Depression

Depression, then, sums up both the terror of life and death and the hunger for self-perpetuation; how heroic can one get? It is so natural to try to be heroic in the safe and small circle of family or with the loved one, to give in to a “silent retreat” now and then to keep this heroics secure. How many people have an independent gift to give to the cosmos in order to assure their special immortality? Only the creative person can manage that. When the average person can no longer convincingly perform his safe heroics or cannot hide his failure of depression and its terrible guilt. I particularly like Gaylin’s insight that the bogging-down into total helplessness and dependency in depression is itself the last and most natural defense available to the mammalian animal:

Dependency is the basic survival mechanism of the human organism. … When the adult gives up hope in his ability to cope and sees himself incapable of either fleeing or fighting, he is “reduced” to a state of depression. This very reduction with its parallel to the helplessness of infancy becomes … a plea for a solution to the problem of survival via dependency. The very stripping of one’s defenses becomes a form of defensive maneuver.

E. Becker, p.212