The importance of the place to experiences and emotions of people in emotional suffering: pondering on loneliness and possibilities

Abstract

The present paper aimed to understand how spaces constitute experiences and its importance to the existence of emotions. Four people were interviewed, they were diagnosed as “mental ill” and lived and different places. A therapeutic internship, a shelter, a hotel and a house. A participant observation with field diary records was also performed. It is considered that a being is always a being-in-the-world, and they cannot be drawn off from it. This world involves not only relations with other living beings, but also with non human organisms, whose paths are directly related with the individual’s. Each individual’s path is made continually during the path itself, in a continuum walk. It was possible to observe many different engagements from the living places, in the perspective of recovering certain autonomy and some lost rights. It is possible to notice that although most of them demonstrate believing in the possibility of having a “normal life”, there was a, sometimes shy, continuum movement which aimed to overcome some difficulties.