Ambience and psychopathology in Eugène Minkowski: a Bruce Bégout’s reading

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the concept of ambience and its relationship with psychopathological phenomena, revisiting Bruce Bégout’s reading of Eugène Minkowski’s work. The aim is to demonstrate how ambiences represent a constitutive element of life, inseparable from the lived structure of any mental disorder, as well as from the relationships and orientations that constitute contemporary medical research and intervention. In this sense, we will explore the “mersive” space of ambiences and their relationship with the “space of the night”, traversing the dynamics of ambiences in the integration of lived space and time, to subsequently analyze depression as a possible “disturbance of ambience”. Our ultimate goal will be to establish the recognition of “ambiences” as a prerequisite for a “broad” and “human” science.