Dr. Angelos Sofocleous, the Phenomenology of Depression

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/16

Dr. Angelos Sofocleous is a friend and colleague. Recently, he earned his doctorate with the thesis entitled “A Phenomenological Study of Interpersonal Relationships in Experiences of Depression.” Here we talk about it. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what do you want to call it? Commemorating or reuniting over things about Conatus News when we first met. So, you finished your Ph.D., Dr. Angelos Sofocleous. Congratulations to you!

Dr. Angelos Sofocleous: Thank you, my friend! 

Jacobsen: So, how long was the torture?

Sofocleous: Four years, four long years. Looking back now, I can say, “I learned a lot.” Not only regarding my thesis, I learned many life skills and much new knowledge. It was also a time from 25 to 29 when every person developed and, in a way, matured. The fact that this happened during my Ph.D. was interesting, at least. I feel like I am a different person now. 

Jacobsen: What do you mean by that? What do you mean by a different person? 

Sofocleous: I got much confidence in myself. You learn that good things come through a lot of progress and slow progress. Sometimes, you spend much time on something. You end up not having any output. You invest time in people and your money. It is a risk. You may get your money back. You will not get your time back. You might get something reflecting the time that you invested in something. So, this is life skills. It is a skill that every Ph.D. student gets to develop and apply because you work on something for so long. It becomes part of your day. It becomes your day. Your day is the Ph.D. There is no time for anything else. So, this one thing defines your day, from when you wake up to when you go to sleep. It does change you. 

Jacobsen: How did you come across your original and doctoral thesis topics? How do you pick among a large number of possibilities? Not simply going through them and picking ones that have already been done or similarly been done. I mean choosing one consciously as the one. 

Sofocleous: Two reasons: the philosophy of depression, I wanted to do something practical with philosophy. I love philosophy. I love how philosophy makes you think about every topic in the world, from philosophy of art to sports, literature, science, and anything else that can be philosophized. Philosophy could get too theoretical and abstract. I realized that was not for me. I wanted to do something with philosophy that could be more practical. You can use philosophy to study it or research it in the way it can be applied. I decided to delve into the field of phenomenology, which is the branch of philosophy that studies experience and emotions. More specifically, my thesis topic was the phenomenology of depression: How people experience depression. This leads me to the second reason why I chose to study this topic: Due to my personal experience with depression, which was around the time or before I started thinking about doing a Ph.D. I was drafting my first thesis proposal. So, yes, these are the two reasons I chose my topic. 

Jacobsen: Now, if you can recall it, what was the first formulation of the research question? How did that become more precise as time passed, even as the writing process developed?

Sofocleous: Yes. My thesis topic merged with my Master’s dissertation, which was more or less on the same topic as my Ph.D. It concerned how people’s interpersonal relationships change in depression, how people feel alienated or isolated from other people, but sometimes even connected to other people in depression. Now, so, this was pretty basic. I recall reading the Master’s dissertation and was surprised by how basic and superficial they looked. I cannot recall the argument. I can recall the development. So much research and so many things have been done on this topic. It is a relatively new topic. So, it is not as researched as other topics in philosophy. However, there are already works out there. It was good to read others and be informed. I could not have done anything without the help of my supervisor, Keith Allen. He is the reason I have managed to finish. 

Jacobsen: A good supervisor is a gem and should be cherished. 

Sofocleous: It is the number one thing in managing the Ph.D. You must love what you are doing and be passionate about it. A good supervisor who can also be a mentor will make a difference. 

Jacobsen: How do people with depression experience themselves as spectators in the world?

Sofocleous: My research started with first-person experience. Books that depressed people had written, surveys, memoirs, autobiographies, and interviews with depressed people. So, in all of these first-person accounts, depressed people use, often the words “alienated,” “isolated,” “incarcerated,” “imprisoned,” “suffocated,” and “living in a bubble.” I was interested to see what they mean when using this metaphor. I came across this concept in phenomenology. This concept of “world experience.” It refers to how we experience the world. When I say “We,” in this instance, I mean ordinary people, average people, and how we ordinarily experience the world. This kind of world experience, I argued, changes in depression. People who are depressed do not feel like they experience the world in the same way that other people experience the world. First, there are all these metaphors that they used to describe their experience of the world. Then, there is the temporal aspect of one’s world experience. They say that time goes slower in depression, but they catch up with other people. So, this expresses a contrast between the world experience of the depressed person and the world experience of other people. There is also a significant aspect of my research focused on what we call possibilities in phenomenology, which refer to, if you wish, opportunities in the world or the possibility of doing something, anything, in the world: going for a run, applying for a job, going out with friends. So, the possibility of doing these things the world offers us is an opportunity. What depression often expresses is that they do not have access to these kinds of possibilities. They feel that they cannot go for a run and cannot go out with friends. Even if they go out with friends, they will not enjoy being there. They will not feel present. This creates a huge contrast between the world experience of a depressed person and the world experience of other people. So, to finally get back to your question, this brings about the idea of the spectator. One is alienated from the world in depression and simply observes other people living their lives as usual but feels like the depressed person is not participating or engaged in the world. 

Jacobsen: So, you have had depression. I had depression years ago with anxiety. It was environmentally induced. I had it for about 3, maybe 4, months. Talking about these things for people should be normalized. It helps to talk about it and to let people know it is not that uncommon. I think a vast number of the population gets depression. Doesn’t it?

Sofocleous: Definitely, figures differ per country, but globally, according to data, around 300,000,000 people. 

Jacobsen: So, just shy of the population of the United States, globally, gets depression at least one time in their lifetime, that is shocking. Maybe it is not shocking. 

Sofocleous: It is shocking and not shocking at the same time. 

Jacobsen: It is a quantum shock. 

Sofocleous: It is one of the major causes of suicide in young people. If you imagine the whole of the U.S. population at this time being depressed, you understand how huge the problem is. 

Jacobsen: What about the developing mind makes it prone to this? Or, reversing the question, what is it in the environment that makes it more likely to happen, or both?

Sofocleous: Very interesting question. I will start with the environmental causes. I would like to hear how you experience it as well. The phenomenological point of view is that a major reason why people get depressed is the lack of interpersonal relationships. The phenomenologists agree almost entirely while having their disagreements with each other. They all emphasize the role of other people in our lives. The positive role of other people in our lives. They emphasize that we are not alone in the world. They don’t promote a solipsistic point of view in the world. They don’t mean that in a physical sense. Of course, there are other people in the world. What do phenomenologists mean when they say we are not alone in the world? Even when we are born, even though that is the start of our lives. We are thrown into the world. We have to exist. Heidegger uses these words to describe how when we come into the world.

We find ourselves in a world with some language, culture, history, traditions, and social rules, which all have evolved from human collaboration and cooperation. So, it is the role of other people which is crucial. Not only in our development or growing up but also in establishing our identity and who we are. So, when you contrast these with the more individualistic lives, we tend to live those nowadays. The fact that we have grown apart from our communities. Our communities, any communities from neighbourhoods to religions to family. The idea is that we do not have such close connections with other people as we did in the past through all these institutions or social groups. So, that is how the phenomenologists would see it. Our interpersonal relationships are somehow to blame for this. 

Jacobsen: To your implicit question or somewhat explicitly stated question, for mine, I was coming from a lower-income home. I have an alcoholic father and a substance misuse father. To this day, he is, at least, an alcoholic. I don’t know if there are any substance misuse disorders ongoing. Yet, growing up, that’s all I knew of him. Coming from a divorced home, he finally came to our home when his girlfriend kicked him out of the house in North Vancouver. He came to our home in Langley, which is quite a drive. He took a taxi. He was already drunk when [Laughing] he left the home in North Vancouver. Which is to say, when he was ‘removed’ unpolitely, he drank 2/3rds of a Mickey of fireball from that trip, maybe 45 minutes, in the taxi. So, it was a whole issue. I have written about this. Yet, regardless, it was a traumatic experience. He ended up being taken away by the police. I kicked him out of my life similarly. My family kicked him out of the home that day, the police unceremoniously. There were some issues with an intimate relationship, with other family, and schooling at that same time, and some other things. So, from my perspective, all angles of my life were shaken up, while some were completely shattered. I was having a difficult time handling that emotionally, mainly because I hadn’t endured that degree of those experiences before – especially all at once. I note – you, probably note this in your research – a lot of these things: self-isolation comes from feeling as if you need to deal with it on your own. During that period, when major depression was present, I was self-isolating, having a calm environment to mull through things, write about them, and process what I was experiencing at that time. That was formally diagnosed by a relevant psychiatrist and a medical doctor who has since retired. I was given an antidepressant and an anti-anxiety medication. Those were self-extinguishing within that 3- to 4-month period. I haven’t had any indication of that symptomatology before or since. The major depression gave me the short-form scale, where I was one point from the top. I was second-best at feeling the worst. That experience certainly matches what you’re describing. You feel almost a slide away from the coherent experience of the body. You feel like a spectator. I felt like a spectator. That is undoubtedly true. Concerning your own, I am sure. It was the same. Not the conditions under which it happened but the experience of it. 

Sofocleous: Yes, the experience of it.

Jacobsen: I am glad others, and you are doing more research on it. I will ask one last question. Is it possible to take all these texts formally diagnosed as depressed, clinically depressed, or even subclinically but almost clinically depressed who have written works online or published by an A.I. system to look at word use patterns? So, do they reference “I” more or “the” more when describing things, a distance in the language? Or the types of words used, you noticed they used more sad-oriented language or isolated-oriented language. Has that been done? Is that a possible research path in the future?

Sofocleous: It would be fascinating. Two things to say there. On your first question, it has been found that depressed people used the first person more. I can find and send the paper to you. You can include this here. It would be fascinating to look at the words depressed people use. That wouldn’t be strictly phenomenological research. Although, it would be a great start for a phenomenological analysis of this person, personal report. In order to see how all these words that we may use in everyday language or ordinary language, such as “isolated,” “alienated,” “incarcerated,” or “feeling suffocated,” are used in a much different way, it would be beneficial. It would save a lot of time if we could give a book to an A.I. chatbot, then it would tell us instances in which the author either explicitly said the word “isolated” or in some way implied the word “isolated.” This was a huge part of my day-to-day research, reading memoirs and autobiographies of people to identify these words and then use them in my research. To have an A.I. to do this work for me would save a lot of time. I could devote more to analyzing these words, which, at least, I don’t believe the A.I. is currently capable of doing. It would be great. It was one of the key questions of my thesis. What do people mean when they use metaphors? People are not incarcerated or suffocating. What do they mean when they use these words? Using or incorporating A.I. in this research would be helpful. 

Jacobsen: An interesting hypothetical, for me, would be something entirely unethical like the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Asch experiments on conformity, or the electroshock experiments. That era is over. However, it would be an interesting thought experiment. However unethical it would be, it would be interesting, once or if you do find patterns in this word frequency use, if you could somehow induce depression through the language environment of someone. So, looking at the linguistic landscape around someone, the context, and seeing if this induces a depressive state, we know others’ qualities of experience someone goes through like war: the visual, the smell, the hearing, the feel of everything. It can induce symptoms of depression if they have a vicarious trauma. I would also be curious if that happens with the linguistic system. That would be entirely evil [Laughing]. 

Sofocleous: [Laughing] It would be fascinating. 

Jacobsen: I do not recommend this, and I do not encourage it. I am taking this as a Marvel Cinematic Universe “What if?” 

Sofocleous: Even as a thought experiment, we do not know the answer to the question just because of how unethical it sounds. Can we induce depression in people? We know that we can treat depression. But we don’t know if it can go the other way around or intentionally cause depression in people in the same way we can cause depression with some methods. I do not think we know the answer to the question of what can cause depression. Can we intentionally cause depression?

Jacobsen: I’ll leave us on that note. I am looking forward to the development of your research, doctor. 

Sofocleous: Thank you so much, Scott, it was enjoyable. Thank you for giving voice to many people who speak about things that matter to people. I can say depression is one of them, given the huge amount of people who suffer from it. I would dare to use the word suffer. So, thank you for what you are doing, too. 

Jacobsen: You’re very welcome. 

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