Depression vs. The Dark Night of the Soul

In his new book, Against Happiness, In Praise of Meloncholy, Eric G. Wilson makes a case for the purpose of suffering.

“The greatest tragedy is to live without tragedy,” he writes. “To hug happiness is to hate life. To love peace is to loathe the self. The blues are clues to the sublime. The embrace of gloom stokes the heart.”


Is there something to be said for these dark nights of the soul? And is this different than suffering with depression?

Why psychotherapy?

Many people see psychotherapy as an unnecessary luxury, or even worse, a self indulgent addiction. If you do a quick scan of history’s psychopaths and sociopaths, you will discover that those most in need of help tend not to get it. So why then, does the profession of psychotherapy exist, and what possible use can it be to society?
If we consider that the human species is developing and adapting to mind numbing technological changes at a rate so fast that we only see the present moment in the rear-view mirror, we can understand the great surge of visits to mental health facilities. Panic and anxiety disorders are on the rise, which is is a manifestation of fear. Many people cannot voice the cause of the fear, and may not even be aware that they have low levels of constant preoccupations, but these subconscious and subliminal emotions can rule one’s life, and consequently have a grave societal impact. When there are large numbers of people harboring deep levels of subliminal fear, there is a high possibility of societal manipulation. The obvious example of this is the government’s use of terrorists alert and red-flagging of levels of danger, which keeps the populace at a constant level of subliminal terror. Terrorized people will do what they’re told. This is working on a basic instinctual level of survival.
So why psychotherapy? Is it possible to have some control over these unconscious, subconscious, or even conscious emotions? Can we be the author of our own destinies?
The answer is yes.
The goal of psychotherapy is to realize an internal state of equilibrium. This may seem like a superficial or easy state to achieve. But if one were to look at ones own internal state, it can be rather like taking a microscope into the rain-forest: the more carefully you look at it, the harder it is to grasp what is really going on. Equilibrium is an easy goal. The means to reach it involves tough personal work. The above example of having a “CODE ORANGE” level of danger in your psyche for the majority of the day, can mean that 95% of your energy swims around with low levels of anxiety, while only 5% of your mind is concentrating on the task at hand.
Psychotherapy makes the unconscious conscious, makes the subliminal submerge, makes the discomfort of powerful emotions tolerable. No system in physics can achieve equilibrium if opposing forces are not stablized. When we go up against ourselves, we are resisting some of the most powerful forces in nature: the power of innertia. Psychotherapy makes us stop doing what we’re doing to oppose our own evolution towards happiness. That which we are conscious about, we have to be accountable to. Once we are no longer ruled by untenable emotions, we can make decisions to change. And this is how societies change and evolve. Personal change brings about a societal change, as systems that are changing from the inside cannot remain stagnant.

Immigration

Immigration.
Mankind has been doing it since the beginning of time. Leave starvation behind and move somewhere where there’s more to eat. But the invisible who walk amongst us can no longer forage for food seamlessly. Immigration officers are out there and they know where to look too.
I too have roamed the streets illegally of the southern mediterranean country where I live, trying to blend, and blending because of my fair skin. I have bowed my head and looked the other way as the police scan the crowd for “sin papeles” (without papers), that dreaded word for illegals. I have been vulnerable and humbled by my own helplessness.
I don’t take for granted what it means to have the right papers. And I have learned to wait in ceaseless lines, prostrating myself to a malevelant bureacracy.
Certain unalienable rights contains an alien in its quiet closet. In 2005 Spain instituted an amnesty process in which all illegals were given a chance to supplicate, to announce their illegality and beg forgiveness in return for residency. I was one of hundreds of thousands who awoke each day at 5 am to wait in line with the other thousands to receive a piece of paper and advance to the next line where quietly and expectantly we arrived at our fate-which involved awakening at 5am the next morning and going to the window with the number on it to be moved to the next line, etc.
That line became my world for about a month. I believe I was the only North American in my particular line of 2,000 or so mainly Africans and South Americans. I envied the others for their sense of camaraderie and bright clothing. They had a waiting-in-line culture that I wanted, laughing and telling jokes without ever looking at the watch or wondering at the ineficiency of the system. But I had something that they didn’t have which set me apart, made me lonely, special. My being North American never had to be voiced. It’s something I wore like a tribal jewel.
I remember one Asian woman (Korean? Chinese?) who had been standing in line in front of me for a number of days. When she reached the window, the tired, Spanish bureacrat started screaming at her to sign the paper, which he shook in her face. She didn’t understand, and was turning away, beleaguered and despondent, to retreat to yet another line. I took her small hand in mine and helped her sign her name, the angry line pushing into us from behind. I remember the tremble in her hand and the look on her face, which I can only describe as resigned.
As the process drew to an end, and the selections were made by virtue of having the right paperwork done, you could smell the fear in our line. I saw one African man, his bright orange sarong swinging behind him, holding his head in his hands as his compatriots looked away, willing away the unbearable truth of rejection. I imagined the places they would have to go home to: the hunger, the camps, the tired look of the expectant children.
It’s not easy to explain the racism in immigration issues. In theory, the law was the same for all of us. But the fact that I was born above a certain latitude and had a certain skin pigment adjusted to northern latitudes gave me the edge on most people in that line. The work force needed them more than me. Their need was higher than mine, and yet I was one of the small percentage that got chosen for residency.
This BLOG will look at issues of cultural identity, racism, immigration issues and psychological adaptation. We’ll have ongoing articles about psychological evolution and what that means about cultural identity and expanding consciousness. We welcome you to contribute.