James put it this way:

The method of averting one's attention from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far more generally than most of us are ready to suppose, and within the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religious solution. But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite free from melancholy one's self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.7

Perhaps the most important reason, however, why "count your blessings" doesn't do the whole job with some people is that a person must "want" to achieve the good feelings that come with counting one's blessings. If you believe that you ought to count your blessings, or to achieve good feeling, then you might be disposed to do so. But if you have had little experience in your lifetime with simple good feeling, this goal will not seem a reasonable or achievable one. More about this in Chapter 18 Values Treatment.

Sweetening The Denominator By Learning Your History

Learning how and why you acquired certain benchmark standards of comparison can often make it easier for you to change your denominator. This is often a matter of realizing that you did not choose the standard yourself on the basis of reasonable experience and thought, but rather the standard was thrust upon you. Then you can be responsive to Ellis's command (!) that you not let yourself be commanded to accept any goal or standard that others have set for you, or that you have set for yourself; this is the heart of his method for overcoming depression.

Take, for example, my mother always telling me (surely with the best of intentions) that I could do better than I had done. This caused me to feel that I had accomplished less than I ought to have accomplished (and less than I had accomplished). After I came to understand that as an adult I criticize myself in the same way that my mother criticized me as a child, I could then take the next step--understanding that I am not obligated to accept my mother's point of view about this; I am not required to always judge that I could do better, to always get closer to perfection. And with that discovery I learned to say to myself "Don't criticize" every time I hear myself saying, in imitation of my mother, "You can do better," or "That's not up to the standard you should reach." And with that discovery I took the first step on the road to conquering depression (though in itself this did not, and could not, cure me of depression, for my own idiosyncratic reasons; more about that later.)

The Freudian method known as psychoanalysis is essentially a technique for self-discovery, and especially for learning about one's childhood, which is assumed by Freudians to be necessary for a cure. Delving into memories of one's early years takes place in several hour-long weekly over the course of several years, usually. Discovery of the causes of your contemporary behavior and feelings--for example, the causes of your contemporary negative self-comparisons and depression--might be enough to cure your depression, because the necessary change in your behavior and outlook may be obvious. But more likely, the discovery is not enough, though it can be used as valuable input to careful thinking about your present and future.

In contrast cognitive-behavioral therapy does not find that examining one's childhood memories is usually crucial in overcoming depression.

The learning gained in psychoanalysis may come from dredging up forgotten or repressed memories of childhood events. This can be a sudden illumination induced by free association or related techniques. Or the learning may come from creating a new set of experiences to offset the old ones, for example, learning that one can trust a therapist and other people after coming to believe as a child that all other persons are untrustworthy, or that one is helpless to deal successfully with other people. This learning is closely related to the more recently-developed method of Interpersonal Therapy, which has had considerable success in helping depressed people. And if the focus is on learning that one is capable of dealing with other people rather than being helpless, the learning is related to Seligman's approach to depression, discussed in Chapter 17. Once more, different therapeutic strokes help different folks, but all of these approaches fit nicely into the general intellectual framework of Self-comparisons Analysis.

Psychoanalysis intends that a patient identify, relive, and understand childhood experiences--either traumatic experiences such as losing a parent, or repeated experiences such as being criticized for not doing better in school. The aim is that the person learn that the childhood experiences were not what they are subconsciously remembered to be--that all relationships need not be the same as the person's relationships with his or her parents, and that as an adult the person need not be obedient to the dictates of his or her parents in the past. That is, like behavior-modification and cognitive therapies, psychoanalysis is supposed to be a special process of learning (and unlearning) with respect to negative self-comparisons.

With respect to traumatic childhood experiences, the person can learn to recognize the continuing influence of the childhood event, to understand its impact, and perhaps to lessen its tension by reliving it in a context where it no longer is so terrible. For example, Joan H., a woman of thirty-five who relived in therapy the death of her mother when she was seven, came to understand that the deprivation she felt at seven no longer applies at thirty-five. That is, the difference between being a woman of 35 without a mother versus being a woman of 35 with a mother is much less important than the difference between having a mother versus not having a mother at age seven. If Joan recognizes that the traumatic loss -- a huge negative self- comparison-- that she experienced at seven (and still remembers vividly) no longer applies, then she can feel less sad.

Another aspect of re-living traumatic experiences is that a person can finally get the facts straight, and hence get rid of damaging misconceptions. For example, many children whose parents [or siblings] die in childhood actually feel responsible for the event, believing that the death happened through the child's neglect or misbehavior. Joan was such a person. As an adult, she can finally realize that her mother's heart attack did not occur because Joan was being too noisy, and hence she can now shed that horrible guilty self-comparison, and with it the attendant sadness. This is really an improvement in one's numerator, the perceived facts of one's life, but I've mentioned it here for convenience.