Notes on Depression
A review of "Darkness Visible"
William Styron’s Darkness Visible is a memoir about his depression.
Reading the book years ago was like stumbling on notes from a fellow traveler describing a world few had seen. Today, when mental health stigma has largely been eroded, the book’s mood of neurotic solidarity is commonplace. Now what the memoir fails to make illuminate is more salient.
Depression is a word used to describe many different things. A reasonable first pass is Robert Sapolsky’s line that it is a disorder where “somebody can’t appreciate sunsets.” Darkness Visible is a reasonable depiction of one kind of depression. Styron experiences the variant with anhedonia, mental anguish, and melancholic psychosis.
A central theme of the book is that the reality of depression cannot be adequately conveyed to the non-depressed.
For instance, Styron writes:
I was feeling in my mind a sensation close to, but indescribably different from, actual pain…That the word “indescribable” should present itself is not fortuitous, since it has to be emphasized that if the pain were readily describable most of the countless sufferers from this ancient affliction would have been able to confidently depict for their friends and loved ones (even their physicians) some of the actual dimensions of their torment, and perhaps elicit a comprehension that has been generally lacking; such incomprehension has usually been due not to a failure of sympathy but to the basic inability of healthy people to imagine a form of torment so alien to everyday experience.
At some level, every experience seems indescribable, what makes depression distinct? If anything, depression seems more coherent than many other states.
Heightened aesthetic, religious, or psychedelic events are difficult to describe too. Such experiences can be nearly impossible to comprehend alone, let alone with others. Perhaps this is due to their novel and non-conceptual nature.
Deep personal transformations are also hard to express to the uninitiated. The meaning of such metamorphoses is tough to transmit because they change who one is. Take becoming a parent for example. Many parents report the transition to parenthood changed them to the extent that ordinary decision-theoretic tools are of no use. Of course, that’s wordier than what most parents will say, but it does seem clear that the move to raising children has a profound effect that is confusing to convey to the childless.
But the task is hardly impossible. Returning to depression, one can simply list symptoms (sensations, thoughts, behavior), share biography, or create art. Darkness Visible is, despite its protestations, an existence proof that it is possible.
Everyone has experienced mental anguish and failed to take pleasure in things they once enjoyed. If you’ve never been depressed, consider such symptoms with more intensity and persistence. Imagine them following you. One can repeat this exercise for the other features of depression. Fictional and biographical representations are useful aids as well. Consider Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia as a portrait of depression and anxiety or Albert Camus’ The Stranger as a picture of anhedonia and dissociation. The strategy of intensifying the familiar and ingesting art as an aid is a good one.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of depression to communicate is its psychotic character. Depression is popularly described with reference to negative emotions like sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. These emotions are universal. What contributes to the condition's uniqueness is the kind of madness that takes hold. One’s perception of the world narrows and the sufferer sees almost everything through the distorting lens of the condition. This is what renders the reference to Milton’s Paradise Lost still such an excellent title:
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
How can one communicate this? Even here, one can recall cases where adverse events or extreme fatigue shaped one’s ability to think well or do ordinary things. Most people have been possessed by an intense emotion – whether despair, wrath, paranoia, ecstasy, or joy – to the degree that they see all of their reality through the madness of that emotion. These negative emotions “overleap reason and carry it away.” Think of depression in a similar way. The noonday demon narrows one’s world until all one can think of are its negative aspects. One can see little else. Styron writes:
In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying- or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity- but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes. And this results in a striking experience- one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded.
More poetically:
The madness of depression is, generally speaking, the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.
As I remarked once, while depressed you may “Discover the bottom of the universe while walking around Walmart.”
Why does it matter whether disorders can be understood? Because otherwise others may “not get” your behavior. When depressed, it can be difficult to get those around you to understand why you’re so painful to be around. They can’t understand why ordinary tasks, whether it’s grocery shopping, conversation, or getting out of one’s bed are so difficult. You are overwhelmed by the sense that they don’t grasp, whether out of ignorance or malice, the intensity of the anguish, emptiness, or madness of the condition.
One reason “healthy people” may “just not get it” is that the depressed often act poorly. Styron is irresponsible and obnoxious. The argument that depression is ineffable is a useful justification – though likely not a conscious one – for such behavior. To be clear, I don’t intend to pick on him too much – unfortunately treating others poorly while depressed is a feature the both of us share with countless others. Styron himself isn’t too bad, see Melancholia for a more despicable character.
The question for many depressed is, why does the condition justify the way you’re treating yourself and others? The fact that it feels inevitable and ineffable somehow provides an answer.
To the non-depressed, the melancholic seem to fail to understand the level of their agency. Although they may feel like they’re bound to the bed, they’re not. They can actually just get up. It may be difficult, but it’s not impossible. Entire therapies exist to untangle the justifications that the depressed offer for their behavior.
Styron’s episode was potentially triggered by going cold turkey on alcohol. Other potential explanations are given: Styron's father was depressed, he wasn’t happy with his work, and his mother died when he was 13. Styron leans towards the idea that he hadn’t completely mourned over the death of his mother – his depression was a case of “incomplete mourning.” This doesn’t make any sense.
Styron notes that moving to the hospital changed the character of his depression. If depression were like a physical illness, purely a result of withdrawal symptoms, or the result of some subconscious trauma, such behavior is surprising. It’s not surprising on the hypothesis that depression is socially constructed.
The idea that depression is a constructed phenomenon essentially follows from the idea that emotions are socially constructed, an idea that is not so controversial. What it is to be depressed is something we have defined and instituted. Darkness Visible doesn’t just describe what depression is, it plays a part in making it what it is. Similar remarks apply to other descriptions – whether essays, novels, therapeutic records, novels, or movies.
I should clarify what I am not saying. I am not saying that depression isn’t real, that it’s easy to cure, or that one can lull others out of their depression by explaining its irrationality. The socially constructed is real. Defeating moderate and severe depression is difficult. Unfortunately, calling someone irrational doesn’t make rational people. Nor am I saying that depressed people are necessarily acting out, manipulative, or simply seeking attention. Nor is the claim that biology doesn’t matter.
Social construction is a misleading enough term that’s tempting to avoid using it. Yet, it has a developed tradition behind it and the denotation is correct, so I’ll stick with it. For now, I’ll simply point to Jesse Prinz, Lisa Feldman Barret, or John Searle for useful work on what it amounts to.
What Darkness Visible leaves out, in my view, are the cognitive and social aspects of its subject. The disorder isn’t simply something that happens to isolated individuals. Styron gets closest to this when discussing prestigious figures who suffered from depression, like Albert Camus. The archetype of the unhappy artist is likely not culturally arbitrary. The roster of depressed luminaries plays no small role in determining how the ordinary melancholic thinks and behaves.
In some ways, the non-depressed may see this better than others. I’d be interested in reading accounts from Styron’s wife and friends.
One of my former philosophy professors once told me a story about a man who suffered from severe depression for years. Eventually, his wife threatened divorce if he continued to act like a catatonic melancholic.
Such situations are better at conveying depression’s morally and psychologically complex character than the narrative of the isolated victim.
He got better.