Body and affective instrumentalization in contemporary spiritual illness

Abstract

This article addresses spiritual illness as a metaclinical phenomenon that transcends traditional biopsychosocial models, situating it at the intersection of the constitutive and the pathological in contemporary human experience. Drawing on contributions from phenomenology and logotherapy, especially in dialogue with Scheler and Frankl, it argues that the spiritual dimension constitutes the core of freedom, self-transcendence, and meaning-making. Its blockage gives rise to specific forms of suffering that cannot be reduced to the psychophysical realm. Within this framework, affective instrumentalization is examined as a pathology of our time, characterized by the dissociation between sex and love and by the reduction of the other to a means for the satisfaction of impulses. This phenomenon entails a transformation of corporeality insofar as the body ceases to be lived as a space of intersubjective encounter and becomes instead a functional, consumable object. From the field of physical education and the formation of corporeality, it is argued that this reduction impoverishes the body’s formative experience, weakening its potential as a site of meaning, responsibility, and recognition of the other. Finally, it is proposed that overcoming spiritual illness requires a reconfiguration of individual and social practices, as well as the development of pedagogical and therapeutic approaches that restore the existential dimension of the body and foster authentic, ethically committed relationships.