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Growing from Depression cover

What if depression were a blessing as well as a curse? This is a book about how depression can have benefits as well as costs, and how to reap those benefits while making yourself feel better—better, in fact, than ever before.

🏆 Semi-finalist, the BookLife Prize

🏆 Highly Commended, the BMA Book Awards

A comprehensive, sympathetic, and thought-provoking guide for those who want to explore their depression in more depth. —The British Journal of Psychiatry

This book brings understanding and encourages independent solutions. It is remarkable in its shortness and practicality. —The British Medical Association Book Awards

★★★★★ I have read most of Dr. Neel Burton’s books and have enjoyed them immensely … All in all, I found this to be a very insightful and engaging book on depression. —Jamie Bee, Amazon.com Top 50 Reviewer

Grab your copy now for a new and powerful way of looking at depression.

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The Incarnate Angel, which has been tactfully cropped.

An introduction to the most successful of all ego defences.

Sublimation is considered by many to be the most “mature” or “successful” of all ego defences. Let me give you a few examples.

If a person feels angry with his boss, he may go home and kick the dog—or he might instead go out for a long run. The first instance (kicking the dog) is an example of displacement, the redirection of uncomfortable feelings towards someone or something less important, which is an immature and destructive ego defence. But the second instance (going out for a long run) is an example of sublimation, which can be defined as the channelling of uncomfortable feelings into positive or productive activities.

If someone finds out that she’s been cheated upon, she might fly into a rage and cut up all her partner’s clothes—or she might instead write a poem to explore and express how she feels. And if the poem or poet were one day to be remembered, would that not be the sweetest revenge of all?

A third example of sublimation is the person with sadistic or homicidal urges who joins the military to provide an outlet for these urges, or who, like Justice Wargrave in Agatha Christie’s And Then Ther Were None, becomes a hanging judge who doles out the death penalty to murdered. In the novel’s postscript, a fishing trawler dredges up a bottle just off the Devon coast. The bottle contains the confession of the late Wargrave, in which reveals a lifelong sadistic temperament juxtaposed with a fierce sense of justice. Though he had longed to torture, terrify, and kill, he could not bring himself to harm innocent people. So instead, he became a hanging judged and thrilled at the sight of convicted (and guilty) criminals trembling with fear.

The Case of Leonardo

In a 1910 essay on Leonardo, Sigmund Freud argued that Leonardo was a “sublimated homosexual” who did not act on his sexual desires but rather converted (sublimed) them into an insatiable curiosity and artistic genius.

Leonardo never showed any interest in women and even wrote that heterosexual intercourse disgusted him. He never married but chose instead to surround himself with beautiful young men such as Salai (a nickname meaning “little devil”) and Melzi, who were both included in his last will and testament. In 1476, at the age of 24, he was twice charged with sodomy, even though the charge was common in the Florence of the quattrocento and later dropped for want of witnesses.

As in his life, so in his art: Leonardo sketched many more male than female nudes and paid much more attention to the male genitals. Many of his figures appear androgynous, especially the John the Baptist (c. 1513) who, complete with the long, fine curls of Salai, looks nothing like the biblical cousin of Jesus and everything like Salai or, indeed, Mona Lisa. And if that were not enough, there is also a drawing, The Incarnate Angel, from the school of Leonardo that appears to be a humorous take on the John the Baptist, portraying John/Salai in a state of, shall we say, excitement.

The Last Supper

In the famous Last Supper (c. 1498), Leonardo painted a female figure, often interpreted as Mary Magdalene, in the privileged position to the immediate right of Jesus. But it is generally understood that it was in fact John the Apostle who occupied this position. In the Bible, at John 13:23, it is written (presumably by John himself, or else someone close to John), “Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.” And again at John 21:20: “Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee?” 

In his Spiritual Friendship (c. 1167), St Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx in the twelfth century, contrasts John with Peter. To Peter, he says, Jesus gave the keys to his kingdom, but to John “he revealed the secrets of his heart”. “Peter… was exposed to action, John was reserved for love.”

Whatever the real relationship between Jesus and John, placing a female figure in the place of John in a painting destined for a monastery seems like something more than poor catechism.

Neel Burton is author of Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception.

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Friedrich Nietzsche in circa 1875.

How Nietzsche channelled a traumatic breakup to write his most famous book.

In March 1882, the writer Paul Rée travelled to Rome to join a community of free spirits. There, he met the 21-year-old Lou Salomé, who was travelling with her mother following the death of her father, Gustav von Salomé, an ennobled Russian general.

Nietzsche rejoined them in April, after three weeks in Messina, Sicily. Nietzsche and Salomé first met, of all places, in the grandeur of St Peter’s Basilica. Nietzsche was captivated by her charm and intelligence, and enjoyed reading to her and Rée from his newly published Gay Science.

Love Triangle

The then 37-year-old Nietzsche asked Rée to deliver a marriage proposal to Salomé, without knowing that Rée had himself proposed to her. Salomé rejected both proposals, suggesting instead that she, Rée, and Nietzsche form a platonic “intellectual trinity” and wander in search of some monastery or other edifice in which to establish a commune of free spirits.

On 5 May, Salomé and Nietzsche ascended Monte Sacro, with its romantic views over Lake Orta and San Giulio Island. Nietzsche described this pilgrimage of sorts as “the most exquisite dream of my life”. Later, he wrote to Salomé, “Back at Orta, I conceived a plan of leading you step by step to the final consequence of my philosophy—you as the first person I took to be fit for this.”

He proposed to her a second time in Lucerne’s Löwengarten. Later that day, they had their photograph taken with the reluctant Rée in a photographer’s shop. This photograph (below), with Salomé brandishing a whip, is almost certainly the most famous picture in all philosophy.

On 5 November, in Leipzig, Salomé and Rée suddenly vanished from his life, without word or trace. He knew not where, or why. Some days later, when what had happened had sunk in, he confided to his friend Franz Overbeck, “So I really am going into utter solitude.” He never saw Salomé or Rée again. After hiding in Leipzig for some days, the pair had made for Berlin.

The most famous picture in philosophy, with Nietzsche, Rée, and Salomé holding a whip.

From Heartbreak to Masterpiece

Naturally, Nietzsche’s already fragile health suffered. He began taking heavy doses of chloral hydrate and opium. In mid-December, he sent letters mentioning overdoses and suicide to Salomé, Rée, and Overbeck. To Overbeck, he wrote: “My whole life has crumbled under my gaze… the barrel of a revolver is for me now a source of relatively pleasant thoughts.”

On Christmas day, he wrote again to Overbeck: “This last morsel of life was the hardest I have yet had to chew… Unless I discover the alchemical trick of turning this muck into gold, I am lost.”

Nietzsche did, of course, find the trick. On 14 February, he posted the manuscript for the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, to his publisher. It’s his most famous work, and he insisted that everything he wrote afterward was mere commentary on its themes. In his autobiography, Ecce Homo, he goes so far as to call it the greatest gift humanity has ever received.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche proclaims the death of God and, consequently, the inability of conventional religion and morality to provide modern man with structure and meaning. Instead, Zarathustra advocates a radical, earthly, and life-affirming philosophy, and introduces some of Nietzsche’s most famous themes: the Superman (Übermensch), the Will to Power, and Eternal Return.

The Ego Defence of Sublimation

Sublimation is considered by many to be the most successful of all defences.

If a person’s partner has just left her for someone else, she might fly into a rage and cut up all his clothes… or she might instead write a poem to express how she feels. The first instance (cutting up all her partner’s clothes) is an example of displacement, the redirection of uncomfortable feelings towards someone or something less important, which is an immature ego defence. But the second instance (writing a poem) is an example of sublimation, the channelling of uncomfortable feelings into positive or productive activities, which is a much more mature ego defence.

And if the poem or poet were one day to be remembered, would that not be the sweetest revenge of all?

Neel Burton is author of The German Greeks: German Philosophy and the German Philosophers.

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Arthur Schopenhauer on Noise and Genius

In August 1821, while living in Berlin, the 33-year-old Arthur Schopenhauer had an altercation with a neighbour, the 47-year-old seamstress Caroline Louise Marquet. On that day, he was enraged by the noise of three women talking in the private anteroom to his apartment. When he demanded that they leave, two of the women complied but Marquet refused.

Later, Marquet claimed that Schopenhauer kicked and punched her and threw her down the stairs, leaving her paralysed on the right side and unable to work. He countered that he had only pushed her, and that she fell to the ground on purpose so that she could sue him.

Following a six-year legal battle ending in May 1827, he was made to pay her medical expenses along with a maintenance allowance of 60 thalers per annum for the rest of her life. On the day she died in 1842, the great philosopher of compassion recorded in his ledger, in Latin, Obit anus, abit onus [The crone dies, the burden is lifted].

The Case of Immanuel Kant

Schopenhauer built his pessimistic philosophy on that of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who also hated noise. Although gregarious and fond of laughter, Kant needed absolute quiet to write. According to lore, he once moved lodgings on account of a crowing rooster.

In May 1784, Kant, who lived all his life in Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad), penned a letter to the police superintendent to complain about the “stentorian singing of prayers by the hypocritical inmates of the jail” (in the Iliad, the Greek herald Stentor had a voice as loud “as fifty voices of other men”). He was offended not merely by the noise but also by the insincerity of the prayers, which were offered, he thought, simply to appear God-fearing to the jailor.

Schopenhauer on Noise

In his essay On Noise (1851), Schopenhauer rails hardest not against the nattering of women but the cracking of whips in narrow resounding streets (the nineteenth century equivalent of revving motorbikes or these fart-can cars with modified exhausts): “Hammering, the barking of dogs, and the screaming of children are abominable; but it is only [his emphasis] the cracking of a whip that is the true murderer of thought.” To him, the cracking of whips was all the more unbearable for being unnecessary, and, worse than unnecessary, useless.

Schopenhauer links misophonia [the hatred of sound] with intellect and creativity: “Certainly there are people, nay, very many, who will smile at [my predicament], because they are not sensitive to noise; it is precisely these people, however, who are not sensitive to argument, thought, poetry, or art, in short, to any kind of intellectual impression: a fact to be assigned to the coarse quality and strong texture of their brain tissues.”

For Schopenhauer, genius is precisely this: the ability of the mind to remain focused on a single point and object. But as soon as a focused mind is interrupted or distracted, it is no better than an ordinary mind. It is, says Schopenhauer, as with a large diamond, which, if shattered, loses most of its value; or as with an army, which, if dispersed, loses most of its power.

It is not merely a matter of genius but also of happiness, because, as every creative person knows, there is no happiness greater than that of the mind at play. Aristotle famously conceived of God, the traditional fount of all reason, as a mind that turns blissfully upon itself. In contrast, people who are too frightened to put two and two together, or too dense to do so, use noise to help occupy and numb their minds.

What Science Says

Was Schopenhauer being fanciful in linking misophonia (the hatred of noise) with intellect and creativity? In recent years, researchers at Northwestern University have found that real-world creativity may be associated with a reduced ability to filter “irrelevant” sensory information. “Leaky” sensory gating may help our brains integrate ideas that are outside the focus of our attention and thereby promote associative and creative thinking. But if these extraneous ideas are, well, noise, it can also cripple us.

The genius mind is like a high-compression engine, which knocks if fuelled with lower octane gasoline, i.e. nonsense. Even if he might have overstated his case, Schopenhauer, it seems, was on to something.

Neel Burton is author of The German Greeks: German Philosophy and the German Philosophers.

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Schopenhauer on the psychology of nationalism.

Although he thought of existence as a sorry mistake, the philosopher of pessimism Arthur Schopenhauer retained a strong “Will to life”. One of his reasons for settling in Frankfurt was the reputation of that city’s doctors. 

In Frankfurt, he took many precautions, bordering on the paranoid, to preserve his life and comfortable lifestyle. For example, he kept loaded pistols at his bedside, carried a leathern flask to avoid drinking infected water, and forbade barbers from shaving his neck. To prevent robbers, servants, and others from reading them, he wrote his business records and personal thoughts in English, Latin, or Greek, or in a shorthand code.

In the final year of his life, he moved to a ground-floor apartment not because he could no longer manage the stairs but from fear of being caught in a house fire. “A man of genius” he wrote in typical style, “is like a person who lives in a house where there are no other people but only dogs and cats; he is the only one who has any intelligence, but he is constantly in danger of being bitten or scratched.”

The 1848 riots

In September 1848, there were violent riots in Frankfurt following the murder of two conservative politicians, a prince and a general.

Schopenhauer, who was then sixty years old, became worried about his property and safety. He welcomed the arrival of Austrian troops, and even allowed some twenty soldiers into his elegant apartment to shoot at revolutionaries from the window. In a parody of his social class, when the soldiers moved next door for a better vantage point, he lent one of the officers his large, double opera glasses.

Shaken by these events, he altered his will to leave the bulk of his estate to a fund for Prussian soldiers who had been maimed while quashing the 1848 revolutions—a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions across the German Confederation aimed at establishing a unified nation state, constitutional governance, and civil rights.

Schopenhauer on nationalism

Schopenhauer had no truck with either nationalism or rabble utopias. National pride, he held, is the cheapest form of pride, because it requires no individual effort or character. In Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), he wrote: “Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resort pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.” The Germans, he opined, benefited from having such long words in their mouths, because they “think slowly” and need “time to reflect”.

While the Young Hegelians (most famously, Karl Marx) were agitating for political and social reform, Schopenhauer claimed that misery is the natural, inevitable state for human beings, regardless of external conditions, and would not be alleviated by “progress.” He made a point of stepping outside the torrent of history and “minding not the times but the eternities”—and considered this ability to “rise into timelessness” to be the mark of a genius.

Whereas for Hegel, the state was the aim of human existence, for him it was simply its guarantor. The role of the state, in his Hobbesian view, was strictly to limit “the war of all against all” and afford him the conditions to philosophise and enjoy the arts without having to forsake his opera glasses. States with any higher ideals jeopardised their true goal of simple security.

How the Nazis interpreted Schopenhauer

The Nazis viewed Schopenhauer’s older contemporary G.W.F. Hegel with hostility. They abhorred his emphasis on reason: on history as the march of reason and the state as a body of rational laws and institutions. In 1933, Carl Schmitt, the “Crown Jurist” of the Third Reich, famously declared that “on the day Hitler came to power, Hegel died.”

In his Table Talk, Hitler, who did not have much philosophy, dismissed Hegel’s “tedious” and “Jewish” rationalism in favour of the “irrationalism” of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche—even though Schopenhauer and Nietzsche both strongly rejected nationalism. Nietzsche looked upon nationalism and democracy as the successors of the slave morality of Christianity. Instead, he championed the ideal of the “good European.” In 1886, he wrote to his mother, “Even if I should be a bad German, I am at all events a very good European.”

Hitler and the Nazis praised Schopenhauer’s ideas on the “will to life,” which, with Nietzsche, became the “will to power.” They glorified this “irrational will” over reason to support their “social Darwinism,” according to which brute force and action are superior to intellectualism, justice, and the rule of law.