I. TWO KINDS OF DEPRESSION

A. Psychological Depression
    —From Disappointments and Failures.

B. Existential Depression—Uncaused, Irrational, Pervasive.

C. Differentiating Psychological and Existential Depression.

A. The Collapse of Comforting Life-Illusions.

B. Capturing Existential Depression in Descriptive Words.

C. Boredom and Depression.

D. Attempting to Cope with Existential Depression.

Being Released from Existential Depression

         It is not the same as sorrow for this or that...
         If someone asks me what is the matter, I do not know, I cannot say.
         It may fall upon me in the midst of action.
         Why am I doing this?  It is vain and purposeless.
         A curtain falls between me and the world.
         I may try to evade it by plunging again into distraction,
         but something remains to tell me this is hopeless.
         I can no longer participate in routine affairs.
         I seem to be excluded.  My daily existence is dead and joyless.
        This is the work of dread that slumbers within me.

        [John Wild The Challenge of Existentialism
        (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1955) p. 36-37]

     The human experience of depression or melancholia is not new;
it was described by Hippocrates in the fourth century BC.
All of us have been downhearted or dejected occasionally.
Sometimes we have definite reasons for our low spirits;
but at other times we search in vain for causes.

     We often resist noticing our deepest condition of being
because it is unpleasant to face how discouraged and sad we feel.
So we may go around with a ‘smiling depression’,
masking our heavy feeling so that others will not notice it,
and even hoping that being cheerful will dispel the gloom.

     But occasionally something makes us deeply aware of ourselves:
How do I truly feel inside?  Am I really happy with my life?
What is this vague distress in my chest or stomach?
Why do I have trouble eating?  Or do I eat too much?
Is it hard for me to get to sleep at night?  Or do I sleep too much?
Am I avoiding people—withdrawing into isolation?
Am I nervous, easily irritated?  Do I blame others for my troubles?
Has my thinking slowed down?  Do I have trouble remembering?
Have I found myself just sitting all day long, unable to do anything?
These are some of the signs of enervating depression.

I. TWO KINDS OF DEPRESSION

       A. Psychological Depression—From Disappointments and Failures.

     Ordinary depression always arises from specific life-situations:
We get depressed when our jobs are boring, when we have money-problems,
when our children disappoint us, when marriage turns sour,
when we have difficulty communicating with our friends and associates,
when love lets us down, when nobody seems to care about us, etc.

Ch. 2   EXISTENTIAL DEPRESSION: DEEPER THAN PSYCHOLOGICAL  by JAMES PARK   39

     New mothers often become severely depressed when they give birth.
And fathers sometimes share similar feelings:
They have begun a completely different phase of their lives
—with many new responsibilities which will last for years.
They may even feel guilty in some sense for having created this child.

     Many other turning-points or mile-stones of life may trigger depression:
Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and other signs of the passing years
may remind us of lost hopes and half-forgotten dreams.
Going to weddings and funerals, friends and relatives dying,
finding ourselves looking back on life instead of looking forward
—all may remind us of the final threat of death.

     Almost any disappointment, disillusionment, failure, or collapse of hopes
can cause us to tumble into an emotional slump.
But these moods are usually temporary and limited;  we can manage them:
Since the ordinary blues are caused by specific circumstances,
they will often disappear when the situation changes,
when the job, the marriage, or the children improve,
when we recover from illness, or have a mostly Merry Christmas.
In any case, not all dimensions of our lives are clouded by depression;
somewhere, something is going well.
And once we have identified the causes of our depressed spirits,
we can attempt to correct the situation or gain a different perspective on it,
often pulling ourselves out of the black hole.

       B. Existential Depression—Uncaused, Irrational, Pervasive.

     But the other kind of depression cannot be directly traced to a cause.
We are quietly haunted by a vague sense or dark mood;
thru the hollow depths of our beings sounds a low, moaning tone,
which breaks into consciousness when our daily preoccupations fall away.

     Existential depression seeps into consciousness not as an invading fluid;
we recognize it as our own juice.
And when our life-situations bring on the rain of psychological depression,
this soaking seems to draw out some of our own internal Malaise.
When we are frustrated and disappointed about our life-endeavors,
our underlying, irrational depression reinforces this discouragement.
Thus fortified, our factual depressions may be blown out of proportion
and may persist beyond a reasonable period after the situation has passed.
Or we may find ourselves constantly shifting our pervasive depression
from one excuse to another, never finding anything to bear the whole blame.
Or again, we may attribute our existential depression to a lot of little things.
And worst of all, we may have to admit that because our deeper depression
has no concrete, objective cause, we cannot overcome it.
All we can do is try to ignore it or cover it up with happiness.

40        OUR EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT: LONELINESS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, & DEATH

     The following five contrasts highlight the significant differences
between understandable, everyday depressions and primordial depression:
 

PSYCHOLOGICAL DEPRESSION	EXISTENTIAL DEPRESSION
1. Specific, understandable feeling of disappointment or failure.	1. Generalized feeling of lowspirits; undefinable, unintelligible, free-floating.
2. Caused by recognizable   problems and difficulties; specific channels of approach;  we know why we are depressed.	2. Uncaused, no recognizable source; arises from within our selves; no channel of approach; we don't know why we are depressed.
3. Temporary—comes and goes with our changing life-situations.	3. Permanent—always present in our selves, altho often repressed.
4. Focused on a specific aspect of  our lives; localized, isolatable.	4. Pervades every corner of our being; cannot be isolated.
5. We can overcome it by correcting  the cause or simply letting it pass.	5. We cannot eliminate it; but we can conceal it or embrace it.

       C. Differentiating Psychological and Existential Depression.

    The rest of this chapter on existential depression
—13 pages in all—will be found in
Our Existential Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, & Death.
Go to the publisher's website for details: www.existentialbooks.com.

    Another (4-page) version of this chapter appears in:
Opening to Grace: Transcending Our Spiritual Malaise.
It is Chapter 3:
"Psychological Depression & Spiritual Depression".

    If you would like to read a three-page online article
about the differences between psychological depression
and existential depression, go to:
"Being Depressed in Spirit: Deeper than Psychological Depression".