clink….
Question:
I’ve responded to this a couple times now. I can’t remember if I actually posted any of the replies, but I doubt it…memory’s untrustworthy. So here goes, maybe again.
snips here and there… Depression is defined by those who have never experienced it! Actually, our predicament with depression is closer to the situation that gays were in only a few decades ago, as homosexuality was, until recently, also considered a pathological condition. Isn’t it astounding that it was only in 1976 that homosexuality was finally removed from the same DSM-# – the same book that depressives accept and legitimize as authoritaive text which defines *our* ’selfs’.
I think, even beyond pathologizing, we share a great deal with the gay problem. Both are invisible classes, coming to light only when acted out in certain structured ways. Both offer unsatisfying but easy-to-fall-into lifestyles based on those outside definitions. Thanks to tricyclics, both can give you bad breath. Now that homosexuality has been loosened to some degree from the straightjacket of psychology/medicine, it might be illuminating to do a comparative study of it with depression. Both seem to have biological influence. Both significantly affect the definition of self. Both are/or have been *defined* within a psychological/medical discourse as pathological conditions.
And, as well, with the resurgence of …what’s it, reparative? Some R-word, therapies, to treat homosexuality without ever pointing out what specifically is the harm it causes, a comparison could enlighten us on, once we figure out the nonpathological parts of depressive self-definition, what we’ll face next. Of course, there’s at least one huge divergence between them, that makes understanding depression from your view a little hard–homosexuality, while defined as a medical problem, has been more often a *moral* problem; meanwhile, it’s reversed for depression, where the stigma isn’t so much on what we do being evil, but what we are being frighteningly unhealthy. In a sense, that makes it more difficult for us–morals change with time, while our ideas of health seem to have grown more and more strict over time. Heh…I’m not saying half of what I want to, here. I should go to bed and try again, except I’ve been doing that for days. *That’s* why no one is taking it on as a serious discipline? Those with something at stake are too depressed!!
There’s got to be a way to get through (he tells himself), though. Women and homosexuals had an awful lot invested in the appearance of mental deficiency–women weren’t to look smarter than their husbands, gays were supposed to be too flighty for such pursuits…. And yet, each class has a huge body of literature by now, attempting to reach the point where defensive self-definition is no longer required. There’s gotta be *someone* among us willing to take the first steps in building our own critical literature. As long as it’s not me. Oh! I see. (I was thinking of it like – why does a contextualist thinker tend to be a depressive.) I was *sure* I was going to find depression interpreted from a culture-crit point of view in John Bentley Mays’ memoir of depression, since he is an art critic. It was very disappointing to discover the same old point of view taken from interpersonal psychology. We’ve got the tools – why won’t anyone *use* them!
Please. No one wants to hear it, that’s why. The few papers I’ve done that dared deal with it were received with warm, sympathetic looks. Not a good, critical read, but that same damned pity. Look what the trained puppy can do. I will say though, that what I have found of value from having an affective disorder has to do with the *fluidity* of states – moving from one affective extreme to another, like from mania to depression very quickly. One is confronted with the dilemma of deciding which of the two contradictory versions of the same situation, which perception of the world is correct. One is tempted to suggest that the view from a *normal*, moderate, point of view is correct and the other two are distortions. But it’s not that simple. They are all equally distorted versions of the world.
In the same way, I have trouble resolving my own view of the world, marked by danger, fear, and death–and backed up, apparently, by facts–and the view that I’m supposed to be aiming for, in which all that is ignored and life is enjoyed, risks and all. I mean, is there supposed to be some synthesis there? Are we back to psychomimetics? What’s that?
Drugs that mirror psychological states, psychoses and whatnot. Heh…why do I try to write this sorta stuff when I’m tired? Ah, well. cp — ** Baywatch Barbie and her pet dolphin do not move by themselves ** * yet MORE new pages! http://www.mindspring.com/~capadgett * **** Art Used For Illustration Purposes Only ****
Response:
It *is* kind of strange, ain’t it? I mean, I think of all the students I know working with feminism, queerism, postpostmodernism, all these great studies, and nearly *all* of them can relate to some degree with mental problems. So why isn’t anyone taking this on as a serious discipline?
I dunno. I suppose because the context for interpreting it as such has yet to be invented. A few folks have, but it’s been too, too limited, and sorta derogatory. The people who’ve done work on, say, some of the modernist writers (HD’s experience with Freud, for example), all seem to portray mental illness in those same terms as always, either illness or tongue of God–and there’s a depressing amount of psychology-bashing involved. But it sounds like you already know this. 
Perhaps, I do. Vaguely. I find it quite bizzare that depression is *defined* by people who have never experienced it! We are in the same situation that women were in before feminism – to be a woman meant whatever *men* said it meant, ie. to be inferior. I think *that’s* what is essential to the problem – we are defined by *others* as inferior, according to a bunch of self serving stereotypes. It is *not* however, that we are intentionally being undermined at every turn; it is purely the product of ignorance. Depression is defined by those who have never experienced it! Actually, our predicament with depression is closer to the situation that gays were in only a few decades ago, as homosexuality was, until recently, also considered a pathological condition. Isn’t it astounding that it was only in 1976 that homosexuality was finally removed from the same DSM-# – the same book that depressives accept and legitimize as authoritaive text which defines *our* ’selfs’. From a contemporary point of view (post 1950’s), the way in which homosexuality was *defined* by the heterosexist medical/psychological establishment is almost beyond comprehension – as is evident in the types of treatment offered. For example, homosexuality was believed to be a problem of sex: homosexuals were imagined to be not *male* enough. Thus, one treatment involved pumping them full of testosterone. To the great surprize of the doctors administering this ‘treatment’ however, it did not have any impact at all on the men’s object of desire. Rather than suddenly becoming sexually attracted to women, and thus reverting to a "natural" heterosexuality, the men typically became very hairy and horny homosexuals! ; ) Now that homosexuality has been loosened to some degree from the straightjacket of psychology/medicine, it might be illuminating to do a comparative study of it with depression. Both seem to have biological influence. Both significantly affect the definition of self. Both are/or have been *defined* within a psychological/medical discourse as pathological conditions. In the end it’s very simple. The way depression is defined and described has very little to do with my experience of it. Most of it is laughably absurd. The worst part of it however, is that it is self perpetuating. We suffer as much from these *definitions* as we do from the *actual* depression – if not more. Write a book or something, will you Charles. ; ) Yeah, yeah, rub my nose in it. I’ve been trying to do a book on the intersections of sexuality, anxiety, and some sort of platonic shadow-world of memory. But I’ve been too down to make much progress.
Yah, well, you *know* I was trying to be encouraging. I’ve been working on a thorough deconstruction of depression. I’ve got hundreds of pages of notes and things, but I’ve been too depressed to get it together properly too. : ) *That’s* why no one is taking it on as a serious discipline? Those with something at stake are too depressed!! "Don’t worry about the depressives. You can push them around all you like. They don’t have the energy to fight back and they’re all isolated from each other." Obviously gays and women meet each other. But really, until the internet, how many depressives really got together? Makes you think, don’t it! Part of the reason I’ve been drawn back to writing about the politics of madness is that I’ve started realizing that, many times the worldview and the disposition *don’t* come together. That is to say, for some reason people aren’t abstracting enough–they’ll embrace the emotion of emptiness and sorrow, without extending it to a production of knowledge and power. But I know what you mean–there’s *something* there that needs to be looked at.
Oh! I see. (I was thinking of it like – why does a contextualist thinker tend to be a depressive.) I was *sure* I was going to find depression interpreted from a culture-crit point of view in John Bentley Mays’ memoir of depression, since he is an art critic. It was very disappointing to discover the same old point of view taken from interpersonal psychology. We’ve got the tools – why won’t anyone *use* them! Ecce synchronicity. I’ve been reading a few things about the big LSD craze in the mid-sixties, that Tom Wolfe book, for example, and keep thinking about the experiences people describe. As I mentioned in another post, I’ve always been plagued by my senses, an overflow of data that makes my ego- and body-boundaries seem very fluid and unreal. And I keep seeing connections–the way someone’s talked through a really scary trip, the way some have talked me through my bouts of hypervigilance. And that leads me to ask, again, like I always do–what *is* the cultural context in which our disorders would be useful? Who’s experimenting with this? Where are the underground communities seeking to validate the experience?
uh… I think we are. (yikes!) I can imagine affective extremes like depression emptied of content, as if it were a purely physical/perceptual experience. Care to share? I have a hard time imagining it. You mention generation of meaning, below, and one of the few views I have of a non-painful depressive experience involves an opening, a realization of futility, a sort of innocent love of pointlessness that strikes me as different than, say, that existentialist idea of absurdity. Some way to cast off life without being jaded. But not quite one of those "life is suffering" philosophies, either. As I say, I have trouble imagining it.
I really can’t imagine anything concrete, actually. I don’t know how to describe something like that. *However* I may be able to describe something which draws a number of the things we have been talking about together. <three hours later I can’t reconstruct anything sensible from memory in the available space. I’ll post something about states of affect when I get home. My computer (writing) is in the uk. I will say though, that what I have found of value from having an affective disorder has to do with the *fluidity* of states – moving from one affective extreme to another, like from mania to depression very quickly. One is confronted with the dilemma of deciding which of the two contradictory versions of the same situation, which perception of the world is correct. One is tempted to suggest that the view from a *normal*, moderate, point of view is correct and the other two are distortions. But it’s not that simple. They are all equally distorted versions of the world. Are we back to psychomimetics?
What’s that? What good can come from depression? For me, suddenly an abstract philosophical critique of a extremely reductive and absolutist worldview is provable by experience. This was supposed to be impossible. And suddenly, there is an infinite capacity for meaning in the world. We are only limited by our imaginations. Discovering *that* was a bit of a shock. This would not have been possible were it not for this affective disorder. When you say critique, do you mean from a positive or negative slant? I find myself always heading for a very deterministic, behaviorist view, and the way the drugs change me push me further in that direction. As for the capacity for meaning, I agree entirely. With no-one descending from heaven to tell us what’s what, it leaves this incredibly rich, complex body of tiny phenomena to put together….
When I say critique, I mean taking the piss out of a determinist, behaviorist, positivist, absolutist point of view. I am a very resolute contextualist. ‘Things can be said to be true within particular contexts, but not universally true.’ I think of contextualism being a kind of umbrella for the traditions of phenomenology, poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, Neitzche, Foucault, Surrealism, etc. I think if you push western philosophy hard enough, you end up with resembling Zen. To make it simple and less pretentious – if you studied culture-crit, women’s and queer studies, then we probably have the same POV. I studied the same stuff. I would call all that stuff contextualist. On the downside of course, it is horrible and depressing to realize and accept that this potential will never be acknowledged, and will be wasted; we have limited imaginations; the culture we live in is literally psychotic. Any culture is going to have a prevailing mental disorder. I don’t think there’s any other way to go about it–as soon as you have a group of people with a similar outlook, their children are going to go through different experiences, and the traditions they’ve been taught are going to begin that schizoid separation from observed reality. Is it possible to have a culture specifically designed to encourage change?
Kool idea. It’s very utopian of me, but I *do* think one can have that kind of culture. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Then again, sometimes I can let that slide and it’s just very amusing. Then it becomes one more excuse to stay in bed with my depresso lover! lol…and where do you find these? cp
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