Work

In the mood of the other: emotional contagion, empathic knowledge, and intuitive diagnosis in psychiatry

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: In this study we critically examine the phenomenological foundations of intuitive diagnosis in Psychiatry by integrating Max Scheler's concept of emotional contagion with Edith Stein's three-stage model of empathy. We argue that what Scheler calls emotional contagion offers a useful pre-reflective, bodily-affective resonance that precedes and facilitates deeper empathic understanding of the subject's experience. Then, we suggest that Stein's analysis of empathy, which is based on a three-step process-i.e., the emergence of the other's experience, its imaginative explication, and the final comprehensive objectification-may account for the role of imaginative empathic immersion in diagnostic assessment. This imaginative engagement, grounded in bodily co-originality, allows clinicians to apprehend the subject's world beyond mere perceptual awareness. We contend that Scheler's emotional contagion and Stein's model of empathy can be productively harnessed within a comprehensive diagnostic framework to provide a raw intuitive and imaginative substrate for further cognitive elaboration.

Source: Frontiers in Psychology

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1676449

Authors: Andrea Altobrando, Leonardo Zaninotto

Institution: University of Padua

Language: English

Topic: Mental Health and Psychiatry

Subfield: Philosophy

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,801