Dysphoria: a Desperate Vitality

'Dysphoria’ is often used as the most generic word for any kind of negative emotion. It can be better defined as an unmotivated and quasi-ineffable constellation of feelings that convey a nebula of vague sensations and impulses, an uncomfortable feeling characterized by being sorrowful and indignant. The intentional structure that characterizes much of human emotional experience is absent in dysphoria. Emotions are fluxes of intentionality that innervate the flesh and connect it to the world. Dysphoria is an emotional state saturated with a brimming constellation of feelings without any explicit object or target, a state of tension that may lead to spontaneously vigorous outbursts as well as to pale stagnation or emotional depletion. Dysphoria is empty intentionality devoid of the moderating power of language and representation which fragments the person’s representations of herself and of others and inducing painful …