Searching for a Way Out of Depression

Posted by JohnD Mon, 07 Apr 2008 07:55:00 GMT

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In a previous post I started thinking aloud if my stance toward depression could change from hostility toward an invader to the acceptance of a primal force in my make-up, something that was giving me a message I was imperfectly grasping. I’ve found a remarkable book that helps me respond with new energy to this terrible condition. It is Julia Kristeva’s Black Sun. This series of essays by a prominent French psychoanalyst evokes the ways in which artists have portrayed states of depression in order to transcend the suffering of this condition. Though at times the language is dense with post-Freudian terminology, it is also beautifully evocative of the experiences of melancholy and depression and the powerful insights of creative minds in grappling with the problem of living with an illness that takes hold of the mind and feelings so pervasively.

The psychoanalytic theory that tries to explain all this is less important than the fact that it pushes my thinking in the here and now to a new understanding of the strange interplay of basic forces inside me. It helps me consider the dynamic of what I experience quite apart from explanations rooted in past family history. Though psychoanalytic theory is rooted in that history, Kristeva presents the dynamic within the psyche in symbolic terms that make it possible to separate the forces inherent in depression from the particular circumstances of loss or trauma that initially triggered them. Those circumstances, after all, cannot be changed – the family past is completely gone – but the immediate drives toward destruction or hope are the experiences I have to work with right now.

Posted in Explanations, Connecting, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags Black Sun, Dostoevsky, forgiveness, hope, Julia Kristeva, life, loss, love, Nerval, psychoanalysis, transformation | 3 comments