Abstract

The fundamental points of the atmospherologically oriented phenomenological psychology are identified and discussed: if phenomenology sees the symptom within subjectivity, atmospherology shifts the emphasis of emotions outward. Atmospheres capture us so deeply that they direct our agency and our perception of places, objects and situations: in psychiatry it would be possible to organize a diagnostic criterion where the psychopathogenic agents are reconstructed following the emotional atmospheres grasped by the patient-person. The article problematizes the theoretical base of this concept, arguing that the personhood of the patient-person, in an externalizing theory of emotions, is lost. In a psychiatric instance, this is problematic as the aim of reconstructing one’s atmospherical emotions collides with emotions being all-out: it is at least paradoxical or conflicting to believe that one’s psychopathogenic atmospheres are clinically detectable if emotions are poured into air. Finally, it is supported the idea that, while preserving the possibility of having an atmospherological diagnosis, a deeper analysis of its theoretical preconditions is needed.