From the “Intensification of Emotional Life” to “Acceleration Society”

The paper has a twofold goal: on the one hand, the late modern characteristics of time consciousness are introduced; on the other hand, its consequences for the emergence of depression are elaborated. In case of the first task the main sources are the analyses of Simmel on classical modernity and the analyses of Rosa on late modernity. Based on their work two ideal-typical patterns of the experience of acceleration are reconstructed. In case of the second task, literature on the phenomenology of depression is applied (e.g. Ratcliff  and Fuchs): the notion of intertemporality enables the linking of social phenomenological diagnoses of modernity and particular patterns of mental suffering.