“My mother slept with an axe under her pillow,” one woman recounts in a plaintive voice, “We lived in terror that my father would return to murder us in the night. For some reason, I don’t know why, but I was always expected to be happy.”
Inside a recent video installation at the Power Plant Gallery in Toronto, Venezuelan artist Javier Téllez has installed two facing screens at opposite ends of a long, dark room. While Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent masterpiece La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc plays on one screen, intimate interviews with twelve women living inside Rozelle Hospital, a mental institution in Australia, play on the other.
Jeanne d’Arc, whose claim to divine revelation got her burnt at the stake in 1431, is shown on the left enduring a brutal inquisition by the Church. On the right, one of the youngest Rozelle women tells of being committed for being too expressive in class. Looking from left to right, from Jeanne’s torture to the heartbreaking stories of the locked-up women, a strong case is made for their relationship. Six centuries later, very little has changed.
According to a recent study by the University of Toronto, prescriptions for antidepressants in Canada increased from 3.2 to 14.5 million between 1981 and 2000. But despite this medicalization frenzy, depression is on the rise. The World Health Organization (WHO) has predicted that by the year 2020, depression will be the second leading cause of the ‘global disability burden’.
Though pharmaceuticals mean legitimate salvation for many, they have become the catch-all solution to our collective gloom. Instead of investigating the intelligence of our melancholia, North America has fallen under a prohibition of sadness. “Part of the nagging worry about Prozac and its ilk,” says prominent bioethicist Carl Elliott, is that the ills they treat are part and parcel of the lonely, forgetful, unbearably sad place where we live.”
Marion Woodman, prized Canadian Jungian analyst and author, tells us that what we are experiencing as a culture is the loss of the symbolic life. We have displaced our natural impulse to worship the sacred onto the material world. We accumulate wealth instead of strengthening our values, pursue knowledge instead of wisdom and choose status over interconnectedness.
The antidote to this terrible crisis of meaning is what Woodman calls the “Mature Feminine.” It is the domain of interiority, the body, feeling and dreams. The Mature Feminine is about really listening to one another, digging in the unconscious dirt, and enduring what Jung called “the empty stillness that precedes creative work.”
Painting by Tomasz Alen Kopera
Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, we might begin to welcome the slowness depression brings. We might recognize the accompanying inwardness as an intelligent response to the manic culture we live in. And, if we can withstand it, we may even find that it opens the door to beauty.
According to Gregory Orr, author of Poetry as Survival, the land of suffering can be exceedingly fertile soil. It is, as Orr puts it, “where energy and intensity concentrate.” It is from “that place just beyond, which chaos and randomness reign,” that our greatest inventions originate. “When I write a poem to help myself cope with a serious disturbance,” Orr goes on to say, “I do so by registering the disorder that first destabilized me and then incorporate it into the poem. The literary result is the poem of survival.”
This idea of healing the wound by entering into it is antithetical to our dominant ideology. But there is an old myth told by Lakota elder, Lame Deer, which speaks to the importance of injury. After you die, it is said you meet an old hag in the Otherworld who will eat your scars and then let you continue on. If you have none, she’ll eat your eyes instead and you’ll be blind in the next life. Or as Leonard Cohen poetically puts it; There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Determined to keep their eyes open, mental health activists have followed in the footsteps of other stigmatized groups and through education, protest and pride, an international movement has been born. Scar-having folks, including high profile celebrities, are pulling their mental disabilities out into the open, demonstrating that life, in fact, can still thrive for the mentally ill — even if it isn’t always Happy about it. One of the most inspiring pioneers in Canada’s growing mental health awareness is Toronto’s own Lisa Brown, who started out in the early 80’s as a registered nurse at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).
Over the years, she began to notice the great number of clients who displayed high creative ability. At first she organized small jam sessions and visual art displays to give the clients a means to bring their art to a larger audience, but soon participation grew overwhelmingly until finally she founded the Workman Theatre Project (WTP) in 1991. In the short decade and a half since WTP’s birth, it has collected an impressive membership of artists (professional and amateur alike) with, or recovering from mental illness, who are producing outstanding works of art, as well as mentoring in every discipline imaginable. WTP not only provides a creative outlet to those suffering with mental illness, but serves to reinforce the bridge over stigma.
In 2003, WTP and CAMH partnered to create the Madness and the Arts Festival, an international undertaking that brings together diverse artistic groups with similar missions from around the world to present their performances/artworks to the public. It is here that we begin to see the global force that the ‘Mad Pride’ movement is becoming. But as Brown explains, “We are not an advocacy organization. For as many clients who are dead-set against using pharmaceuticals because it dulls their creative senses, there are just as many who say taking meds is the only way they can function.” Indeed, rather than taking sides, WTP remains neutral on the issue, putting all of its resources into the creative work. Somewhat exempt from the stigma that mental illness carries, artists are serving as the footsoldiers of this burgeoning movement, coming out worldwide about their struggles with depression and addiction, giving testimony to their suffering, and sharing in their healing.
The creative process not only has a restorative effect on the individual psyche, but extends outwards to those listeners, readers and watchers who respond to it. The redemption is felt vicariously, as Orr explains, “as if it were, in some way, their own.”
Maybe instead of asking how to do away with our gloom, the braver idea is to remain attentive to it. If we welcome our personal sadness, we may recover a sense of meaning in our lives and possibly even contribute something valuable to our collective in the process. Maybe one day we’ll even do as 13th century Persian mystic, Rumi, teaches, and bleed joyfully.
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Well done! I love the”mad pride”!! I am a strong believer in lying in the ashes, as our ancestors understood as being part of life. I gave 20 years of massage and energy work, and Iwould begin every session with holding the clients feet to ground them. Any one on drugs, esp anti-depresents, I could not ground, often I felt no presence of chi at all!! I now do some health councelling and there is rampant guilt and shame around sadness and depression, so many trying vainly to hide it, only to escalate it. I too have found the most pro-active form of release, even when one is on the drugs, is to create. For some the outward work leads to the inner, either way, that is all pain is saying, is “pay attention in the now”, P A I N.
Very insightful comment. “Pay attention in the now”, PAIN. Pain does absorb so much of one’s attention that it leaves little room for anything else. Living fully in the moment may lead to more pain, but staying in the pain to avoid pain gets me nowhere.
[...] his reductionist approach suggested those wishes were disposable. Carl Jung, on the other hand, championed our madnesses as having an intelligence we would do well to heed. Wishes are born to be [...]
[...] Bleed Joyfully: a fresh view of depression [...]
‘The intelligence of our melancholia’ – what an arresting phrase. I’ve just scheduled a post about depression, Toko – when it goes live I’ll link to yours. Nice coincidence
I’m so glad you found this article Jenny – it’s a piece I am very passionate about and am hopeful to spread it’s message as far and wide as possible – so, yes please do use any quotes & link back here. Much love to you!
I feel passionately about this topic too, for so many reasons – personal, cultural, ecological, philosophical… Much love to you too!
Entering the wound reminds me of Pema Chodron and Jung, advocates of different techniques, who tell us that exploration within is more valuable than externals props and solutions. This is easier for some, for introverts, but can be done with a guide by those who have difficulty. Thanks for posting this.
You are very welcome, Kath – thank you for your thoughtful comments. I love Pema and Jung, of course.
[...] passionate piece here, in which she talks about ‘the intelligence of our melancholia’ http://toko-pa.com/2007/03/08/bleed-joyfully-a-fresh-view-of-depression/#comment-497 You might also enjoy this piece from ispeakindreams [...]
Thank you.
That’s all.
You are most welcome!
Great post. Thanks for sharing. Depression and how we writers can learn to use it is something I feel very strongly about
Thanks for your comment on my blog Lesley – I’ve just replied along exactly these lines – how writers can learn to use it
Thanks so much for reading Lesley, and thank you Jenny for linking to my article!
I loved this article, Toko-pa – I’m delighted to be able to recommend it to my blog-readers
thank you so much for this very perceptive view of depression…appreciate the insight you bring…has help me view it as a gift now instead of a damaging force in my life…many blessings
You are very welcome, Laura. I am grateful that something of these words have been healing for you.
[...] read more about the link between Creativity and Mental Illness, here is an article I wrote called, Bleed Joyfully: A Fresh View of Depression Add [...]
i suffered from depression for many years, the only way i rose above it was to do something creative, so i began writing. but everything i wrote was depressing, and in some strange way healed me a little bit each day as i re-read my short stories and poetry. today i can say i am a survivor who bled joyfully.
Thank you for that tender testimonial Anne! Creativity can be so much like bloodletting in the moment, but ultimately it is redemptive!
Well written. I have long thought the same. When I have had my own periods in the underworld I have gone willingly to that other place, to see what needs to be stripped away, what I am not listening to, what my soul is yearning for. At those times it has been dance, art, mosaic, nature, dreams that have allowed cathartic experiences to occur which have nourished me at a soul level. I integrate creative, symbolic, spiritual and relational connecting experiences into my life rather than waiting to need them.
This epidemic is another example that the human race is not listening to our bodies. Our bodies are yearning for something different, they are not being nourished by what the media and advertisements tell us will nourish us.
Yes, we don’t need mindless, addictive, soulless, passive, dulling entertainment, video games or whatever people do, I don’t need them we need to create for ourselves soulful, sensory, aesthetic, spiritual connecting experiences. Well done Tokapa!
Thank you for this.
Brilliant essay!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
I have just come away from a very interesting session with Dr Liz Miller, the author of ‘Mood Mapping’ where a very interesting perspective arose about depression in that the symptom can have two quite distinct meanings: 1. where the person’s self-esteem and/or well-being is low the ‘depression’ is rooted in tiredness/exhaustion (depressed people are generally if not all tired) This ‘tiredness’ is not limited to the physical it also relates to the psychological ie thinking & feeling. 2. Where the person’s wellbeing/self-esteem is good/high the ‘depression’ is related to lethargy associated with boredom ie the person is in deep need of engagement or occupation which feeds his/her soul being. Contrary to the lethargy type requiring stimulation, the exhaustion type requires rest and recovery – not generally accepted in our (UK) culture hence the prescribing of anti-depressants to get the person on his/her feet again (as fast as possible) Ironically, anti-depressants only actually work in 17% of cases (pharmaceutical companies are making enormous amounts of money out of products which mostly don’t work!) There are many better ways of helping people to recover not least just giving them time & and an appropriate space to be.
Talking Out of Both Sides of My Mouth
Clinical depression is a biopsychosocial/spiritual disorder that can cause excruciating and needless suffering. When helped by intervention, including medical (e.g. medication, electro convulsive therapy), those who suffer can find life-saving relief that would be beyond cruel to deny. That being said, medication is not for everybody. And there are those that would refuse it based on preference alone. But make no mistake–depression, from severe to mild or chronic, is hell on earth.
However, the medical model is reductionistic and biased. We are human beings, not human brains. In fact, our brains are developed by the nature of our early attachments. In fact, scientists are discovering that brains can actually change (because there is neuro-placisity) by nurturing, compassionate and empathic relationships (including therapeutic ones).
And as human beings, we live in a psychological context, a social environment, and a spiritual dilemma (that of finding or making meaning). As the Buddha so aptly realized, life always includes suffering. How we encounter, experience, express, and relate to our suffering is of vital importance– a key to our survival and a door to enlightenment. Denying sadness and even depression is tantamount to denying our humanity and our valid experience. Medicating feelings is anti-life.
Just like anxiety, depression can be a normal response to certain conditions. People that do not have clinical depression feel depressed at times. Why wouldn’t someone with clinical depression also have differing mood states according to their moment by moment experience of living? We all are faced with conditions–biological, psychological, social, and spiritual that we are in relationship with, whether we are aware of it or not. How we relate to these conditions is necessary to examine for our overall wellness and richness of being human.
As I read your article, I have to admit I felt confused. It is an excellent idea, it really is. I have suffered from depression so long. At times it has gotten better, at times even more terrible. The one thing I didn’t read about is the pain of it. The hopelessness, the loneliness, the confusion it all causes in my life. The restlessness, but still being unable to accomplish anything or if I do accomplish something I find no real joy in it.
I’m practically in tears having read this. thank you. thank you for showing me that there is honor and sense in this miasma that has been my life since reaching biological womanhood. thank you for reaffirming I am not broken, I don’t need fixing, I am becoming, indeed I already am, what I’m supposed to be.
Bless you dear one xoxoxo