Time Alteration in Melancholia. A Phenomenological Inquiry - An important trend of psychiatric research views psychopathological symptoms as temporal disturbances. This essay is based on the assumption that melancholia/ depression primarily signifies an alteration of experience of time, essentially linked to an alteration of the ways in which the subjects experience their own body and how they relate to other people. The phenomenological approach allows us to understand how the melancholic person suffers a blocked future, how he/she is irrevocably marked by a past that never passes and how the present is experienced as an eternal recurrence of one and the same state.
Key words: Phenomenology, Psychiatry, Melancholia, Depression, Time, Diachrony.
Parole chiave: Fenomenologia, Psichiatria, Malinconia, Depressione, Tempo, Diacronia.