My research and approach in this thesis stem from three sources: a shamelessly unbridled and life-long fascination and inquisitiveness about how history and culture influence every aspect of our lives; a life-long personal struggle with melancholic moods and anxiety culminating in two-and-a-half years of unsuccessful medical treatment for my diagnosed illness of depression; and, arising from the interaction between these first two sources, something of a bellowing in my ears questioning
why Western culture views depression as it does and whether there might be another way of looking at depression.
Following those such as Barry (2006), Frank (1991, 1997) and Karp (1996, 2001, 2007) who openly disclose personal associations with their topic of research, I acknowledge that my lifelong experience of depression indicates a clear and direct association between my personal life and my chosen topic of research. In addition, my negative experience of the medical treatment I received for my depression left me, to the say the least, rather antagonistic towards medicine. However, after my initial focus on spirituality as a missing dimension in the medical paradigm of depression (heavily influenced by my ‘anti-medical’ feelings), I moved strongly away from any position that focussed solely on a condemnation of medicine. I quickly realized that such an approach would be decidedly unhelpful. Acutely aware of the problems caused by divisiveness between different perspectives within Christianity (my own religious world-view) and between different religious world- views, I determined that my study of depression would not intentionally add to any divisiveness in ongoing research about depression. Instead, I hope it promotes open and respectful dialogue, where an ethic of dialogic debate and inclusivity replaces dialectical condemnation and exclusivity.
This thesis is a journey of exploration about emotional suffering, that today is termed ‘depression’: into what has gone before, into what is now, and into what may come in the future. It is a meta-investigation that is neither definitive nor conclusive, but suggestive of a different way of understanding the framing of depression in contemporary Western culture. I find the current ‘story’ of depression to be, because of Western rationalism, both valuable and restrictive and suggest that an interstitiality facilitating the respectful coexistence of different ‘stories’ about depression would enrich our understandings of depression in the future.
The human portrait, to return to my earlier painterly analogy, has historically shown a waxing and waning of chiaro and oscuro in different combinations and relationships (see Chapter Three). However, my research indicates that there is a particular preference in the contemporary Western framing of depression that seeks to paint the human portrait largely in chiaro, by resisting oscuro. This preference has
led to a ‘specific and peculiar’ painting style, which would benefit, I suggest, from the use of a broader palette, thereby facilitating the enriching of this portrait in a vibrant and potent mix of light and dark.
Suffering defines a part of what it means to be human, affecting a person physically, mentally, and emotionally. As one facet of human suffering, I consider it would be to our detriment as a species if we were to only rationalize sadness as a depressive illness and control it through drugs and other therapies. Viewing the suffering of sadness as an illness called depression is one ‘story’, but there are other ‘stories’ that speak to what is ‘beautiful’ and ‘valuable’ in such emotional suffering. Some can even see butterflies arising from the “horrible, unclean” (Kazantzakis 1962: 202) depths of human suffering. I am not disputing that depression can be something terrible and painful, but I am suggesting that a wider perspective than that of only illness would allow for other ways of engaging with such emotional suffering. In the West, ‘a place and a space for tears’ is neither spatial nor temporal. The places and spaces are, and always have been, in process; and the contemporary West currently seems to be at a critical juncture in place and time to substantially enrich this unfolding journey of our relationship with sadness, with the emotional suffering that constitutes a part of our human condition.
Depression is both demon and dæmon10
, both “loathed” and “holy” (Milton 2007:15- 24). In their respective emphases on melancholy and mirth (sadness and happiness, night and day, dark and light) evident in Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso can be seen reflected aspects of the Motifs of Suffering in Western culture explored in Chapter Three and the orientations to depression in Western culture introduced in Chapter Four and explored in Chapters Five to Nine. Between the polarities in Western culture of viewing sadness as “holy ground” (Wilde 1979: 54) or as “devil” (Ford 1965: 52) are to be found the numerous concerted efforts, however different, to understand and enrich the continuing human journey with what it means to be emotional beings who feel pain. I think this study, with its specific focus on
10 I am using these words according to their conventional definitions (Brown 2002: 638): demon as an “evil spirit
... or an unclean spirit” and dæmon, also spelt daimon, as “an attendant or indwelling spirit, one’s genius” reflecting ancient Greek and late Middle English usage. The former, then, is something essentially bad and the latter is something essentially good. In application to depression, I am conveying the sense that depression is both terrible and destructive, robbing a person of life, value and meaning (depression as demon), and also ‘beautiful’ and creative, instilling profundity, meaning and possibility into a person’s life (depression as dæmon).
depression, in some small way represents a modest example of Busfield’s (2001:2) call for sociologists to “re-think” the sociology of mental health and illness. It is also a study that is deeply indebted to the sociologists and philosophers from whom I have so brazenly and eclectically commandeered their profound, brilliant, and insightful ideas. In the next chapter, I map my convoluted journey into theory, discussing the ideas of three theorists on whose concepts my approach to depression in this study is based.