Good Mood: The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

The development of a person's values and beliefs is complex, and differs from person to person. But it is clear that childhood experiences with parents and the rest of society influence one's values. And it seems likely that if your childhood was rigid, pressure-filled, and traumatic, you will be more rigid in your values, and less flexible in choosing a new set of values upon adult reflection, than a person who had a more relaxed childhood.

In particular, loss of love, or loss of a parent, must heavily influence one's fundamental view of the world and oneself. Loss of a parent or parental love is likely to make one feel that success, and the ensuing approval and love, are not automatic or easy to get. The loss likely makes one believe that it takes very high achievement, and the attainment of very high standards, to obtain such approval and love from the world. A person with such a view of the world is likely to conclude that her actual and potential achievements are, and will be, less than they must be to achieve love and approval; this implies hopelessness, sadness, and depression.

Of course childhood experiences persist in the adult not only as the objective experiences they were, but as the memory and interpretation of those experiences--which often are far from the objective facts.

Sometimes a person suddenly thinks, "Life has no meaning." Or to put it differently, you come to think that there is no meaning to, or value in, the activities which you had formerly thought were meaningful and valuable to yourself and the world. For one reason or another, you may come to cease accepting the values you had formerly accepted as the foundation of your life. This is Tolstoy's famous description of his "loss of meaning" and collapse of values, his subsequent depression, and his later recovery.

...something very strange began to happen to me. At first I experienced moments of perplexity and arrest of life, as though I did not know how to live or what to do; and I felt lost and became dejected.... Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What's it for? What does it lead to?... The questions... began to repeat them- selves frequently, and to demand replies more and more insistently; and like drops of ink always falling on one place they ran together into one black blot.

Then occurred what happens to everyone sickening with a mortal internal disease. At first trivial signs of indisposition appear to which the sick man pays no attention; then these signs reappear more and more often and merge into one uninterrupted period of suffering. The suffering increases and, before the sick man can look round, what he took for a mere indisposition has already become more important to him than anything else in the world--it is death!

That was what happened to me. I understood that it was no casual indisposition but something very important, and that if these questions constantly repeated them- selves they would have to be answered. And I tried to answer them. The questions seemed such stupid, simple, childish ones; but as soon as I touched them and tried to solve them I at once became convinced, first, that they are not childish and stupid but the most important and profound of life's questions; and secondly that, try as I would, I could not solve them. Before occupying my- self with my Samara estate, the education of my son, or the writing of a book, I had to know why I was doing it. As long as I did not know why, I could do nothing and could not live. Amid the thoughts of estate manage- ment which greatly occupied me at that time, the question would suddenly occur: 'Well, you will have 6,000 desy- atinas of land in Samara Government and 300 horses, and what then?'... And I was quite disconcerted and did not know what to think. Or when considering plans for the education of my children, I would say to myself: 'What for?' Or when considering how the peasants might become prosperous, I would suddenly say to myself: "But what does it matter to me?' Or when thinking of the fame my works would bring me, I would say to myself, 'Very well; you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakes- peare or Moliere, or than all the writers in the world-- and what of it?' And I could find no reply at all. The questions would not wait, they had to be answered at once, and if I did not answer them it was impossible to live. But there was no answer.

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