The Lebenswelt of Edmundo Diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder: a case study

This paper aims to show the case study of Edmundo, who attended psychotherapy in a Psychology School Clinic for 12 months. Under the Clinic perspective of Lebenswelt (living world or world of life) we consider the diagnosis of bipolar as part of the Edmundo’s living world. He was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder about eight years ago and this has been a remarkable thing in his life. Even though he recognized himself as “the bipolar” and ascribed his behaviors to the disorder, Edmundo had difficulty to describe his bipolar experience. Humor disturbance and energy oscillation are the main features of the Bipolar Disorder, which leads to a disorganization of the organism and implies in a variation that goes from deep sorrow to excessive joy. Throughout Edmundo’s psychotherapeutic process, his living world was explored in an insistently way by the psychotherapist through comprehensive description of the lived experience as part of the phenomenological method, seeking to follow Edmundo in his living world, getting as closer as possible to his lived experience, with the purpose of understanding how he felt himself and assisting him in the process of awareness of his Lebenswelt which, although characterized by the illness and by the bipolar disorder characteristics, was not limited to this. On one side, we highlight the importance of a phenomenology of the bipolar disorder as a theoretical scope to the understanding of Edmundo’s living world. On the other side, we emphasize that the therapy sessions, from the phenomenological clinic, added to the comprehension of the meanings of Edmundo’s bipolar experience, bringing the client closer to his lived experience. During sessions, as denser contents emerged, Edmundo could start to describe how he felt. Moreover, the attitude of the psychotherapist to suspend her concepts about the illness and other assertions about Edmundo provided the reinforcement of the psychotherapeutic bond and of the therapeutic process as well.