Depression, Disconnection, and Spirituality

The feeling of disconnection commonly expressed by depressed individuals is a reminder of Tolstoy’s personal struggle with depression and suicidal ideation when he sensed his life as total meaninglessness.  Commenting on this experience, William James points out that while he was seeking an end to life, there was, in the deepest part of him the thirst for God at the very same time.  Tolstoy speaks of a strong emotion:
“I can call this by no other name than that of a thirst for God.  This craving for God had nothing to do with the movement of my ideas,–in fact, it was the direct contrary of that movement,–but  it came from my heart.  It was like a feeling of dread that made me seem like an orphan and isolated in the midst of all these things that were so foreign” (VRE, 156).

This narrative as reported in William James’ Variety of Religious Experience captures experiences of many of the participants in this study as well.   This feeling of disconnection is a reminder of James’ concept of the ‘sick soul’ or the ‘twice born.’  ‘Once born’ is, to James, those who feels naturally connected and in harmony with the world.  “Some persons,” writes James, “are born with an inner constitution which is harmonious and well balanced from the outset.  Their impulses are consistent with one another, their will follows without trouble the guidance of their intellect, their passions are not excessive, and their lives are little haunted by regrets.” (P. 165).   On the other hand, the ‘twice born’ are those who are subjected to inner conflicts and disharmony.  They are not at peace within themselves or with the world around them.  In describing the ‘sick soul’ James writes:
“So much for melancholy is the sense of incapacity for joyous feeling.  A much worse form of it is positive and active anguish, a sort of psychical neuralgia wholly unknown to healthy life.  Such anguish may partake of various characters, having sometimes more the quality of loathing; sometimes that of irritation and exasperation; or again of self-mistrust and self-despair; or of suspicion, anxiety, trepidation, fear ” (145).

This dark experience of depression as described by James is common among depressed individuals I interviewed.  Many used terms such as cold, dark, black hole, and a shocking black hole to describe their depression.  They also indicate a high level of self-blame and self-negation that fit the description James paints for those he categorizes as ‘twice born.’  One participant describes depression as, “all consuming.”  She states, “Life is a crisis.  I just felt like I lost my purpose and my footing.  Even now I cannot reason with myself intellectually.” Perhaps this sense of disconnection, from a Jamesian perspective, can be explained through an inner sense of disharmony of the self and the world.  It is the contradiction between the inner self filled with dark emotions and strong impulses and the expectation of life portrayed as positive, harmonious, and peaceful.

Yet it is this disconnection that propels depressed individuals into the quest of self-understanding and of meaning, and perhaps the quest for the Divine itself, or in the words of Tolstoy, “A thirst for God.”  While he thought of suicide, Tolstoy also indicated that there existed a “force that obliged my mind to fix itself in another direction and draw me out of my situation of despair.” (153).  Similarly, depressed individuals I interviewed  talked about their suicidal ideation and claimed religious beliefs as a force that held them back from pursuing this intention and offered hope for their future.  A few explained that while depression leads to a sense of disconnection with the world and even with God, there remains a understanding somewhere in the deepest part of who they are that God is still with them.   The ‘disconnect,’ in a way, results in a series of quest through complex interweaving of ideas and constructs into a better understanding of oneself that may ultimately provide a sense of healing.  It is clear from the interviews that most individuals had an eagerness to find meaning for their very existence that seems dark and painful.  They wonder if meaning could exist in the depth of these dark and cold lives they are living.
James’ account of melancholia does not end with the conflicted, disharmonious self.  The ‘sick soul’ can find a new birth.  This is when an individual becomes ‘twice born.’  The sense of unity is achieved through a long and painful process of self-understanding and reflection as is shown through the lives of Tolstoy and John Bunyan (184-85).  After recovering from his disenchantment with the ordinary life, Tolstoy begins to see the possibility of happiness but it is not the simple ordinary type of happiness.  It takes on a certain dimension of depth.
“The happiness that comes, when any does come…is not the simple ignorance of ill, but something vastly more complex, including natural evil as one of its elements, but finding natural evil no such stumbling-block and terror because it now sees it swallowed up in supernatural good.  The process is one of redemption, not of mere reversion to natural health, and the sufferer, when saved, is saved by what seems to him a second birth, a deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before” (VRE, 156-57).
Reflecting on the experiences of people who suffer from chronic depression in relation to William James’ ‘twice born’ makes me wonder if it may be possible to assert that for the most part individuals who suffer chronic depression experience themselves to be very different from others.  Their thinking process, their mood, their perspectives on the world, their feeling-tone, and their dark emotions set them apart from the norm.  Could it be possible that the awareness of their non-normative sense of being become a force that drive them to strive, to move toward the norm, the collective, with the hope that this achievement could normalize their inner intrapsychic lives?  This process in turn activates  a heighten level of self-consciousness that further propels them toward greater preoccupation with standards and the norm while at the very same time splitting them apart through the process of comparison, the process that is the natural outcome of self-consciousness.  This heighten level of self-consciousness may be the very same process experienced by the ‘twice-born’ as discussed by James.  It is the feeling of disconnection and disharmony with others and within oneself.  If this is so, it is interesting to note that, in James’ observation,  a sense of harmony can be achieve among this population.  In the words of Tolstoy, “The happiness that comes, when any does come…is not the simple ignorance of ill.”  It comes with the awareness of natural evil that has been overcome by supernatural good.  It is not naiveté.  Like most individuals I listened to who come to recognize that they may have to live with depression at some level and that it is alright, the experience observed by James points to healing and harmony that can take place not by denying or ignoring.  It is the harmony that comes when one returns to and be at one with who one essentially is, no longer striving for a self as defined through public discourse.  It is no longer striving in order to normalize but neutralizing the non-normative within one self.

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