In the middle of our life’s walk, I found myself alone in a dark forest… —Dante Alighieri
Like heart disease or diabetes, depression can be highly debilitating, even fatal. But unlike heart disease or diabetes, depression is poorly understood and heavily stigmatised. People with depression are often seen as ‘failures’ or ‘losers’, too weak or lazy to pick themselves up or pull themselves together.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. If you feel the way you do, it is most likely because you tried too hard or took on too much—so hard and so much that you made yourself ill with depression. In other words, if you feel the way you do, it is because your world was simply not good enough for you. You wanted more, you wanted better, and you wanted different, not just for yourself but for all those around you.
So if you’re a ‘failure’ or a ‘loser’, that’s only because you set the bar far too high. You could have swept everything under the carpet and pretended, as many people do, that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Instead, you had the honesty and the courage to recognize that something was amiss, that something was not quite right.
Rather than being a failure or a loser, you are all the opposite: you are ambitious, you are truthful, and you are courageous. And that’s precisely why you got ‘ill’.
Depression as a Signal
But here’s the good news. Unlike heart disease or diabetes, depression can also have a silver lining.
Crushing though it may be, depression can present a precious opportunity to identify, acknowledge, and address deep-seated problems.
Just as physical pain evolved to signal injury and prevent further injury, so depression may have evolved to remove us from distressing, damaging, or futile situations—situations that do not serve us well as human beings.
The time and space and solitude afforded by depression can enable us to reassess our needs, reframe our perspectives, and round up the resolve to break with established patterns.
In other words, depression, or the depressive position, may have evolved as a signal that something is seriously wrong and needs working through and changing—or, at the very least, processing and understanding.
In the normal run of things, we become so immersed in our day-to-day that we no longer have the opportunity or perspective to think and feel about ourselves. The adoption of the depressive position invites—or compels—us to shed our defences, stand back at a distance, reassess our needs and priorities, and formulate a modest but realistic plan for fulfilling them.
At a deeper level, the depressive position can enable us to develop a clearer understanding and appreciation of ourselves, our lives, and life in general. From an existential standpoint, it obliges us to become aware of our mortality and freedom, and challenges us to exercise the latter within the framework of the former. By meeting this ultimate challenge, we are able to break out of the mould that has been imposed upon us, discover who we truly are, and begin to give deep meaning to our lives.
The Gift of the Dark Wood
It can be no coincidence that so many of history’s most creative and insightful people suffered from depression, or from a state that might today be diagnosed as depression. They include Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Leo Tolstoy, and many others.
To quote Marcel Proust, who himself suffered from depression, ‘Happiness is good for the body, but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind.’
The concept of depression as a mental disorder may be helpful for the more severe and intractable cases treated by hospital psychiatrists, but probably not for the majority of cases, which, for the most part, are mild and short-lived and more readily understood in terms of life circumstances, human nature, or the human condition.
Thinking of our distress or protest or withdrawal in terms of a mental disorder or chemical imbalance in the brain can be counterproductive, insofar as it can prevent us from identifying and addressing the important life problems or psychological issues that lie at the root of our distress, and that are, almost literally, crying out for our care and attention.
Maybe all this is more common sense than philosophy, but I do think it merits saying.
In the middle of our life’s walk I found myself alone in a dark forest Where my path was confused.
Ah how hard it is to retell How dense, dark, and dangerous The thought of it alone fills me with fear!
So bitter that death is scarcely worse; But to speak of the good I found there, I shall tell of the other things that I saw.
—Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno
Continue Exploring
If this article spoke to you, you might look into The Meaning of Madness, my award-winning exploration of what mental disorders can teach us about human nature and the human condition.
If you are struggling with depression, you can also download my practical self-help guide Growing from Depression free of charge.
The Deepest Cure for Fear and Anxiety—No Prescription Required
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs culminates in self-actualization. But the journey does not end there.
In his influential paper of 1943, A Theory of Human Motivation, the psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that healthy human beings have a certain number of needs, and that these needs can be arranged in a hierarchy, with some needs (such as physiological and safety needs) being more primitive or basic than others (such as social and ego needs).
Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ is often represented as a five-level pyramid (Figure 1), with higher needs coming into focus only once lower, more basic ones have been met. Maslow called the bottom four levels ‘deficiency needs’ because we do not feel anything if they are met but become anxious or distressed if they are not. Thus, physiological needs such as eating, drinking, and sleeping are deficiency needs, as are safety needs, social needs such as friendship and intimacy, and ego needs such as self-esteem, status, and recognition.
In contrast, he called the fifth and highest level of the pyramid a ‘growth need’ insofar as the drive to self-actualize requires that we move beyond the pursuit of comfort and security to fulfil our deepest potential as human beings.
Once we have met our deficiency needs, the focus of our anxiety shifts to self-actualization, and we begin, even if only dimly, to contemplate our bigger picture. However, only a minority of people ever truly self-actualize, because self-actualization requires unusual qualities such as independence, awareness, creativity, originality, and, above all, courage. Many people who have satisfied all their deficiency needs remain unable to self-actualize, instead inventing more deficiency needs for themselves, because to contemplate the meaning of life would lead them to entertain the possibility of its meaninglessness and the prospect of their own death and annihilation.
Existential Anxiety
A person who begins to contemplate their bigger picture may come to fear that life is meaningless and death inescapable, while at the same time clinging to the comforting belief that they are somehow immortal, important, or at least significant. This inner conflict gives rise to existential anxiety. Whereas fear and anxiety and their pathological forms (such as phobias or panic disorder) are grounded in threats to life, existential anxiety is rooted in the brevity and apparent insignificance, or absurdity, of life.
Existential anxiety is so disturbing that most people avoid it at all costs, instead constructing a false reality out of goals, ambitions, routines, relationships, customs, values, culture, and religion in a bid to deceive themselves that their lives are meaningful and that death is distant or delusory.
Unfortunately, such self-deception comes at a heavy price. According to the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, those who refuse to face up to ‘non-being’ are acting in ‘bad faith’ and living out a life that is inauthentic and unfulfilling. Facing up to non-being can bring insecurity, loneliness, responsibility, and, with them, anxiety, but, beyond that, it can also bring a profound sense of calm, freedom, even nobility. Far from being pathological, existential anxiety is a necessary transitional phase—a sign of health, strength, and courage, and a harbinger of greater things to come.
The Courage to Be
The theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich took this idea a step further. In The Courage to Be, he argued that refusing to confront non-being leads not only to inauthenticity, as Sartre had argued, but also to pathological—or neurotic—anxiety.
He wrote:
He who does not succeed in taking his anxiety courageously upon himself can succeed in avoiding the extreme situation of despair by escaping into neurosis. He still affirms himself but on a limited scale. Neurosis is the way of avoiding nonbeing by avoiding being.
According to this striking outlook, pathological anxiety, although seemingly grounded in threats to life, in fact arises from repressed existential anxiety, which itself arises from our uniquely human capacity for self-consciousness.
Squaring up to non-being enables us to put our life into perspective, see it in its entirety, and thereby lend it a sense of direction and unity. If the ultimate source of anxiety is fear of the future, the future ends in death; and if the ultimate source of anxiety is uncertainty, death is the only certainty. It is only by facing up to death, accepting its inevitability, and integrating it into a life that we can escape from the pettiness and paralysis of anxiety, and, in so doing, free ourselves to make—and get—the most out of our lives.
This, I believe, is the philosophical cure for fear and anxiety.
Some philosophers have gone further still in asserting that the very purpose of life is none other than to prepare for death. In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates, who is about to face the executioner, tells his friends that absolute justice, beauty, and goodness cannot be apprehended by the senses, but only by pure thought, that is, by the mind or soul. Thus, the philosopher seeks as far as possible to separate soul from body. As death is the complete separation of soul and body, the philosopher aims at death—and can be said to be almost dead.
Only a true philosopher who no longer fears death truly possesses courage and the other virtues. Those who remain in fear of death can only have, at best, the appearance of virtue; but behind the facade, they are forever trading one fear against another.
If you’re struggling with depression, or know someone who is, I’d like you to have this book—free of charge.
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.
Drawing on psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, and literature, Dr Neel Burton explores depression not only as an illness to be treated, but also as an opportunity for insight, growth, and transformation.
🏆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
Neel is an incredibly insightful and elegant writer, with a deep knowledge of all he surveys.—Dr James Davies, psychotherapist, author of Cracked
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
Sisyphus, by Titian. The ancient image of a meaningless life—and, perhaps, of a meaningful one.
The question of the meaning of life is perhaps one that we would rather not ask, for fear of the answer or lack thereof.
Still today, many people believe that humankind is the creation of a supernatural entity named God, that God had an intelligent purpose in creating us, and that this intelligent purpose is ‘the meaning of life’.
I do not propose to rehearse the well-worn arguments for and against the existence of God, and still less to take a side. But even if God exists, and even if He had an intelligent purpose in creating us, no one really knows what this purpose might be, or whether it is especially meaningful.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system—including the universe itself—increases up to the point at which equilibrium is reached, and God’s purpose in creating us, and indeed all of nature, might have been no loftier than to catalyse this process much as soil organisms catalyse the decomposition of organic matter. In a word, we may be no more than complex fungi or enzymes.
If our God-given purpose is to act as super-efficient heat dissipators, then having no purpose at all is better than having this sort of purpose—because it frees us to be the authors of our purpose or purposes and so to lead truly dignified and meaningful lives.
In fact, following this logic, having no purpose at all is better than having any kind of pre-determined purpose, even more traditional, uplifting ones such as serving God or improving our karma.
In short, even if God exists, and even if He had an intelligent purpose in creating us (and why should He have had?), we do not know what this purpose might be, and, whatever it might be, we would rather be able to do without it—or at least to ignore or discount it.
For unless we can be free to become the authors of our own purpose or purposes, our lives may have, at worst, no purpose at all, and, at best, only some unfathomable and potentially trivial purpose that is not of our own choosing.
Can We Really Create Our Own Purpose?
You might object that not to have a pre-determined purpose is, really, not to have any purpose at all.
But this is to assume that for something to have a purpose, it must have been created with that particular purpose in mind, and, moreover, must still be serving that same original purpose.
Many things acquire purposes that were never intended for them.
Many Junes ago, I visited the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the South of France. One evening, I picked up a rounded stone called a galet which I took back to Oxford and put to good use as a bookend.
In the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, these stones serve to capture the heat of the sun and release it back into the cool of the night, helping the grapes to ripen. Of course, these stones were not created with this or any other purpose in mind. Even if they had been created for a purpose, it would almost certainly not have been to make great wine or serve as bookends.
That same evening over a rabbit stew, I invited my friends to blind taste a bottle of Bordeaux—an evil trick, given that we were in the Southern Rhône. To disguise the bottle, I slipped it into one of a pair of socks.
Unlike the galet, the sock had been created with a definite purpose in mind, albeit one very different from (although not strictly incompatible with) the one that it came to assume on that idyllic evening.
The point I’m driving at is that purpose need not be fixed at the moment of creation: it can also emerge afterwards.
What If the Meaning of Life Lies Beyond This Life?
But this raises a related question. Can meaning come from us at all? Or must it come from somewhere beyond us—whether from the intention of a creator or from a life beyond this one?
Many would argue that the meaning of life lies beyond this life, which is merely a prelude to some eternal afterlife.
However, I can marshal at least four arguments against this position:
It is not at all clear that there is, or even can be, some form of eternal afterlife that entails the survival of the personal ego.
Even if there were such an afterlife, living forever is not in itself a purpose. The concept of the afterlife merely displaces the problem to one remove, begging the question: what then is the purpose of the afterlife?
Reliance on an eternal afterlife not only postpones the question of life’s purpose but also dissuades or at least discourages us from determining a purpose or purposes for what may be the only life that we do have.
If it is the brevity or finiteness of human life that gives it shape and purpose (an argument associated with the philosopher Bernard Williams), then an eternal afterlife cannot, in and of itself, have any purpose.
So, whether or not God exists, whether or not He gave us a purpose, and whether or not there is an eternal afterlife, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.
Existence Before Essence
To translate this into Sartrean (or existentialist) terms, whereas for the galet it is true only that existence precedes essence, for the sock it is true both that essence precedes existence (when the sock is used on a human foot) and that existence precedes essence (when the sock is used for an unintended purpose, for example, as a bottle sleeve).
We human beings are either like the rock or the sock, but whichever we are like, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.
In fact, let me correct myself. We human beings are neither like the rock nor the sock—because capable of discovering and creating meanings.
This echoes Kant’s insistence that human beings are not merely means to some external end, but self-determining ends in themselves. It is this capacity for autonomy—for rationally determining our own ends—that gives us our special dignity.
Human life may not have been created with any pre-determined purpose, but this need not mean that it cannot have a purpose, or that this purpose cannot be just as good as, if not much better than, any pre-determined one.
And so the meaning of life, of our life, is that which we choose to give it.
But how to choose?
Camus and Nietzsche
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus compares the human condition to the plight of Sisyphus, the mythical king of Ephyra who was punished for daring to defy the gods by being made to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll back down again.
Yet Camus reaches one of the most startling conclusions in all philosophy: ‘The struggle to the top is itself enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’
Even in a state of utter hopelessness, Sisyphus can still be happy. Indeed, he is happy precisely because he is in a state of utter hopelessness, because in recognising and accepting the hopelessness of his condition, and embracing it, he at the same time transcends it.
The tragedy of Sisyphus became the very source of his freedom. The universe may not provide us with a ready-made meaning, but this need not prevent us from creating one, and living with dignity, courage, and even joy.
Nietzsche, too, challenged us to embrace our fate, even to love it. In Ecce Homo, he wrote, ‘My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati [love of fate]: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it … but love it.’
How to Find Meaning
In Man’s Search for Meaning, the psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl (d. 1997) wrote about his experiences during the Second World War.
Tellingly, Frankl found that those who survived longest in the concentration camp were not those who were physically strong, but those who retained a sense of inner freedom and purpose.
He observed:
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.
Frankl’s message is ultimately one of hope: even in the most absurd, painful, and dispiriting of circumstances, life can still be given a meaning, and so too can suffering.
Life in the concentration camp taught Frankl that our deepest drive is neither pleasure, as Freud had argued, nor power, as Adler had maintained, but meaning.
After his release, Frankl founded the school of logotherapy (from the Greek logos, meaning ‘reason’ or ‘principle’), which is sometimes referred to as the ‘Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy’ for coming after those of Freud and Adler. The aim of logotherapy is to carry out an existential analysis of the person, and, in so doing, to help them uncover or discover meaning for their life.
According to Frankl, meaning can be found through:
Experiencing reality by interacting authentically with the environment and with others.
Giving something back to the world through creativity and self-expression, and,
Changing our attitude when faced with a situation or circumstance that we cannot change.
‘The point,’ said Frankl, ‘’is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.’
The Final Freedom
Whether or not God exists, whether or not He created us for a purpose, and whether or not there is an afterlife, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.
We began with a fear: that if life has no pre-determined purpose, it must be meaningless. But it now seems, the opposite is true. A purpose imposed upon us from outside may give us a goal, but not necessarily meaning—for meaning requires that we recognise and embrace it as our own.
The meaning of life is not hidden in the stars, waiting to be discovered like buried treasure. Nor is it handed to us at birth. Instead, it emerges from our attitudes and choices.
Thus, it is more of an activity than a state—something that we create, discover, and renew throughout our lives.
Three ancient mind exercises for processing and subliming bad news.
Imagine: Your house has been burgled. You’ve been fired. Your partner cheated or walked out on you. You’ve been diagnosed with a life-changing condition…
Bad news can leave us in a state of dread and despair. It seems like our whole world is falling apart, almost as if we’re being driven into the ground. We fear the very worst and cannot get it out of our mind, or gut. Often, there are other emotions mangled in, like anger, guilt, despair, betrayal, and love.
Bad news: we’ve all had it, and the worst is yet to come.
So, how best to cope?
I’m going to give you three cognitive strategies, or mind exercises, that I picked up from the Stoic philosophers—who, in the second century, could count the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, among their followers.
All three strategies aim, in one way or another, at generating perspective. While reading, hold a recent piece of bad news in the front of your mind, and consider how the strategies might or might not apply to your bad news.
Contextualization
Try to frame the bad news, to put it into its proper context. Think about all the good things in your life, including those that have been and those that are yet to come. Remind yourself of all the strengths and resources—the friends, facilities, and faculties—that you can draw upon in your time of need. Imagine how things could be much, much worse—and how for some people they actually are. Your house may have been burgled. Yes, you lost some valuables and it’s all such a huge hassle. But you still have your health, your job, your partner… Bad things are bound to hit us now and then, and it can only be a matter of time before they hit us again. In many cases, they are just the flip side of the good things that we enjoy. You got burgled, because you had a house and valuables. You lost a great relationship, because you had one in the first place. In that much, many a bad thing is no more than the removal or reversal of a good one.
Negative visualization
Now focus on the bad news itself. What’s the worst that could happen, and is that really all that bad? Now that you’ve got the worst out of the way, what’s the best possible outcome? And what’s the most likely outcome? Imagine that someone is threatening to sue you. The worst possible outcome is that you lose the case and suffer all the entailing cost, stress, and emotional and reputational hurt. Though it’s unlikely, you might even do time in prison (it has happened to some, and a few, like Bertrand Russell, did rather well out of it). But the most likely outcome is that you reach some sort of out-of-court settlement. And the best possible outcome is that you win the case, or better still, it gets dropped.
Transformation
Finally, try to transform your bad news into something positive, or into something that has positive aspects. Your bad news may represent a learning or strengthening experience, or act as a wake-up call, or force you to reassess your priorities. At the very least, it offers a window into the human condition and an opportunity to exercise dignity and self-control. Maybe you lost your job: time for a holiday and a promotion, or a career change, or the freedom and fulfilment of self-employment. Maybe your partner cheated on you. Even so, you feel sure that he or she still loves you, that there is still something there. Perhaps you can even bring yourself to look at it from his or her perspective. Yes, of course it’s painful, but it may also be an opportunity to forgive, to build a closer intimacy, to re-launch your relationship—or to go out and find a more fulfilling one. You’ve been diagnosed with a serious medical condition. Though it’s terrible news, it’s also the chance to get the support and treatment that you need, to take control, to fight back, to look at life and your relationships from another, richer perspective.
A Taoist story for the road
There’s a Taoist story about an old farmer whose only horse ran away. “Such terrible news!” said a neighbour. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” replied the farmer. The next day, the horse returned with six wild horses. “Such wonderful news!” exclaimed the neighbour. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” replied the farmer. The day after that, the farmer’s son tried to tame one of the wild horses but got thrown off and broke a leg. “Such terrible news!” cried the neighbour. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” replied the farmer, biting into a peach. A week later, war broke out: thanks to his broken leg, the farmer’s son managed to escape military conscription. “It all worked out really well in the end,” said the neighbour, “such great luck!”
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” replied the farmer, rolling his eyes.
Neel Burton is author of Growing from Depression, which is currently free to download from his website bookstore.
You must be logged in to post a comment.