Starting about the middle of December, 1974, I had a special feeling of nearing completion, and I felt that in many ways it was the best period that I had had for the past thirteen years. Because I had no troubles with health, family, or money, nothing pressed on me from outside my own psychology. That certainly did not mean that I was happy or undepressed. Rather, it meant that I was sufficiently undepressed that I was willing to spend some time on myself and my depression.

I therefore determined that if I was ever going to rid myself of depression, then was the time to do it. I had the time and energy. And I was in a cosmopolitan city (Jerusalem) which I thought (wrongly) was likely to have more possibilities of help than my small home city in the U. S. I decided to look for someone who might have the wisdom to help me. I thought to consult some eminent psychologists in person, and others by mail. And at the same time I went to a family physician to ask him to refer me to someone--physician, psychologist, religious wise man, or whatever--who might help. All this should illustrate how desperate I was to get rid of my depression. I figured that it was my last chance--now or never: If it didn't work then, I'd give up hope of ever succeeding. I felt like a man in a movie hanging by his fingertips to the edge of the cliff, figuring he has strength enough for just one more try to pull himself up and over to safety--but the fingers are slipping...his strength is waning...you get the picture.

The family physician suggested a psychologist, but one visit convinced us both that--good as he probably is--that he was not the right man for my problem. He in turn suggested a psychoanalyst. But the psychoanalyst suggested a long course of therapy which exhausted me just thinking about it; I didn't believe it would succeed, and it didn't seem worth spending the energy or money to try.

Then in March, 1975, about four weeks before writing the first draft of this account, I felt that my current work was really complete. I had no work laying on my desk, all my manuscripts had been sent to publishers--simply nothing pressing. And I decided that now I owed it to myself to try to spend some of my "good time"--that is, the time when my mind is fresh and creative in the morning--thinking about myself and my problem of depression in an attempt to see if I could think my way out of it.

I went to the library and took out a bag of books on the subject. I began to read, think, make notes. The book which made the greatest impression upon me was Aaron Beck's Depression The main message I got was that a person can alter one's thinking by consciously working at it, in contrast to the passive Freudian view with its focus on the "unconscious". I still didn't have much hope that I could work my way out of depression, because many times I had tried without success to understand it and deal with it. But this time I decided to devote my full energies to the subject when I was fresh, rather than thinking about it only at those times when I was exhausted. And armed with that key message of Beck's cognitive therapy, I at least had some hope.

Perhaps the first big step was my concentrating on the idea --which I had understood for a long time but had simply taken for granted--that I'm never satisfied with myself or what I do; I never allow myself to be satisfied. I have also known the cause for a long time: With all good intentions, and though we were (until her death in 1986) quite fond of another even if not very close, my mother (with the best of intentions) never seemed satisfied with me as a child (though perhaps she really was). No matter how well I did something, she always urged that I could do better.

Then this startling insight came to me: Why should I still pay attention to my mother's stricture? Why should I continue dissatisfied with myself just because my mother had built that habit of dissatisfaction into me? I suddenly realized that I was under no obligation to share my mother's views, and I could simply tell myself "Don't criticize" whenever I begin to compare my performance to the level of greater achievement and perfection urged by my mother. And with this insight I suddenly felt free of my mother's dissatisfaction for the first time in my life. I felt free to do what I wanted with my day and my life. That was a very exhilarating moment, a feeling of relief and freedom which continues until this moment, and which I hope will continue for the rest of my life.

This discovery that I am not obligated to follow my mother's orders is exactly the idea that I later discovered is the central substantive idea in Albert Ellis's version of cognitive therapy. But though this discovery helped a great deal, by itself it was not enough. It removed some of the knives I felt sticking into me, but it did not yet make the world look bright. Perhaps the depression persisted because I felt I was not succeeding in making a real contribution with my research and writings, or perhaps it was because of other underlying connections between my childhood and my present self-comparisons and mood which I do not understand. Whatever the reason, the structure of my thinking was not giving me a happy life-loving life, despite my discovery that I need not keep criticizing myself for lapses from perfection.

Then came another revelation: I remembered how my depression lifted on one day each week, on the Sabbath. And I also remembered that just as Judaism imposes an obligation not to be anxious or sad on the Sabbath, Judaism also imposes an obligation upon the individual to enjoy his or her life. Judaism enjoins you not to waste your life in unhappiness or to make your life a burden, but rather to make of it the greatest possible value. (I am here using the concept of obligation in a rather vague and unspecified fashion. I am not using the concept in the way that a traditional religious person would use it--that is, as a duty imposed upon a person by the traditional concept of God. Nevertheless, I did feel some kind of a vow in which there is a compact, an obligation which goes a little bit beyond me and me.)