Depressive Psychosis

Something else that caught my eye as I continually read "The Denial Of Death"

"Schizophrenic Psychosis"- any of several psychotic disorders characterized by distortions of reality and disturbances of thought and language and withdrawal from social contact.

Søren Kierkegaard

If Schizophrenic Psychosis is on a continuum of a kind of normal inflation of inner fantasy, of symbolic possibilty, then something similar should be true of Depressive Psychosis. And so it is in the portrait that Kierkegaard paints. Depressive Psychosis is the extreme on the continuum of too much necessity, that is, too much finitude, too much limitation by the body and the behaviors of the person in the real world, and not enough freedom of the inner self, of inner symbolic possibility. This is how we understand Depressive Psychosis today: as a bogging down in the demands of others-family, job, the narrow horizon of daily duties. In such a bogging down the individual does not feel or see that he has alternatives, cannot imagine any choices or alternate ways of life, cannot release himself from the network of obligations even though these obligations no longer give him a sense of self-esteem, of primary value, of being a heroic contributor to world life even by doing his daily family and job duties. As I once speculated, the Schizophrenic is not enough built into his world-what Kierkegaard has called the sickness of infinitude; the depressive, on the other hand, is built into his world too solidly, too overwhelmingly. Kierkegaard put it this way:

"But while one sort of despair plunges wildly into the infinite and loses itself, a second sort of permits itself as it were to be defrauded by "the others". By seeing the multitude of men about it, by getting engaged in all sorts of worldly affairs, by becoming wise about how things go in his world, such a man forgets himself...does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too venturesome a thing to be himself, far easier and safer to be like the others, to become an imatation, a number, a cipher in the crowd"


This is a superb characterization of the "culturally normal" man, the one who dares not stand up for his own meanings because this means too much danger, too much exposure. Better not to be oneself, better live tucked into others, embedded in a safe frame-work of social and cultural obligations and duties.
     Again, too, this kind of characterization must be understood as being on a continuum, at the extreme end of which we find depressive psychosis. The despressed person is so afraid of being himself, so fearful of exerting his own individuality, of insisting on what might be his own meanings, his own conditions for living, that he seems literally stupid. He cannot seem to understand the situation he is in, cannot see beyond his own fears, cannot grasp why he has bogged down. Kierkegaard phrases it beautifully:

"if one will compare the tendancy to run wild in possibility with the efforts of a child to enunciate words, the lack of possibility is like being dumb...for without possibility a man cannot, as it were, draw breath."

This is precisely the condition of depression, that one can hardly breathe or move. One of the unconscious tactics that the depressed person resorts to, to try to make sense out of his situation, is to see himself as immensely worthless and guilty. This is a marvelous "invention" really, because it allows him to move out of his condition of dumbness, and make some kind of conceptualization of his situation, some kind of sense out of it-even if he has to take full blame as the culprit who is causing so much needless misery to others. Could Kierkegaard have been referring to just such an imaginative tactic when he casually observed:

"Somtimes the inventiveness of the human imagination suffices to procure possibility..."


In any event, the condition of despression might permit an inventiveness that creates the illusion of possibility, of meaning, of action but it does not offer any real possibility. As Kierkegaard sums it up:

"The loss of possibility signifies: either that eveything has become necessary to man or that everything has become trivial."

Actually, in the extreme of depressive psychosis we seem to see the merger of these two: everything becomes necessary AND trivial at the same time-which leads to complete despair. Necessity with the illusion of meaning would be the highest achievement for man; but when it becomes trivial there is no sense to ones life.
     Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude-even dishonor and betrayal-to real possibility? This may not seem to be the choice, but it is: complete self-effacement, surrender to the "others", disavowal of any personal dignity or freedom-on the one hand; freedom and independance, movement away from others extrication of oneself from the binding links of family and social duties-on the other hand. This is the choice that the depressed person actually faces and that he avoids partly by his guilty self-accusation. The answer is not far to seek: the depressed person avoids the possibilty of independence and more life precisely because these are what threaten him with destruction and death. He holds on to the people who have enslaved him in a network of crushing obligations, belittling interaction, precisely because these people are his shelter, his strength, his protection against the world. Like most everyone else the depressed person is a coward who will not stand alone on his own center, who cannot draw from within himself the necessary strength to face up to life. So he embeds himself in others; he is sheltered by the necessary and willingly accepts it. But now his tragedy is plain to see: his necessity has become trivial, and so his slavish, dependent, depersonalized life has lost its meaning. It is frightening to be in such a bind. One chooses slavery because it is safe and meaningful; then one loses the meaning of it, but fears to move out of it. One has literally died to life but must remain physically in this world. And thus torture of depressive psychosis: to remain steeped in ones failure and yet justify it, to continue to draw a sense of worth-whileness out of it.


Wow, that one was a doosey.