Psychoanalysis Of Depression

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Psychoanalysis of depression

In this article, I do not want to make depression either attractive or cute. I want to show its essence from the standpoint of psychoanalytic practice. Not to rush around with her and not idealize, picking up beautiful pictures for her image, but to return to the origins of her appearance, I will try to make you feel the pain that people feel in this state. I want to make the text of the article clear, simple, more informative than artistic. Why this topic? Because I know her from the inside. Because there are quite a few clients with such a problem. When I started writing this article, I remembered an incident from my life … Several years ago I was on a course on tourism and there was a teacher, an old but cheerful uncle (you cannot call him grandfather). He talked about alpine skiing, being a professional in this matter since Soviet times. So, in our city there is a sports and entertainment complex with ski slopes called "Avalanche". It seems like a beautiful name … for those who do not know what an avalanche in the mountains is. And our uncle the teacher said that getting into an avalanche is the worst thing that can happen to a skier. He was outraged that such a terrible word could be called an entertainment complex … (I'm talking about the attractiveness that many writers endow this horror - depression).

To understand the further text, the reader will need at least the minimal concepts of the terms of depth analytical psychology.

I want to outline a portrait of a depressed personality, the mechanisms of its formation, methods and stages of working with such clients.

I am not sure that a person himself, without the help of a specialist, will be able to “work through” depression, “grow” out of it. Do not suffer in loneliness and hopelessness - believe me, there is a way out! I do not promise that you can completely change, but you can learn to live with it, understand and enjoy the joys of life.

Working and growing is not going out

You can also leave yourself in not very difficult cases - switch to something exciting, fill the depressive black hole with creativity, entertainment, new relationships, acquaintances. For a while. Until the next dark wave.

Why "grow up"? Depression refers to the earliest stages of psycho-sexual personality development. Weaning period from the mother's breast. Well, if she was, this mother's "good" breast, which gives the child everything that is necessary in infancy. Warm, satisfying, soft and mom is always there. The kid feels himself and his mother as a single organism. He is safe and loving.

Depression is the loss of an “object”

An “object” can be either another person or something that fills the existence of a given individual with meaning and importance. When, already in adulthood, a person who has not received enough maternal unconditional love loses someone or something that he has endowed with value for himself, he regresses to that infancy when he lacked a “good” mother's breast. Regressing is when it is absolutely useless for his environment to appeal to reason, to try to convince you that "You will have a hundred more of these Natasha!" All he needs at this stage is silent, supportive, accepting human support. What the baby needed was for mom to be there.

In his subjective reality, he loses part of himself. Part of your personality. The "I" splits. One part remains crippled, the other dies. The "I" ceases to function.

Instead of the "I" of the personality, a void is formed

The "I" or "Ego" is identified either with the introject of loss or with the "Superego." The main distinguishing feature of depression from sadness is that the loss is not recognized.

I do not know WHAT I have lost, I just feel bad

There is a sense of hopelessness and hopelessness. Close people, "favorite" work, hobbies, material goods become introjects that fill the void. What the subject replaces drowns out his pain, the unsatisfied need for a sense of security and love. The reality, that what is lost cannot be returned, is not recognized. For the first time, depression can be experienced by a child at a later age, when the second child in the family appears. The child feels that the love and attention of the mother is decreasing. The optimal difference between children is considered to be 6-7 years old or more. But if the child did not receive maternal love when he was little, then the difference of 10-15 years will not help make brothers and sisters loving and benevolent to each other. The child feels not loved, which means bad, unworthy of love. He did something wrong, since his mother stopped loving him. And he starts coming up with thousands of explanations, reasons, for what he cannot be loved. He begins to hate himself, displacing, projecting his hatred onto others, onto the younger family member. Outwardly, this can manifest itself in excessive servility, submissiveness in relations with parents. But how much vital energy is spent to hold back hatred, aggression, those feelings that are not accepted in our society! Hold in a place of emptiness. It is very difficult to hold on for a long time, the feelings must be frozen. And along with hatred and aggression, they freeze all kinds of other emotions that arise in communication with people. Depressive individuals appear “constricted,” clumsy, gloomy, and lacking in emotion. Some external inhibition is inherent in them.

The natural aggression that appeared in childhood must be responded to

Parents must understand and accept it. This will strengthen the "I" and not break the internal structure of the personality. A child's response can manifest itself both in the form of directed aggression against any object, and in regression at a younger age. There may be a "lisp" in speech, wet sheets, requests to take pens. If the parents shame the older child, shift their responsibilities to take care of the little one, prohibit the manifestation of certain, natural in this case, negative feelings, the child grows up as an adult who does not know how to love. Moreover, a projection will be a frequent psychological defense for such an adult. Projection of your feelings onto the Other.

"It is not I who do not know how to love, it is they who do not value me and are not capable of love."

And in order to explain to himself why they do not love me, the poor fellow will come up with a lot of reasons, blaming himself for all mortal sins. Starting from dissatisfaction with the appearance - the nose is big, the legs are crooked, I am fat (s) - to - I do not know how to speak beautifully, I am stupid, I have such a fate, etc. This overwhelming hatred creates feelings of inferiority and leads to self-accusations. Forms interpersonal problems, forming a layer of negativism inside.

"I cannot love people, so I have to hate them."

Love is unconsciously perceived as suffering. There was no other experience of love.

Love is what they do to me

In this way, they recreate the mother's primary love. Such people often cause pity for themselves, constantly looking for flaws in themselves. Guilt is attempted in Others. They take revenge, torture their inner circle, talking about their failures or working to the point of exhaustion. Often identifies with the aggressor (mother), directing anger at himself, depriving himself of the joy and pleasures in life. Their suffering can lead to the level of the Divine (Jesus suffered, and I will). Somewhere they even enjoy their torment, filling the inner emptiness. I will This love in yourself.

Value for him is what he fills his emptiness with - resentment, envy, hatred, guilt

Let there be at least something, just not emptiness. But these feelings require nourishment. When communicating with Others, negative feelings need to be acted out in your scripts. But acting out leads to new frustrations and self-deprecation.

I am nobody, I am helpless, I can’t do anything, I’m not capable of anything

This is the core of the depressive state. Repressed feelings of hatred are the basis for feelings of guilt. This unconscious feeling of guilt carries the idea that he alone is responsible for ALL what's happening. A sort of omnipotence.

One of the main tasks of psychotherapy is to bring intrapersonal conflict to the interpersonal level

Therapy for a depressed client is based on restoration, recreating an adequate "I", capable of an adequate assessment of reality. "Grow", "feed", "love" the client. Introject a relaxed, again adequate, healthy parent into the client's superego.

In the therapy with the symbolic drama method, at the first stage, I use images that are resourceful, filling the client with what he lacked in childhood. We use motives - "Meadow", "Stream", "A place where I feel good", "A flower that has everything for life and growth" and many others. Then we defrost (we admit that they exist and call things by their proper names) resentment, envy, aggression (motives "Wild cat", "Lion", "Hole in the swamp"). We are working on conflicting material (motive "The Edge of the Forest"). At some stage, we connect to work with the body, build a genogram. Often, towards the end of the therapy, when I see that the client has become stronger - he can defend his boundaries in communication, understands his reactions and states, expresses, names his feelings - we work with goal-setting. This is no longer the initial request of therapy, but his, only him, not his mothers, fathers unlived, unattained goals, but the goals and desires of the client. Here I can already connect such techniques as "Integration of linguistic levels", "My ideal self", "Building a house", "Allotted land".

The client and I plan step-by-step actions to achieve the goal

This is not an initial request, often infantile, but the goal of an adult person who understands and accepts himself and others. Conscious of reality.

This is a general scheme of work. Everything is very individual and unique with each person. After all, each individual person is a whole incomprehensible, unique and unique world, both for the person itself and for the psychotherapist.

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