Category: melancholy

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Aging Bob Dylan Forever Yonug melancholy Parental Wishes

On Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. 

Recently, upon turning 75, I was reflecting upon how my remaining days have become fewer and fewer. Accompanying these thoughts were some pretty bluesy feelings. Suddenly, the Spotify music streaming I was listening to, Bob Dylan’s “Planet Waves” album began to play, “Forever Young.” “Oh, to be young again,” I thought.

The first few lyrics of the song go:

    May God bless and keep you always
     May your wishes all come true
     May you always do for others
     And let others do for you
     May you build a ladder to the stars
     And climb on every rung
     May you stay forever young

The line, “May you always do for others…” hit me pretty hard. I always prided myself as carrying my own weight. When I retired as a psychologist, I decided to continue to make contributions to others by writing a blog, completely financially free, that seeks to offer help for people who want to improve how they get along with others and themselves. The first few years of this, I was writing a blog post every week. Now, I struggle to get one out monthly, my energy slipping. I moaned at the thought of this.

Feeling this way, I wondered if others felt the emotional impact of the song as I have. I notice that on Spotify, most of the songs on the album have one or two million plays. “Forever Young” in contrast,  has over 34 million. Impressive. I then went to Wikipedia to see if there is a writeup on the song, and indeed there is. I found that Bob had written the song as a lullaby for his eldest son, Jesse, who was a youngster at the time. I was a bit surprised by this, because my initial interpretation of the song was that Bob, himself, was expressing his own struggles with feelings of growing older.

With this insight, I decided to ask my son, Jack, who has a young daughter, what thoughts and emotions the song brings up for him. He replied:

“When I hear “Forever Young” while thinking about my 5-year old daughter, I think about the beautiful freedom and lightness in her laugh and her smile. She experiences so much genuine joy.  I know a big part of that is that the world she knows so far is one of safety and love. She hasn’t yet learned about war and violence and greed, and many of the really hard things people face in this world. So when I hear the refrain of “may you stay forever young” I think of a wish for her to have the resilience to keep her big heartedness and her playfulness and the wonderful twinkle in her eye even as she grows up and becomes more aware of all the heavy things in life. And I feel a commitment in myself to do all I can to be there for her and remind her that she is loved even as she faces the challenges of her life.”

Nice! I very much can respect those feelings. Somehow I’m having a harder time respecting some of mine about getting older. As I listen to the song’s final verse, it expresses hope that,

    May your hands always be busy
     May your feet always be swift
     May you have a strong foundation
     When the winds of changes shift
     May your heart always be joyful
     And may your song always be sung
     May you stay forever young
     Forever young, forever young
     May you stay forever young.

Here, again, I find there some words that have me struggling with my emotions. The lines about “May your feet always be swift”  hit me like a walloping club. In my youth, after work I would run two miles, sprinting the last quarter mile, which left me feeling so full of life. Now, I still manage to cover two miles, but it’s a walk, and the last quarter mile has me looking forward to finishing it up so I can lay down on my bed for a while until I can get enough energy to resume the rest of my day.

Oh, the winds of change have come upon me, and my heart has not always remained joyful. Though there are periods of joy–a beautiful day with family and friends, the delight of spending time with my lovely granddaughter, the recognition of the fantastic loving relationship I have with my wife–I am still seeking to adjust to this change. I’ve felt for a long time that we can learn to respect ourselves despite not always being joyful. I’m thinking melancholy in life can be useful in some ways, deepening one’s perspectives. Although this is my accepted understanding in most of life’s challenges, with this new experience related to getting older, my recent limitations are still hard on me. If you are having similar experiences, perhaps you will find some comfort knowing you are not alone.

My Best,
Jeff

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Depression melancholy The Kinks

The Kinks’ “Misfits” As Melancholy

Welcome to From Insults to Respect.

My previous post utilizes the Kinks song “Low Budget” to sympathetically discuss how our money woes can take a bite out of our feelings of respect for ourselves and others, while suggesting some helpful approaches to deal effectively with such challenges. The positive feedback that I received led me to see if I might utilize another Kinks song, partly just for the fun of it, but also as a way to explore some issues relevant to respect.

On this blog, I have on several occasions (see HERE and HERE) made the case for the value of transforming periods of depression into the more helpful experience of melancholy. It just so happens that the Kinks song, “Misfits,” offers us a wonderful opportunity to further enhance this pregnant idea.

After the first introduction verse, Ray Davies sings,

You say your summer has gone
Now the Winter is crawlin’ in
They say that even in your day
Somehow you never could quite fit in
Though it’s cold outside
I know the Summer’s gonna come again
Because you know what they say
Every dog has his day

These words suggest Ray is singing about you, the listener, but as I interpret it, he’s also singing about his own feelings. He’s feeling emotionally chilly with the way things are going for him. He has a desire to comfortably fit in socially, but he’s not there. You, the listener, might feel this way from time to time as well. Within this emotional state, Ray seems to be seeking to turn his attention to a more hopeful future, with the return of a warmer weather, happier period.

The chorus then goes on to say,

You’re a misfit, afraid of yourself, so you run away and hide
You’ve been a misfit all your life
Why don’t you join the crowd
And come inside
You wander round this town like you’ve lost your way
You had your chance in your day
Yet you threw it all away
But you know what they say
Every dog has his day

Here, Ray sees his difficulty is made worse by running away and hiding from it. He’s also bemoaning that there were actions he could have taken back in his day but failed to do so. Still, he seeks to bolster his spirits with the hope his day will come.

The song’s bridge tells us to,

Look at all the losers and the mad eyed gazers
Look at all the looneys and the sad eyed failures
They’re giving up living ‘cos they just don’t care
So take a good look around
The misfits are everywhere
La la la la la la

We see here Ray throwing the typical insults at those with the shortcomings and feelings he and the others are singing about. At the same time, he recognizes they are not alone; there are folks all around us having similar feelings, and they are giving up living. This giving up doesn’t sit well with Ray, so he launches into the next verse that seeks to lift our spirits:

This is your chance, this is your time
So don’t throw it away
You can have your day
‘Cause it’s true what they say
Every dog has his day

In the song, we see Ray using two approaches to deal with how he is feeling–insulting himself, and trying to lift his spirits with hopeful, positive words. On this blog, when people are singing the blues and insulting themselves, we say they are experiencing depression. One type of approach to kick yourself out of depression is to focus on some positives, such as the fact that you have company with what you are going through and keeping hope alive for a more positive day. But there is a dramatically different alternative for dealing with the blues than these two, an approach I refer to as melancholy.

Consider how musician and song writer Joni Mitchell described melancholy in her beautiful song, “Hijira.”

There is comfort in melancholy where there is no need to explain, it’s just as natural as the weather in this moody sky today.

She sees melancholy as a comfortable state and natural.

At another point, Joni tells us such experience “can be the sand that makes the pearl…. Most of my best work came out of it. If you get rid of the demons and the disturbing things, then the angels fly off, too. There is the possibility, in the mire, of an epiphany.”

In a New York Times article titled “The Case for Melancholy” we learn from American writer Laren Stover about her own personal experiences. After telling us of her weariness of all those folks on the internet promising to show us how to be delightfully happy in just a few short steps, she writes:

sadness 3“Whatever happened to experiencing the grace of melancholy, which requires reflection: a sort of mental steeping, like tea? What if all this cheerful advice only makes you feel inadequate? What if you were born morose?”

Laren continues to weave her creative images of melancholy with such words as:

sadness 2“Sadness has a bad reputation. But I soon came to feel that melancholy — the word itself is late Latin from the Greek melancholia — is a word with a romantic Old World ring, with a transient beauty like the ring around the moon.”

Here’s how the great psychologist, William James, viewed the subject at hand. He wrote that many so called “healthy-minded” individuals believe that those who worry are “morbid-minded” and “diseased,” but it may very well be true that “the world’s meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart.” He, himself, learned to appreciate these visits of melancholy as something of extraordinary value, and stated that,

…there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Although the pharmaceutical industry has spent millions seeking to convince us that these types of experiences are pathological, a sickness, requiring drug “treatment,” Jon Kabat-Zinn, an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, tells us,

If we listen carefully to the body, it can teach us a great deal about what is most difficult for us to recognize and come to terms with from the past, and how we might approach our hurt with kindness and wisdom.

We can learn to respect and honor melancholy. Yes, as we do so, from old habits curses along with efforts seeking to bolster these bluesy experiences may arise. We can come to recognize them as old habits while not absolutely accepting their validity. During all of this we can learn to become friends with the underlying experience, patiently, empathically, being with them, spending time with this natural, healthy way to process life’s challenges.

Well, them are my thoughts for this week. Love to all the Kinks fans out there.

My Best,
Jeff

——————————-

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on.  This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence.  To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

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Depression melancholy The Beatles The song "Rain"

The Beatles’s Song “Rain” as Melancholy Metaphor

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. 

In today’s world, if you are experiencing melancholy or depression, the pharmaceutical industry very much wants to sell you on the idea that you have an abnormal condition that is deemed an illness. You would think with the popularity of the blues type of music, periods of bluesy feelings would be viewed as normal as trees in a forest; nevertheless, the pharmaceutical industry has successfully sold prescribing physicians it requires drug treatments.

These drugs have a number of side-effects, and for those who come to decide the drugs are either not working for them, or the side-effects are intolerable, many find that upon trying to stop taking them the withdrawal reactions are awful. And yet, these drug treatments are appealing to many people because of the ease of popping a pill, and health insurance either completely covers the cost, or reduces the cost to such an extent that they are very affordable. Moreover, it is a medical doctor who is prescribing these pills, and since doctors have such extensive training they are viewed as the experts, and people succumb to their advice without much thoughtful consideration.

With this in mind, in my view, if you can find a way to avoid the drugs and learn to make friends with these base notes of experiences, you potentially will be healthier in the long run. In several of my earlier posts (for examples see HERE and HERE), I provide numerous examples of people who found various experiences typically labeled as depression and melancholy as helpful. For example, Joshua Wolf Shenk in his biography of Abraham Lincoln, makes the case that his depression fueled his greatness. Similarly, the music legend, Joni Mitchell, upon discussing her frequent bouts of depression observed,

“Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best work came out of it. If you get rid of the demons and the disturbing things, then the angels fly off, too. There is the possibility, in that mire, of an epiphany.”

We learn further of Joni’s view of melancholy from her soulful rendition of her song “Hejira.” There she sings,

There’s comfort in melancholy
When there’s no need to explain
It’s just as natural as the weather
In the moody sky today

As another example, we learned in an earlier post that the great writer Leo Tolstoy came to understand his bouts with depression as crucial to his personal development as it provoked a gnawing questioning that eventually led to one insight after another.

The Beatles song, “Rain,” as I interpret it, provides us another expression of melancholy and depression as natural.

The Beatles’ song, “Rain”

This song was released on the 30th of May, 1966, as the B-side of The Beatles’s “Paperback Writer” single . According to Wikipedia, it was written by John Lennon although credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. It contains a slowed-down rhythm track, George Harrison’s distorted lead guitar, Ringo Starr’s nifty drumming, Paul McCartney’s droning bass line, and the last lines are vocals played backwards.

The first lines go:

If the rain comesThey run and hide their headsThey might as well be deadIf the rain comes
Here, the Beatles, it seems to me, are bemoaning how people view a rainy period negatively (They might as well be dead). Many people, when they have experiences referred to as melancholy and depression are similarly likely to interpret it as a negative, and they might as well be dead. This is often due, in part, to the way they were brought up.

There are parents who are not given to periods of sadness, anguish, and tears. For them, it’s “steady as she goes,” which is not a bad constitution to have. Their talent for averting their attention from evil, and living in the light of good offers benefits for our society for they can be counted on, day after day, to accomplish many tasks that have to be done for the smooth operation of our society. However, there is another constitution that complements this “steady as she goes” type.

Those with this complementary constitution experience far more acutely facts which strike them as wrong, and this wrongness is a genuine portion of reality. To them, rather than turning away from these feeling, their constitution has them staying with these feeling for an extended period so their life’s significance can be more deeply pondered and ultimately better understood. Though often nothing apparently positive comes from some of these periods, every now and then it serves to open their eyes to deeper levels of truth that end up benefiting them and society as a whole.

Now, when the “steady as they go” parents see their child feeling blue, this strikes them, from their perspective, as abnormal. These parents try to talk their child out of these sad experiences. A father seeing his little Susie not snapping out of her rainy day mood might even get testy, insisting he had enough of her whimpering. “Stop it already,” he may scream, “you’re acting like a horrible baby!” Offering a sympathetic ear would be far more helpful at such times, but children don’t get to pick parents who always act perfectly at all times.

Similarly, adults in general, if they have a “steady as they go” constitution, will readily accept the belief that they are the mentally healthy folks and anyone given to waves of bluesy feelings must have a mental illness.

Now, some of the folks who have a bluesy constitution may have learned to deal with their tumultuous feelings by trying to squelch them by drinking an excess amount of alcohol or consuming various other drugs. When this happens, they become at risk for a real physical illness from the toxic effects of these substances. Dealing with addictions can require support and the first part of that support is to come to understand that some people are given to bluesy moods, and that these moods are natural for them and has the potential to lead to something positive.

The next set of lines in “Rain” go,

When the sun shinesThey slip into the shade (when the sun shines down)And sip their lemonade (when the sun shines down)
When the sun shinesWhen the sun shines
RainI don’t mindShineThe weather’s fine

Here, the song contrasts the pleasantness of sunshiny days and the experience of rainy ones, which is also fine–different, but nevertheless fine in its own way. Metaphorically, we can come to experience our bluesy moods as a different type of mood that is also fine. We can come to learn that for many of us, melancholy is a period of time when, by feeling deeply about our various concerns, we process them more deeply than the more steadily happy folks. There are times when this processing leads to something creative. Biographies teach us that the most creative people are given to periods of melancholy and depression.

The next lines in the song go,

I can show youThat when it starts to rain (when the rain comes down)Everything’s the same (when the rain comes down)I can show youI can show you
RainI don’t mindShineThe weather’s fine

Here, the lines, it seems to me, are designed to encourage us to experience rain as every bit as an equal to a shiny day. It reminds me of a line from St. Basil–“Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his brow, and knows not that it brings forth abundance.” In my view, this is equally true for melancholy. Depression is a little different.

When people become depressed, they are prone to throw personal insults at themselves, typically choosing ones that have to do with feeling guilty about becoming depressed, past mistakes, being crazy, and being worthless. The psychiatric model has them thinking they have bad genes, a lifelong pathological condition, as well as having a condition that is stigmatizing. All of this leads to the person experiencing periods of self-loathing. As a result, they develop what some call a double depression–not only are they depressed, they are depressed that they are depressed.

In contrast, melancholy is a richer, and more powerful approach for addressing our concerns, even the most challenging ones. It doesn’t waste time with all of the insults, though, because of old habits, some may still leap into consciousness. When they do, those in melancholy can observe them without believing they are true. Rather, they recognize them as old unhelpful habits, allow themselves to experience the physical sensations that come with them, and then, when those sensations pass in their own good time, they move on to other emotional work that needs to be done.

The next few lines from the song are,

Can you hear me?That when it rains and shines (when it rains and shines)It’s just a state of mind (when it rains and shines)Can you hear me?Can you hear me?

Here, we are encouraged to view the experiences that come with rainy days and sunny days as just states of mind. This is equally true for uplifting days and days filled with angst.

Now I understand that some people who have reached such a deep level of self-loathing will find it hard to learn to transform their depression into the more natural and supportive state of melancholy. They may have experienced a trauma in their past so awful, they can’t seem to get beyond it. Feelings of getting relief by ending their life may intrude into their thoughts.

The natural ways to deal with this is to take daily walks, particularly in natural settings, talking with a supportive family member or friend, and getting enough sleep. The “Expressive Writing Technique” and meditation are very beneficial and cost free (See HERE for free descriptions of how to use these two techniques). Professional counseling and mindful self-compassion courses can help to get people through particularly challenging times.

The final few lines of “Rain are:

Sdeah reiht edih dna nur yehtSemoc niar eht fi (rain)Niar (rain)Senihs nus (rain)

These lines seem like nonsense words but are actually from a recording tape played backwards. Perhaps it’s meant to suggest that when we view rainy days as “we might as well be dead” we are viewing the experience backwards. Perhaps we would be better off to turn that idea around so it tells us to live fully even when the sun shines and when it rains, and appreciate the full spectrum of human experience.

My Best,
Jeff
———————————
Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Categories
Depression melancholy

Bob Dylan’s “Melancholy Mood”

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. For many of us who have endured a brutally hot summer, the approaching of autumn sure is a welcome.

This past weekend, I happened to be checking out some stuff on YouTube and came upon a wonderful version of the song, “Melancholy Mood,” sung, believe it or not, by Bob Dylan.

 

The amazingly prolific song writer and musical performer typically sings songs he personally penned, but in 2016 he released an album titled Fallen Angels, and “Melancholy Mood,” is one of its twelve classic American songs.

“Melancholy Mood” was written by Walter Schumann and Vick Knight back in 1939. Upon its initial release, several big band performers cut versions, including Harry James’s orchestra with a very young Frank Sinatra doing the vocals. Harry’s instrumentation of the song naturally featured his dynamic trumpet playing, but there is none of that in Dylan’s version. Instead, we get some gentle, pensive guitars. And though it’s hard to beat the rich vocal tones and wonderful phrasing of Sinatra, Dylan’s vocals, as music critic Ray Padgett describes it, “underplays the emotion perfectly.”

The song immediately caught my interest because it brought into focus the topic of melancholy, which, as regular readers well know, I have discussed on several occasions (see for example, HERE, HERE, and HERE). In these earlier posts, I contrasted my views on the differences between melancholy and depression. To me, when we experience melancholy we have made friends with this experience, recognizing it as a natural process in which life hasn’t deserted us forever, and there may be some epiphanies in the mire.

Joni Mitchell

As Dylan’s fellow musician and song writer, Joni Mitchell, describes melancholy in her beautiful song, “Hijira.”

”There is comfort in melancholy where there is no need to explain, it’s just as natural as the weather in this moody sky today.”

Similarly, in an article titled “The Case for Melancholy,” Ms. Laren Stover writes,

sadness 3“What ever happened to experiencing the grace of melancholy, which requires reflection: a sort of mental steeping, like tea?”

From the perspective of William James’s, when we are in melancholy we are sure we will be up again just as we are sure, when elated to be down again.

“Six months, or any cycle of time, is sure to see you produce a certain amount…. The good time will come again, as it has come; and go too.”

In contrast, depression arrives periodically just as melancholy does, but it is combined with insults thrown at oneself for being depressed without questioning if the insults are valid. Some refer to this as having a double depression because not only are we feeling depressed, but we are depressed about being depressed. Words come out of the depressed person such as, “I don’t have time for this! I’m crazy, mentally ill! This is the end of the road for me!” These are more than just words;  there is a furious deep belief that these words are completely true, and a sense of hopelessness is overwhelming.

So, with this as background, let’s take a look at the lyrics of “Melancholy Mood” to see how they depict the melancholy experience. The first few lines are,

Melancholy mood forever haunts me
Steals upon me in the night, forever taunts me
Oh, what a lonely soul am I, stranded high and dry
By a melancholy mood

So far, the lyrics have Dylan expressing a mood in which he will be forever going through. He is stranded high and dry, with no means to move to a better place.

It’s not clear if the word forever, as used here, means that the singer will be always in this mood, or he will forever have periods of this mood that will come and go. A recognition that this mood is something he will have to go through, but good times will come again would be more like what melancholy means to me. At this point in the song, Dylan might be depicting someone drifting into depression. And yet, he is not clearly insulting himself. Perhaps he is just putting into words the gloomy sense one feels at such times.

Let’s move on to the next stanza

Gone is every joy and inspiration
Tears are all I have to show, no consolation
All I can see is grief and gloom, till the crack of doom
Oh, melancholy mood

These words beautifully capture the melancholy moods that I experience. There is no sign of words that are insulting the singer. Even if there is, it would not automatically mean the person has fallen into depression as I define it.

To this day, because of old habits, as I fall into melancholy, I find old habits that I learned as a youngster will spring to mind, like, “I hate myself!” or “I’m such an idiot.” But when these words shoot into my consciousness, I now well recognize that they are not at all helpful in dealing with my current state, and I let them fly away, without trying to suppress the underlying feelings that accompany them. The main difference, for me, between a melancholy mood and depression is whether or not I am convinced that the words that spring to my mind are absolutely true or not. If not, then I’m in a melancholy mood. If I really am convinced that every nasty thing that comes to my mind is true, I’ve become depressed.

Another aspect of the above four lines from the song’s lyrics also worth thinking about, is the phrase, “till the crack of doom.” It suggests there will be no relief ever arriving. Such a hopeless view suggests a depression type of experience if the person saying them truly believes this. If he or she just notices these words coming into consciousness without accepting they are absolutely true, this is more consistent with melancholy.

Moving on to the next few lines, they point to a specific reason for the person grieving:

Deep in the night I search for a trace
Of a lingering kiss, a warm embrace
But love is a whimsy, as flimsy as lace
And my arms embrace an empty space

Here, the desire for romantic love is powerfully expressed. As we move on to the last four lines, along with the accompanying melancholy guitar rifts, we fall under the spell of the song’s grieving feelings.

Melancholy mood, why must you blind me
Pity me and break the chains, the chains that bind me
Won’t you release me, set me free, bring her back to me
Oh, melancholy mood

From these final words, we learn that it is not the desire for just any romantic love the singer is sharing with his audience. Rather, the words tell of someone grieving over the loss of a romantic relationship involving a particular woman. He is pleading for the mood to release him from this grief by bringing the woman he loves back to him.

The song suggests an important function of melancholy moods. We see the person depicted in the song articulating what his desire is, and spending time with his feelings. This just might lead to processing within his mind about what led to the breakup, and what might he do to reignite the shared romantic love he once had. Or, if not that, maybe the processing of the mood will lead to some thoughts of what he might do better in a future romantic relationship that will lead to a better outcome.

Well, in any case, that’s some of my little musings on a recent song I’ve been listening to. I share it in the hopes it will deepen understanding of the nature of melancholy and depression.

May you all have a colorful autumn.

My Best,
Jeff

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on.  This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence.  To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

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anxiety conflict resolution Depression melancholy William James

William James’s Advice To A Melancholy Friend

William James

Welcome to From Insults to Respect.

James with his daughter

In a recent post, I shared some advice the highly respected psychologist and philosopher William James gave to his depressed 13-year-old daughter. It was so well received, I decided to describe another example of James giving advice to another person feeling so very blue.

Unlike my previous example, which occurred when James was a mature professor and father, today’s example occurred in 1866 when James was a mere 24-year-old. But before we get to that example, we shall go back a little further, when James was 19. By doing so, we get to see an intriguing shift in his way of thinking about mental health concerns.

James’s View of the Nature of Mental Health Concerns When He Was Nineteen

James’s cousin, Minnie, two years younger than he, lost both of her parents when she was very young. She somehow appeared to recover from the severe blow, turning herself into the James family’s most enchanting and adored relative. In fact, James’s brother, the famous author, Henry James, drew two of his most appealing heroines from her image,–Minnie Theale in Wings of the Dove, and Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady. Sadly, at the age of seventeen, Minnie began to display emotional patterns that raised serious concerns. James, in a letter to Minnie’s sister, explains his understanding of the cause. “…it is but an organic lesion of the gray cortical substance which forms the pia mater [innermost membrane enveloping the brain and spinal chord], which is very consoling to us all.”

On what basis does James have for this explanation of the cause of Minnie’s mental health concern? And why would viewing Minnie as having a brain lesion be consoling? The letter doesn’t answer either of these questions, but blaming the brain for mental health concerns and the belief that such blaming is consoling survives up to the present day.

In recent years, after failing to prove a brain lesion is the cause of mental health concerns, a chemical imbalance in the brain has been promoted and eagerly accepted by many as true.

For example, the most recent relevant survey I could find on the internet suggests that 67% of the general public believe it has been scientifically established that depression is caused by a serotonin chemical imbalance in the brain (see HERE). Despite this belief, a 2022 research article published in Molecular Psychiatry concludes:

…the huge research effort based on the serotonin hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression. This is consistent with research on many other biological markers [21]. We suggest it is time to acknowledge that the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated.

Many believe the reason why this idea has been so promoted is that it legitimizes the lucrative marketing of psychiatric drugs. Although I think there is considerable truth to this, the eager acceptance of this notion by many members of the general public has to do with it being a consoling notion to family members who might otherwise be blamed for their offspring’s concerning behavior. With this way of thinking, it is not anything any family might have done to cause the concerning behavior; it’s some problem in the brain that is the cause.

Now, don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not at all suggesting that family members should be blamed for all such concerns. There are, undoubtedly, many possible reasons why someone begins to act in a way that raises concerns.

When James is called upon to offer some advice to a friend several years after his comment to Minnie’s sister, his notion about the cause of mental health concerns has clearly changed.

James’s Advice to His Friend

In a letter dated, June 8, 1866, James wrote to his friend, Tom W. Ward:

I have just read your letter over again, and am grieved afresh at your melancholy tone about yourself. You ask why I am quiet, while you are so restless. Partly from the original constitution of things, I suppose; partly because I am less quiet than you suppose; only I once heard a proverb about a man consuming his own smoke, and I do so particularly in your presence because you, being so much more turbid, produce a reaction in me; partly because I am a few years older than you, and have not solved, but grown callous (I hear your sneer) to, many of the problems that now torture you. The chief reason is the original constitution of things, which generated me with fewer sympathies and wants than you, and also perhaps with a certain tranquil confidence in the right order of the Whole, which makes me indifferent in some circumstances where you fret. Yours the nobler, mine the happier part! I think, too, that much of your uneasiness comes from that to which you allude in your letter–your oscillatoriness, and your regarding each oscillation as something final as long as it lasts. There is nothing more certain than that every man’s life is a line that continuously oscillates on every side of its direction; and if you would be more confident that any state of tension you may at any time find yourself in will inevitably relieve itself, sooner or later, you would spare yourself much anxiety. I myself have felt in the last six months more certain that each man’s constitution limits him to a certain amount of emotion and action, and that if he insists on going under a higher pressure than normal for three months, for instance, he will pay for it by passing the next three months below par. So the best way is to keep moving steadily and regularly, as your mind becomes thus deliciously appeased (as you imagine mine to be; ah! Tom, what damn fools we are!). If you feel below par now, don’t think your life is deserting you forever. You  are just as sure to be up again as you are, when elated, sure to be down again. Six months, or any cycle of time, is sure to see you produce a certain amount, and your fretful anxiety when in a stagnant mood is frivolous. The good time will come again, as it has come; and go too. I think we ought to be independent of our moods, look on them as external, for they come to us unbidden, and feel if possible neither elated nor depressed, but keep our eyes upon our work and, if we have done the best we could in that given condition, be satisfied.

James goes on a bit more in his letter to encourage Tom to seek to harmonize his life to nature’s will and to develop patience, equanimity, humbleness, and kindness. These attributes, he says “would do your heart good.”

As the letter draws to a close, James writes,

I will now, my dear old Tom, stop my crudities. Although these notions and others have of late led me to a pretty practical contentment, I cannot help feeling as if I were insulting Heaven by offering them about as if they had an absolute worth. Still, as I am willing to take them all back whenever it seems right, you will excuse my apparent conceit. Besides, they may suggest some practical point of view to you…..

I am anxiously waiting your arrival on Class Day when we shall, I trust, patch up the Kosmos satisfactorily and rescue it from its present fragmentary condition.  

My Take On James’s Letter

Dr. Jeff Rubin

At age 19, James appeared to accept that his cousin Minnie’s troubling emotional behavior pattern is caused by a brain lesion and this notion is somehow consoling. There is no thoughts expressed that perhaps the trauma of losing both of her parents might be playing a part. No wondering if some new disturbing event might have occurred that family members are unaware. A brain lesion theory does provide a simple explanation.

At age 26, when James tries to come up with an explanation for Tom’s emotional concern, the brain lesion notion doesn’t come up at all. Instead, James begins by expressing some empathy for his friend by writing to Tom,”I have just read your letter over again, and am grieved afresh at your melancholy tone about yourself.” I like this. If someone you care about is going through some hard experience, expressing some empathy is a wonderful, humane, and kind thing to do.

Then, James responds to Tom’s question about why he is so “restless” in contrast to James. Perhaps it has to do with a difference in their constitution, James theorizes. But then James suggests that he actually might not really be less restless, he just doesn’t share this with others, preferring to consume his own smoke. In actuality, anyone familiar with James’s biography well knows he suffered greatly from periods of depression. (See HERE  for a discussion of James’s bouts with depression and how he came to overcome them).

James goes on in his letter to point to the possibility that Tom might have gone through a period of great pressure and, if so, naturally he would need some time to recover. The recovery process could be experienced as melancholy. He also suggests that certain thought patterns of Tom’s, if changed, might be beneficial.

James concludes by suggesting to Tom that all of what he had written could be wrong, but nevertheless, they may suggest some practical point of view. In providing this post to my readers, I, too, suggest that perhaps James’s advice might be worth considering if either you or someone you care about is struggling with melancholy experiences.

My Best,
Jeff

Categories
conflict resolution Depression melancholy

The Nature of Depression and Melancholy

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today we take an interesting look at two states of being, depression and melancholy. A central difference between the two has to do with throwing insults at ourselves; when we are depressed we spend a great deal of time doing that, in melancholy, not so much. To better understand what I mean by this, and to clarify the natural function of depression and melancholy, it will be worthwhile to first take a brief look at another state of being, sleep.

Six Similar Characteristics of Sleep, Depression, and Melancholy

As a result of our special familiarity with sleep–we experience it pretty much every single day–when I point out six of its characteristics, everyone will readily know what I’m talking about. It will then be easier to see that similar characteristics occur with the less familiar depression and melancholy experiences.

Six Characteristics of Sleep

Before we go to sleep, we experience a warning that sleep is heading our way. We refer to this warning as “feeling sleepy.”

When we get this warning, there are a few things we can do to exercise some control over when we actually fall asleep. For example, when we are sleepy while eating breakfast but have to go to work, typically we can muster our determination to put off sleep until later.

At some point, like it or not, and even with the greatest determination to stay awake, sleep will come.

Feeling sleepy can range from being a little sleepy, all the way to the point where we can barely keep our eyes open. This range of sleepiness is dependent on a special memory that stores how sleepy you are. This memory can be visualized as a bucket. If you are a little sleepy in the morning, the bucket is viewed as only slightly filled. If you manage to divert your attention from the sleepiness so you can go to work, by the time you get back home, your sleepiness memory hasn’t forgotten that the bucket was slightly filled earlier, and now that several more hours have gone by without getting some sleep, the bucket has filled up beyond the height than it was in the morning. This becomes noticeable by more frequent waves of sleepiness, and each wave feels more heavy or intense. If you divert your attention from how sleepy you are so you can have dinner and watch a few of your favorite TV shows, you will find that none of your earlier sleepiness has been completely forgotten for long, and on top of that, even more sleepiness has been added. By the time you are watching the opening monologue of the Tonight Show, your bucket may now be filled up, and sleep will come even if you try to resist.

Just like there is natural variation in the various characteristics of us humans, like how tall we are or the color of our hair, different people have various size sleepiness memory buckets. Most have average size buckets, and after about sixteen hours without sleep their bucket becomes pretty filled up and they will typically sleep for about eight hours. Other people can go with less sleep; others require more sleep.

Finally, some people, desiring to avoid having their bucket getting filled up too early, will carve out some time in their day to take a nap or two. Each nap lowers the level in their bucket, and they therefore remain more alert during the day after a few minutes of grogginess passes.

Summarizing the six sleep characteristics I want to  bring to your attention, 1. sleep has a warning sign, 2. we can delay sleep for a limited period of time, 3. despite our efforts at putting off sleep, at a certain point sleep will come, 4. we have a special memory that remembers how sleepy we are, 5. people vary on how much sleep they need, and 6. we can decrease the duration of our major sleep event by doing something we call a nap.

The Six Characteristics Of the State of Being that is Often Referred to As Depression

As Katrina is on her way to work, a concern arises within. “My job is not really right for me,” she says to herself. “It’s getting more and more boring, and the pay is barely enough to make ends meet. I have to make a change.”

Now she has arrived. She pauses and says to herself, “I’m going to put off dealing with this job concern ’cause I have to focus on my work responsibilities.”

Katrina finds that throughout her work hours, for the most part, she is able to put off thinking about this concern, though from time to time, she does notice a wave going through her reminding her of it. Each time this happens, she finds that she can cut it off quickly so she can focus on her job responsibilities.

So far in this scenario, we begin to see some similarities between sleep and the buildup of concerns that might lead to depression. That is, each wave of sleepiness is a warning sign that a person will need to get some sleep soon, and each wave of concern that Katrina is experiencing is a warning sign that she will soon have to address her job concern. We also see, in this Katrina scenario, that she can exercise some control over when she addresses her concern, putting off dealing with it until a more convenient time. Notice that this is similar to sleep in that when we feel sleepy, we still can put off going to sleep for a while.

Now, let’s continue with Katrina’s story.

After work, she meets her mother at a nice restaurant to have dinner. There, her mother reveals that she has discovered a lump in her breast.

Upon arriving home, Katrina puts on the TV to see some shows she likes. While watching, she finds that her concerns intrude into her consciousness more frequently and in a more intense manner than previous recent days. In the medical model of thinking about this, these intrusions would be viewed as symptoms of a possible mental disorder. As I view them, they are as natural as a sunrise.

Later in the week, Katrina finds out that her mother’s lump has been diagnosed as cancerous. Then the guy that Katrina has been dating and is really crazy about, calls. In as pleasant a manner as he can muster, he ends his relationship with Katrina explaining he has met someone new. Despite Katrina’s effort to stay positive, she finds she can no longer put off experiencing feelings of disappointment, despair, anguish, sadness and tears.

Like the sleep memory that we visualized as a sleepiness bucket, we can visualize the concern memory also as a bucket. As time passes for Katrina, her memory bucket remembers all of her previous unresolved concerns, and as new concerns come her way, her bucket begins to fill up more and more. As it does so, she experiences more frequent reminders of needing to deal with all of her concerns, and these reminders begin to feel heavier or more intense. Eventually, her concern memory bucket becomes filled to the top and, therefore, putting off dealing with her concerns can no longer be done.

As it did for sleep, this visual metaphor of a bucket works well for depression in two other ways. First, when we look at the various characteristics of depression, we find variation in people’s ability to put off until a more convenient time addressing their concerns. We can visualize this as having either a large, average, or small concern memory bucket. Second, like the sleep memory bucket which we can decrease its contents prior to our main sleep experience by taking naps, there are ways we can decrease the contents in our concern memory bucket before entering into a full blown episode of depression. For example, by meditating once or twice a day, this provides an opportunity to spend time addressing concerns with little distractions.

Meditation is supremely useful for this because the practice involves going to a quiet place and then closing your eyes. Although during meditation you may spend some time focussing on your mantra, this mantra task is so simple that ample time and mental space is available for your concerns to bubble up to the surface where they can be addressed while you are in a relatively calm state.

Taking a walk, or watching a sporting event like baseball also provide a lot of down time to mull over our concerns, and therefore, are examples of other ways we can work though our concerns in a manner that allows us some control over when we have to deal with a full blown depression experience. In today’s world, because there are so many opportunities to distract us from addressing our concerns, from entertaining TV shows, movies, the ease of calling friends, and engaging on social media platforms, methods that free us from so many distractions for periods of time can be enormously helpful.

A Difference Between Sleep and Depression

We have just looked at six characteristics of depression that are somewhat similar to the six characteristics of sleep that we discussed earlier in this essay. There are, of course, some differences between sleep and depression. The difference I want to point out here is that the passing of time is the main factor that leads to needing to go into a period of sleep. The longer you are awake, the sleepier you are likely to become.

When it comes to depression, time is still a factor because the more time passes, the more concerns can develop in a person’s life. Nevertheless, a much bigger factor that influences when someone enters a state of depression has to do with the nature of each concern. Some concerns are relatively easy to address, others are harder. Moreover, concerns vary with regards to how threatening they are to one’s goals.

Easy to resolve concerns are taken out of the bucket after a brief period of reflection, while difficult to resolve conflicts take up space in the bucket sometimes for years. Highly threatening concerns take up far more room in the bucket than low threatening concerns. If they are highly threatening and hard to resolve, much of one’s bucket can be almost filled to the brim for years. When this happens, for years each warning about the need to address concerns will be more intense, and it will take much less additional concerns to fill up the bucket. Thus, people who experience traumatic events are more likely to experience depression more often.

The Difference Between Depression and Melancholy

The six characteristics that apply to depression apply to melancholy as well. The chief difference between the two, as I mentioned earlier, is when people experience depression they insult themselves, whereas when people experience melancholy, not so much.

As the bucket begins to fill up, those who are prone to throw personal insults at themselves, typically choose ones that have to do with feeling guilty about becoming depressed, past mistakes, being crazy, and being worthless. The psychiatric model has them thinking they have bad genes, a lifelong pathological condition, as well as having a condition that is stigmatizing. All of this leads to the person experiencing self-loathing. The insults people attack themselves with add to the concerns in their bucket, leading to it becoming fuller more quickly than if they did not do this, and the insults are distracting, so that the real work of addressing the real concerns are less efficiently addressed.

In contrast, consider how musician and song writer Joni Mitchell described melancholy in her beautiful song, “Hijira.”

There is comfort in melancholy where there is no need to explain, it’s just as natural as the weather in this moody sky today.

In melancholy, the person practices self-compassion and views the experience as a natural helpful process.

David Whyte

David Whyte is one of the finest writers to capture the essence of the melancholy state. We get a sense of this by reading the following from his fine book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words:

Disappointment is inescapable but necessary; a misunderstood mercy and when approached properly, an agency for transformation and the hidden, underground, engine of trust and generosity in a human life. The attempt to create a life devoid of disappointment is the attempt to avoid the vulnerabilities that make the conversations of life real, moving, and life-like; it is the attempt to avoid our own necessary and merciful heartbreak. To be disappointed is to reassess ourself and our inner world, and to be called to the larger foundational reality that lies beyond any false self we had only projected upon the outer world….

Despair takes us in when we have no where else to go; when we feel the heart cannot break anymore, when our world or our loved ones disappear, when we feel we cannot be loved or do not deserve to be loved, when our God disappoints, or when our body is carrying profound pain in a way that does not go away.

Despair is a haven with its own temporary form of beauty; of self-compassion, it is the invitation we accept when we want to remove ourselves from hurt. Despair is a last protection. To disappear through despair is to seek a temporary but necessary illusion, a place where we hope nothing can ever find us in the same way again.

Despair is a necessary and seasonal state of repair, a temporary healing absence, an internal physiological and psychological winter when our previous forms of participation in the world take a rest; it is a loss of horizon, it is the place we go when we do not want to be found in the same way anymore. We give up hope and certain particular wishes are no longer able to come true and despair is the time in which we both endure and heal, even when we have not yet found the new form of hope.

Melancholy provides a richer, and more powerful approach for addressing our concerns, even the most challenging ones. It doesn’t waste time with all of the insults, though, because of old habits, some may still leap into consciousness. When they do, those in melancholy can observe them without believing they are true. Rather, they recognize them as old unhelpful habits, allow themselves to experience the physical sensations that come with them, and then, when those sensations pass in their own good time, they move on to other work that needs to be done.

Transforming Depression To Melancholy

In our society, many of us learn to address our concerns using the depression pattern. How can they change that pattern so, when the bucket is full they experience, instead, melancholy?

One way that can be helpful, and won’t cost any money, is to start reading my blog, beginning with the first post (see HERE). Additionally, my three novels provide an entertaining way to learn to develop self respect (see HERE). There is a modest cost to purchasing them, but the ebook versions are very inexpensive.

Though most personal counselors are stuck in the medical model that pathologizes the experiences we discussed today, more and more are turning to an alternative approach that values enhancing self-compassion. Naturally my two favorites of these are my son, Jack Star Rubin, and his talented wife, Emily Whyte Rubin. You can learn about their services, which are available online, by clicking HERE. They rely on a variety of wisdom traditions that have demonstrated research support, and they listen deeply and compassionately as their clients’ express concerns. In this way, with the help of modeling, their clients come to adopt this way of listening deeply and compassionately as they, themselves, deal with their own concerns even when their counselor is not present.

Well, that’s my post for today. I hope you found some nourishing food for thought. Stay safe out there, and please join us again right here at From Insults to Respect.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on.  This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence.  To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

 

Categories
conflict resolution Depression Emotional pain Laren Stover melancholy psychiatry psychopathology sadness William James

Is Depression an Illness?

sadness 4Since as far back as she can remember, Carla, 19-years-old, has been having periods during which she has waves of deeply sad feelings. She has family members who say that depression runs in their family, and she should see a psychiatrist for treatment. So, off she goes, and after a few questions, the psychiatrist declares she has a mental illness called Major Depressive Disorder. Carla is prescribed pills referred to as antidepressants.

She soon feels a little better, but begins to experience a number of side effects, among them, her sex drive is diminished. Her boyfriend soon breaks up with her, and she has a new bout with sadness. Her doctor increases her dose of pills, and adds some additional ones as well, which seems to work. But in time, new waves of sadness occur, so she goes back to the doctor. ECTHe now sets her up with a series of electroconvulsive shock treatments, which her doctor calls Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT). Her memory begins to suffer, but after each series she does feel her mood rise.

Some who know Carla, respect her for facing the fact that she has a mental illness and is seeking sound medical advice to have it treated. Others who know her, upon seeing her turning to pills and ECT, regard her as foolish and lose respect for her.

In contrast to how Carla construes her waves of deeply sad feeling, some view it as an artistic temperament, and learn to appreciate these visits of melancholy as something of extraordinary valueWilliam James. Thus, in an earlier post titled William James’s Personal Bout With a “Mental Disorder,” we looked at how the brilliant psychologist and philosopher came to view his “bass notes of experience.” On this subject, he wrote that many so called “healthy-minded” individuals believe that those who worry are “morbid-minded” and “diseased,” but it may very well be true that “the world’s meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart.” He went on to write that,

“there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.”

Recently in the New York Times I met up with another writer who genuinely appreciates periods of sadness.

Ms Laren Stover
Ms. Laren Stover

In an article titled “The Case for Melancholy,” Ms. Laren Stover weaves a very different perspective from Carla, the individual I described at the start of this post who has an image of herself as a “sufferer of mental illness, and a consumer of antidepressants and ECT.”

Ms. Stover, after telling us of her weariness of all those folks on the internet promising to show us how to be delightfully happy in just a few short steps, writes:

sadness 3“Whatever happened to experiencing the grace of melancholy, which requires reflection: a sort of mental steeping, like tea? What if all this cheerful advice only makes you feel inadequate? What if you were born morose?”

It is of course not alway easy to bear these experiences, but one can begin to observe the beauty of it:

“It visits you like a mist, a vapor, a fog. It is generally uninvited. And as some people are born into royalty, wealth and prestige, others inherit a disposition for sadness.”

Notice how Ms. Stover pairs this experience with images of being born into royalty, wealth and prestige. In contrast, the mental illness promoters would much prefer to have us associate such experiences with being stuck with an awful disease we can only learn to manage with psychiatric drugs and, if that doesn’t prove sufficient, ECT. 

Laren continues to weave her artistic images of melancholy with such words as:

sadness 2“Sadness has a bad reputation. But I soon came to feel that melancholy — the word itself is late Latin from the Greek melancholia — is a word with a romantic Old World ring, with a transient beauty like the ring around the moon.”

And in another fine phrase, she tells us:

“it is fine to indulge in the cloudy charms of melancholy: to watch a sad black-and-white movie or to be swept away by the wind making a sound that Truman Capote described as a grass harp.”

sadness 6My favorite line in Ms. Stover’s article is actually a quote from her late father, a writer who published 24 books, and apparently also dealt with the many challenges of melancholy: “I don’t know if you’ll be a writer,” he tells his daughter, ” but you have the ‘up down’ thing too. Make creative use of it, otherwise, people will think you’re just plain nuts.”

sadness 5In our society, with its commercials every few minutes on TV telling us of all of the wonderful benefits of treating the terrible disease of depression with drugs, it is not easy to come to the artistic temperament point of view. And there are many good people that you will meet who genuinely believe that they have been saved from the depths of despair by doctors who utilize the medical model. If you choose to follow them down that road, I do wish you well. I have no desire to stop people from following the path that makes the most sense to them.

But for those who have not made their decision on what direction to head questionably into that dark night, I do gently ask for a momentary pause. Yes, in the physical illness domain, many medical procedures produce amazing outcomes. And it is therefore understandable that people will be eager to seek help from those who practice this medical approach to help in the domain of psychological distress. But it is worth noting that doctors can be terribly wrong at times. In the same issue of The New York Times as Ms. Stover’s article appears, we can find an article titled “How Doctors Helped Drive the Addiction Crisis.” It points out that,

OxyContin's long-acting formulation makes it popular but also prone to abuse.
OxyContin’s long-acting formulation makes it popular but also prone to abuse.

“The rate of death from prescription opioids in the United States increased more than fourfold between 1999 and 2010, dwarfing the combined mortality from heroin and cocaine. In 2013 alone, opioids were involved in 37 percent of all fatal drug overdoses.

Driving this opioid epidemic, in large part, is a disturbing change in the attitude within the medical profession about the use of these drugs to treat pain.”

A recent scientific analysis of the pros and cons of the so-called antidepressant, titled “Primum Non Nocere: An Evolutionary Analysis of Whether Antidepressants Do More Harm Than Good“ concludes:

antidepressant_pillsWe have reviewed a great deal of evidence of the effects of antidepressants on serotonergic processes throughout the body. Some of the effects are widely known, but they have been largely ignored in debates about the utility of antidepressants. Indeed, it is widely believed that antidepressant medications are both safe and effective; however, this belief was formed in the absence of adequate scientific verification. The weight of current evidence suggests that, in general, antidepressants are neither safe nor effective; they appear to do more harm than good.

Recent findings with regards to the previous standard medical recommendations for breast cancer and prostate screenings now indicate they led to far more harm than good for millions of patients.

And so, pausing, and considering an alternative way to think about melancholy may be well worth your while. If you feel you just can’t go it alone, meditation has been an enormous help for me in discovering a deeper understanding of these experiences. Vipassana-and-mindfulness-300x200My son, Jack, has found his Vipassana meditation retreat experiences of enormous value, and the cost for these retreats is on a voluntary donation basis. Some counselors and psychotherapists who have not fallen hook, line and sinker into the medical model view of these types of challenging experiences, can be of great help to make the transition from ugliness to beauty.

Well, I hope this discussion has deepened the reader’s views of melancholy, sadness and tears. Until you join us again right here at “From Insults to Respect,” may all of your concerns be addressed with wisdom, love, and kindness.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on.  This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence.  To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.