“A person can be deeply depressed and entirely unaware of their feelings…
The definition of clinical depression includes a person’s refusal to acknowledge that they are deeply despairing. Many depressed people usually do not know that they are unhappy, because they cannot articulate their misery; instead, they display the symptoms of depression. They drift about, forgetting to wash or take care of themselves, the kitchen fills with accumulated mess, they have no energy and cannot get out of bed. They are unable to say to themselves, ‘I am truly wretched and unhappy because I feel so lonely.’ Depressed people do not know how they feel.
If they were aware, they would not suffer from depression. Depression is a state disconnected from feeling. And usually, beneath the surface, depression contains intense anger, along with the sense of having been deceived, controlled, or obstructed in some way. But these feelings are generally unconscious.”
— The Art of Stealing Fire, p. 83 Liz Greene
Liz Greene is a Jungian analyst who brings her knowledge of mythology and archetypes into the field of astrology, becoming one of the most prominent figures of the psychological school in contemporary astrology. In the quotation above, she offers an interpretation of the myth of Prometheus, who steals fire from the gods and gives it to humanity, only to be punished by having an eagle come each day to tear at his liver. Asked about her interpretation of this element of the myth, she says that for her the continual devouring of Prometheus’s liver is connected with depression:
“It is the undermining of hope and faith, the destruction of the sense of connectedness with the cosmic order.”
I hope that someday in the future I will be able to present the spiritual dimension of depressive experiences in greater depth. For now, however, with the quotation above, I wish only to draw attention to something important to know—namely, that truly depressed people may not know that they are suffering from depression. Because they are not in contact with their feelings, the only thing they notice is something “non-psychic”—for example, that they struggle with everyday tasks, that they are obsessed with their work, or that they have problems with sleep and eating. The last thing they will admit, however, is that they are deeply unhappy. That they are despairing. And this admission means a great deal, because it is precisely with it that change begins, and it is the only condition for healing to start.
For this kind of person, I would like to repeat the words of Liz Greene:
“Depressed people do not know how they feel. If they were aware, they would not suffer from depression.”
Then, even if they feel depressed, they will not be ill with depression. Despair, sadness, a sense of inner emptiness, helplessness, or meaninglessness are also a natural part of experiences such as the dark night of the soul (in Christianity), noogenic neurosis (logotherapy), and nigredo (the awakening of the individuation impulse in Jungian analytical psychology). They become a pathological condition only when a person fails to recognize them—fails to acknowledge them and fails to seek the meaning of what they are going through. Then, instead of the discovery of a new direction in life and profound inner transformation, medication steps in.
If, however, a person manages to acknowledge the deep despair in which they find themselves, there is a chance. Then they understand what it means to be “properly depressed” and stop swinging between extremes. Within depressive experiences, they are able to recognize the pain of an irreversible transformation taking place in the depths of their soul—the inevitable symptoms of a dying old identity and the birth of a new Self. They are also able to unearth their repressed anger and express it in healthy outward forms—by fighting for the things they want, believe in, and that make them happy.
Kameliya Hadziyska
Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
