Disorders of temporal experience feature prominently in classical phenomenological psychopathology, regarding mostly disorders of moods and affects, but also substance use, compulsions, and schizophrenia. More recent advances in qualitative phenomenology have expanded the array of atypical experiences of interest (e.g., toward personality disorders and autism) and strengthened empirical methodologies employed to explore them (together with the proliferation of philosophical discussions on the boundaries and thresholds of the “phenomenologicality” of these advances). However, two key related issues remain. The first is the discrepancy between phenomenological insights into the alleged eidetic backbone of disordered temporalities and what we know about their actual incidence and severity. The second is the gap between phenomenological (including qualitative) and other methodologies. While the phenomenological approach to empirical data avoids some pitfalls of the psychophysical and psychological measurements, it suffers from an intrinsic deficiency concerning reliability – the evidence is frequently speculative, anecdotal, and based on small samples. On the other hand, established and validated psychological research tools for objectifying temporal experience are not considered phenomenological enough to satisfy the more philosophically minded parties.
The workshop aims to present and discuss the possibilities of overcoming these two issues by taking quantitative empirical evidence seriously for phenomenological analysis and, second, offering hybrid solutions that both employ the theoretical arsenal of phenomenological concepts of temporality and embark on a larger-scale empirical data-gathering. The aim is to explore possibilities to improve the ‘economics’ of the phenomenological discourse on atypical lived time experience in terms of validity and reliability of evidence, hypothesis testing, transparency, and communicability beyond the distinct Denkkollektiv, and thus to advance present-day phenomenological psychopathology (beyond the largely inconclusive discussions of what constitutes a genuine phenomenological method).