• Therapeutic Atmospheres (THERASPHERES)

Mental health challenges represent one of the most pressing issues of 21st-century science, with an estimated 9% of the population currently experiencing a mental disorder and 25% expected to face one at some point in their lives. As these challenges become increasingly prevalent, the importance of understanding what contributes to effective healing cannot be overstated. While existing research recognizes that the environment in which therapy occurs—such as the layout, lighting, sound, and furniture of a room—can significantly influence therapeutic outcomes, there remains a notable gap in the literature regarding how these therapeutic spaces affect individuals and shape the course of psychotherapy.

The "Therapeutic Atmospheres" (THERASPHERES) project seeks to address this gap by exploring how the experience of affective atmospheres within therapeutic settings impacts the effectiveness of therapy, particularly in forming therapeutic alliances and fostering significant therapeutic change events. The primary objectives of this project are threefold: (1) to map the various interpretations of 'atmosphere' within the literature on phenomenological psychiatry and situated affectivity, (2) to assess how the experience of atmospheres in consultation rooms influences therapeutic change processes, and (3) to refine existing conceptualizations of 'atmosphere' within the field of phenomenological psychiatry and situated affectivity and explore their application to other research domains.

By employing a novel method that integrates phenomenological interviews with the analysis of video recordings, THERASPHERES will systematically assess the role of affective atmospheres in therapeutic processes. Ultimately, this project aims to enhance our understanding of how to create spaces that foster better mental health outcomes.

Funded by the European Commission.

• Towards a process perspective of mental conditions

One of the central challenges in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of medicine is understanding the nature of mental disorders. A key concern is the reifying tendency of current classificatory systems, which treat psychopathological categories as value-independent natural kinds. Although the debate is broad and complex, it can be organized along seven dimensions: descriptivism–evaluativism, essentialism–nominalism, entities–agents, category–continua, causalism–descriptivism, internalism–externalism, and the recently proposed structure–process axis.

Recent advances in enactive cognitive science have challenged these traditional dichotomies. By offering a naturalized account of mind, normativity, and mental disorders, the enactive framework provides an integrative perspective that addresses some of the limitations of earlier binary approaches. This project aims to develop the processual and relational ontology underpinning the enactive perspective and to explore its implications for debates on the nature of mental disorders. In doing so, the enactive approach will be brought into dialogue with longstanding discussions in the philosophy of science concerning natural kinds, scientific classification, and explanatory pluralism.

Funded by the Basque Government and the University of the Basque Country.

• PhD thesis:

I defended my PhD thesis “ Participatory sense-making in psychotherapy” at the University of the Basque Country in 2022 (International Mention and Extraordinary Award). The project was carried under the supervision of Ezequiel Di Paolo and Hanne De Jaegher and founded by the Basque Government (PREDOC 2018-2019). In the thesis, I studied embodied intersubjectivity in therapeutic relationships. I adopt a second-person perspective by placing participatory sense-making processes at the center of my investigation. I present three pieces of work applying the enactive framework to research in psychotherapy: (1) a comment on correlational studies on non-verbal coordination and psychotherapeutic outcome, where new working hypothesis and interpretation of empirical data were suggested; (2) an interpretative phenomenological-analysis of the pre-reflective intercorporeal mechanisms involved in the transition from face-to-face to online therapeutic settings, and (3) a phenomenological-enactive analysis and classification of therapeutic interventions on the body. The thesis contributes to our understanding of the complexity of interactions and modes of participation of the therapist-patient dyad.

Funded by the Basque Government.