CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicSensing Minds: On the Role of Intuitions, Feelings, and Emotions in Psy-clinical Diagnoses and JudgementsView all 8 articles
In the Mood of the Other: Emotional Contagion, Empathic Knowledge, and Intuitive Diagnosis in Psychiatry
Provisionally accepted
Andrea Altobrando1*
Leonardo Zaninotto2- 1University of Padua, Padua, Italy
- 2Azienda ULSS 6 Euganea, Padua, Italy
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In this study we critically examine the phenomenological foundations of intuitive diagnosis in Psychiatry by integrating Max Scheler's concept of emotional contagion with Edith Stein's three-stage model of empathy. We argue that what Scheler calls emotional contagion offers a useful pre-reflective, bodily-affective resonance that precedes and facilitates deeper empathic understanding of the subject's experience. Then, we suggest that Stein's analysis of empathy, which is based on a three-step process – i.e., the emergence of the other's experience, its imaginative explication, and the final comprehensive objectification – may account for the role of imaginative empathic immersion in diagnostic assessment. This imaginative engagement, grounded in bodily co-originality, allows clinicians to apprehend the subject's world beyond mere perceptual awareness. We contend that Scheler's emotional contagion and Stein's model of empathy can be productively harnessed within a comprehensive diagnostic framework to provide a raw intuitive and imaginative substrate for further cognitive elaboration.
Keywords: Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Atmospheric diagnosis, Diagnostic Intuition, Empathy, Phenomenological psychiatry, emotional contagion
Received: 30 Jul 2025; Accepted: 25 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Altobrando and Zaninotto. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Andrea Altobrando
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