Appendix (4): Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression

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EPILOGUE: My Misery, My Cure and My Joy

88-150 epilogue dir depressi January 27, 1989

"Physician, heal thyself!" At the least, the doctor should be sure that the cure works on himself or herself before prescribing it to others. I have healed myself. That's why I tell you my personal story here.

I'll begin by telling you how my life seemed to me in March, 1975, when I was living for a year in Jerusalem. The first-draft notes for this description were written while I was still depressed, based on what I said to a family physician in December, 1974. The purpose of the writing was to serve as the basis for consulting one or more famous psychotherapists by mail -- that's how desperate for help I had become -- before finally concluding that my depression was incurable. Shortly after I made these first notes I went through the process of thought that removed my depression immediately, the first time I had been free of depression in thirteen years.

As of December, 1974, my external situation was the best it had been in thirteen years. I had just finished what I hoped would be an important book, and I had no troubles with health, family, money, etc. Nevertheless, there was no day that I wanted to see. Each morning when I awoke, my only pleasant expectations were taking a nap early in the evening, and then (after more work) finishing the day gasping with relief like an exhausted swimmer reaching shore, then having a drink and going to sleep. Looking ahead to each day I had no sense of accomplishment in advance, only the expectation that I might finish a little bit more of what I considered to be my duty.

Death was not unattractive. I felt that I had to stay alive for my children's sake, at least for the next ten years until the children would be grown, simply because children need a father in the house to constitute a complete family. At many many moments, especially in the morning when waking, or when walking back home after taking the children to school, I wondered whether I would be able to get through that ten years, whether I would have strength enough to fight back the pain and fears rather than to simply end it all. Those next ten years seemed very long, especially in the light of the past thirteen years that I had spent depressed. I thought that after that next ten years I would be free to choose to do what I wanted with my life, to end it if I then wished, because once my children would be sixteen or seventeen years old they would be sufficiently formed so that whether I would be alive or not would not make much difference in their development.

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To repeat, as I thought about the day ahead I saw nothing pleasurable. When I had talked to a psychologist a few times about a year and a half earlier he had asked me which things I truly enjoy in this world. I told him that the list was short: sex, tennis and other sports, poker, and at some happy times in my past when I had been working on new ideas which I thought might result in some impact on the society, the work was really fun, too.

I remember as early as 1954, when I was in the Navy, noticing that I get pleasure from very few things. At sea one Saturday or Sunday, sitting on the ship's fantail, I asked myself what I really enjoyed. I knew that I did not get much pleasure out of what gives most people the most pleasure--just sitting around talking about the events of the day, and about the doings of themselves and other people around them. The only conversations I really looked forward to with pleasure were those concerning some common project in which I was engaged with the other person. But now (as of 1975) I had even lost the pleasure of such joint-work conversations.

My depression had its proximate cause in an event in 1962. I was then a businessman running my own new small business, and I did something that was morally wrong--not a big thing, but enough to throw me into the blackest depths of despair for more than a year, and then into an ongoing gray depression thereafter.

Of course, the long-run causes of the depression--and in every way I fit the textbook description of a depressive personality--were more basic. I lacked a basic sense of self- worth. I did not esteem myself highly, as do so many people whose "objective" accomplishments might be considered small compared to mine. My work did not, and still does not, fill me with a sense of what a fine fellow I am. For most people in the university occupation I'm in, a tenth of the books and articles that I've written would enable them to feel that they had done a lifetime's worth of scholarly work, enough to enable them to claim with a straight face the highest rewards a university can offer. But for me it all seemed hollow. I asked myself (and continue to ask myself) what real impact upon the society my work has had. When I can't point to some substantial change, I feel that the work is all waste. And in truth, up to 1975 a fair amount of my work had not been received well or much esteemed, and this had given me a sense of futility toward those of my writings that were about to appear, or those which I considered writing in the future. (To get ahead of the story, starting in 1980 some of my work brought me wide recognition. From time to time I believe that I affect some people's thinking and perhaps public policy. This was delightful at its height for a few years, and gave me much pleasure. It still gives me much pleasure even though the effect has paled, and brought considerable negative reaction with it. But the change this has brought about in my daily feeling about my life is small compared to the change brought about by my recovery from depression in 1975.)

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