Depressive patients describe depression in relation to various distortions and disruptions in their lived experience of time and space. This paper examines the role of graphic memoirs of mental illness in identifying the distortions and limitations of the mental illness patients' lived space. Drawing upon the German psychiatrist and philosopher Thomas Fuchs'' phenomenological conceptualization of the lived space and its constrictions in mental illness patients, I will look at how graphic medicine can inform the phenomenological studies of mental illness, namely depression. I will first examine some changes and deformations in how depressive patients perceive their lived space and then turn to investigate how multiple facets of confinement and narrowness are visually delineated in the graphic memoirs of Mademoiselle Caroline's Chute Libre: Carnets du Gouffre (2013), and Ellen Forney's Marbles, Mania, Michelangelo and Me (2013).
:Keywords
Graphic medicine – lived space – depression –Thomas Fuchs – Chute Libre – Marbles