Posted by dj on August 10, 2000, at 22:14:55
In reply to Re: Malignant Sadness - title source.., posted by Oddzilla on August 10, 2000, at 18:24:01
> Do you think depression is malignant sadness? I think I would call it malignant disconnection as opposed to healthy detachment. Or meaninglessness as opposed to meaning. That's more what it feels like to me. Loss of interpersonal relationships would probably >underly those causes too.
I think it depends on the type and degree of the depression. The deeper the depression the more the sense of meaninglessness and detatchment. Thinking about this just now I took a look at some of Richard O'Connor's comments at:
http://www.undoingdepression.com/excerpts.html
and focused on the following:"People with depression have a special talent for stuffing feelings. They can pretend to themselves and the world that they don't feel normal human emotions. They are very good at the defenses of repression, isolation, and intellectualization. They raise self-denial and self-sacrifice to the point where the self seems to disappear. (page 97)
It takes a great deal of practice for the depressed person to learn how not to experience emotions, but we get very good at it. Women get especially good at not feeling anger and men get good at not feeling sadness. All of us stop experiencing much joy or happiness. It seems as if when you lose the ability to feel painful feelings, you also lose the ability to feel positive ones. We go through life numbed. (page 100)"
As he points out in his writings, as does Lewis Wolpert, Robert Sapolosky and other more thoughtful writers who don't go for one simple explanation but examine the interplay of many concepts, it is not black and white, either or but rather a dance between our biological and mental vunverabilities, our environments and how they all interact and how we act and react to all of the above.
However, when I go back to the roots of my own experience and as I work back through the layers, I do detect a core of sadness in my self which if I don't deal with effectively can spin out of control and become a depress-ing or of feelings that I don't want to experience/deal with and in the process also a repression of feelings that I would prefer to experience because if I suppress one, I deny the other as well...
> Of course I'm old enough to remember when depression was "anger turned inward". It's been a long time since I heard that one, thank >goodness.Some say that anger is a cover for or reaction to sadness, anxiety, or fear. I think there is some validity to that as I think the above description of depression is not out of line. Wolpert discusses the origins of the psychoanalytiv view and other theories. He also generally dismisses that theory, the core ambivalence which they point to is certainly one I have grappled with at times and the anger and frustration with situations and people that I consider(ed) inane.
Certainly anyone who commits, considers or attempts suicide has to be in a state of self-loathing. Wong and McKeen whom I cited below:
The link between work and Anaclitic Depression, explore the issue of self-hate and hating yourself for hating yourself, ideal self vs. actual self, etc, in their writings and the models they work with, based on lots of observation of self and others over many years.The book: "Compassion and Self-Hate" by Theodore Rubin also explores these issues. Sapolosky in "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" writes: "...depressives often experience elevated levels of glucocorticoids...looking at a depressive sitting on the edge of the bed, barely able to move, it is easy to think of that person as energyless, enervated. A more accurate picture is of the depressive as a tightly coiled spool of wire, tense, straining, active - but all inside..." (pg. 234)
He goes on to note, amongst other things, when reviewing various theories and how they relate: "On an incredibly simplistic level, you can think of depression as occuring when your cortex thinks an abstract negative thought and manages to convince the rest of the brain that this is a real physical stressor. In this view, people with chronic depressions are those whose cortex habitually whispers sad thoughts to the rest of the brain..." (pg 244)
A complicated melange of issues but ones worth grappling with, I believe.
> And thanks for telling me the ending of Anatomy of Melancholy. I rescued a three volume edition from a street curb years ago and never got close >to the end!My pleasure. That's the ending of Malignant Sadness too, so you got two in one.
Sante!
dj
poster:dj
thread:42420
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000729/msgs/42545.html