how can consolation be consistent with both the demands of critique and the constraints of late modernity, while avoiding activist fatigue? LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - GEN AU - Sik, Domonkos TI - Phenomenology as a translator between critical sociology and psychopathology – the case of alienation and depression PY - 2025 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/36118671 ID - 36118671 LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Sik, Domonkos TI - Illness Experience and Social Suffering: Synthesizing Medical Phenomenology and Critical Theory JF - JOURNAL OF MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY J2 - J MED PHILOS VL - 50 PY - 2025 IS - 5 SP - 326 EP - 340 PG - 15 SN - 0360-5310 DO - 10.1093/jmp/jhaf015 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/36153587 ID - 36153587 AB - Medical phenomenology describes the illness experience while providing an alternative to the reductionist biomedical discourse. Phenomenologically oriented critical theories focus on the experiences of structural paradoxes manifesting as social suffering. While both approaches elaborate different patterns of suffering, so far, their parallelisms and interactions have not been adequately analyzed. This task is all the more important because illness experience is never only about the disabled body or the distressed mind, it is also inseparable from a distorted intersubjectivity; and vice versa, untreated social suffering also has the potential of turning into illness. After overviewing various experiences characterizing illness and those disrupted intersubjectivities, which can produce a homologous phenomenological pattern, four idealtypical patterns are analyzed. The parallel occurrence of illness and social suffering represents extreme existential disembedding; illness without social suffering represents a chance for countering the bodily disembedding by intersubjective re-embedding; social suffering without illness is a constellation, wherein the chance of medicalizing structural distortions is high; the lack of illness and social suffering represents a carefree, yet unreflective potential. Differentiating between these patterns opens new horizons for medical phenomenology and critical theories as well, both on the theoretical and the practical level. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - GEN AU - Sik, Domonkos TI - Empty suffering PY - 2025 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/36190609 ID - 36190609 LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Sik, Domonkos AU - Szécsi, Judit AU - Rácz, József AU - Márton, Neogrády-Kiss AU - Demetrovics, Zsolt AU - Kaló, Zsuzsa AU - Kapitány-Fövény, Máté AU - Kovács, Asztrik TI - Structural Deprivation, Rural Segregation, and Substance Use—A Hungarian Case Study JF - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTION J2 - INT J MEN HEALTH ADD VL - in press PY - 2025 PG - 34 SN - 1557-1874 DO - 10.1007/s11469-025-01521-2 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/36235370 ID - 36235370 N1 - Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, Faculty of Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, Budapest, Hungary Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, Budapest, Hungary Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, Budapest, Hungary National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Budapest, Hungary Export Date: 18 December 2025; Cited By: 0; Correspondence Address: D. Sik; Faculty of Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Pázmány Péter Sétány 1/a, 1117, Hungary; email: sik.domonkos@tatk.elte.hu AB - New designer drugs are a major public health concern, particularly in disadvantaged, segregated communities. While the phenomenon is better understood in urban settings, it remains unexplored in rural areas. This gap explains our research rationale: an interdisciplinary survey was designed; the fieldwork took place in Hungary, in a segregated rural area ( n = 425), in 2022. The complex sociological-psychological-existential trap represented by rural segregation is characterized by the lack of prospects for change. As the individual’s attention is narrowed to the present, such a burdensome existence is managed through escapist strategies of substance use. Our research investigates whether substance use is a cause or a consequence of structural deprivation. K-means cluster analysis was used to differentiate between the idealtypical patterns of substance use (e.g. self-controlling vs. risk-taking) and abstinence (e.g. vulnerable vs. consistent); chi-square tests were used to map the structural background and trajectories leading from abstinence to substance use. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Sik, Domonkos TI - Between Depression and Alienation: Burnout as a Translator Category for Critical Theories JF - CULTURE MEDICINE AND PSYCHIATRY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH J2 - CULT MED PSYCHIAT VL - - PY - 2025 SP - - SN - 0165-005X DO - 10.1007/s11013-025-09929-0 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/36282579 ID - 36282579 AB - The horizon of critical theories and their target audience (i.e., the subjects exposed to social suffering) have drifted apart. While the former relies on its own set of diagnostic concepts (e.g., alienation), the actors are socialized within the frames of biomedical discourses. This creates a rupture between theory and praxis: the concepts of social suffering fail to orient collective action. To overcome this challenge, a translator category is elaborated, which can link the distinct biomedical and critical discourses, while reconnecting theory and praxis. Burnout is chosen as a translator category because it is located at the border of the psychological discourses (on depression) and the critical sociological discourses (on alienation). First, the birth of the concept is reconstructed in a genealogical fashion. Second, the psychological measurement tools and explanations are overviewed with a special emphasis on the failed attempt of discursive medicalization. Third, the sociological explanations are analyzed from the perspective of their potential of breaking the biomedical and psychological discursive hegemony. In the last section, it is discussed how burnout can link the discourses of alienation (as a cause of burnout) and depression (as a consequence of burnout), while remaining accessible to the biomedically socialized subjects. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - BOOK AU - Sik, Domonkos TI - Salvaging Modernity: A Social Contract for the Age of Permacrisis PB - Brill Academic Publishers CY - Nijhoff PY - 2025 SN - 9789004736177 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/36322335 ID - 36322335 LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - GEN AU - Sik, Domonkos TI - From violence to illness and mental disorders – towards a critical-medical phenomenology PY - 2025 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/36322345 ID - 36322345 LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Sik, Domonkos AU - Németh, Renáta AU - Barna, Ildikó AU - Gessler, Theresa AU - Vincze, Hanna Orsolya TI - Editorial: Preface to the special issue ‘Text as data’ – Eastern and Central European political discourses from the perspective of computational social science (part 2) JF - INTERSECTIONS: EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS J2 - INTERSECTIONS (HU) VL - 11 PY - 2025 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 2 PG - 2 SN - 2416-089X DO - 10.17356/ieejsp.v11i1.1471 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/36338753 ID - 36338753 LA - English DB - MTMT ER -