FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2017

For the next meeting, on March 22, 2016, we will take on the theme of… depression.

Certainly this qualifies as one of the boundary-lines of the human experience, right?

How do we approach the feeling of emotional and moral collapse, in a world without supernatural solace? What are the handholds we can use to grope our way towards recovery from such a state?

Are there any truths to be found when we find ourselves face down in the mud and experience a sense of smallness and nothingness? Religious people talk of humbling themselves before God… What are we humbling ourselves before when we feel low?

Or is depression, properly seen, just a bummer and a “time suck” caused by chemical imbalance?

Let’s start with the writer William Styron’s legendary memoir, DARKNESS VISIBLE: A MEMOIR OF MADNESS. In it (so I have read) Syron lays bare his own harrowing experience of depression.

Also, go find that faded copy of Sylvia Plath’s THE BELL JAR you have in a box somewhere. Please send in other suggestions…

Meanwhile, keep your chins up, as they say.

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More reading!

Heather wrote in with some more suggestions for the reading for this month’s discussion. I am going to look at both of them. They are:

THE NOONDAY DEMON: AN ATLAS OF DEPRESSION by Andrew Solomon.

In this book, Solomon, who himself suffers from depression, blends personal narrative with detailed research. It is a touchstone in the field of psychology.

THIS CLOSE TO HAPPY by Daphne Merkin.

Published in 2016, this has been widely praised as a searching exploration of the author’s experience of clinical depression.

I would add to these a classic:

THE CRACK-UP by F. Scott Fitzgerald (click on the title for a link to the essays in Esquire magazine).

In his uncannily beautiful sentences Fitzgerald lays bare his self-perceived failures and his hopes for restoration. This raw and honest piece broke ground when it was published in Esquire in 1936, and it still feels fresh today.

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Walden sent in a video of a great lecture on depression by Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky:

http://www.openculture.com/2014/08/stanfords-robert-sapolsky-demystifies-depression.html