Good Mood: The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Values and beliefs play an even more complex role in depression than do ordinary goals. For example, Warren H. believes that it is very important that each person dedicate himself or herself to the welfare of the community. But unfortunately he lacks the talent and energy to make a large contribution to the community. When he compares his actual contribution to the contribution he believes one should make, his self-comparison is negative, leading to sadness and depression.

Values are more fundamental than ordinary goals. We can think of values as goals that are based on the individual's deepest beliefs about human life and society, assessments of what is good and what is evil. Even if a person's values are obviously implicated in a depression--for example, the soldier who refuses to kill during a battle, and is therefore judged by other soldiers and himself as unpatriotic and worthless--no one would suggest that he should simply alter for convenience his belief that life is good and killing is bad.

There is nothing irrational about the soldier's thinking or that of Warren H. Nor is there any logical flaw in the thinking of the English cabinet minister John Profumo who courted danger for his country by consorting with prostitutes who were also consorting with a Soviet spy. For his actions, Profumo did penance for ten years in charity work; that choice is not irrational.

Nor is a person irrational who kills a child in an avoidable auto accident and then judges himself harshly because he has contravened his highest value by destroying human life. There is nothing irrational about the subsequent negative self-comparisons between his behavior and his ideal self which result in depression. Indeed, the guilt and depression may be seen as an appropriate self-punishment, similar to the punishment of the person that society may inflict by sending the person to jail. And the acceptance of the punishment may be part of a process of doing penance which may result in the person finding a new and better life. In such a situation some clergymen say "Judge the sin but not the sinner", but that may not be psychologically or morally appropriate.

These are the kinds of cases that take us beyond psychology and into philosophy and religion.

Values present harder-than-usual questions about whom you should compare yourself to. Should you compare your moral behavior to a saint, or to an ordinary sinner? To Albert Schweitzer, or to the fellow next door? You cannot be as casual about this choice for comparison as when you choose a level of competitive tennis to set as your standard.

The value of meeting one's felt obligations to family, community, and society according to prevailing standards is often involved in depression (The prevailing standards usually are, however, far more demanding than is the norm of other people's actual conduct!) Another troublesome value is the relative importance of various aspects of life, for example, of devotion to family versus community, or devotion to success in one's profession versus family. Sometimes, even if you are very successful in many aspects of your life, your values may focus your attention on dimensions on which you do not excel, which can result in negative self-comparisons.

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