50 Psychology Classics (57 page)

Thoughts or fantasies of suicide.

Insomnia.

Confusion, inability to focus, memory lapses.

Hypochondria—the mind's way of not facing up to its own disintegration, blaming the body.

Loss of libido and appetite.

Styron also notes the idiosyncratic nature of the “black dog.” For instance, most sufferers begin the day poorly, often unable to get out of bed, and their
mood lightens only as the day goes on. Styron seemed to be the opposite, usually quite “together” in the morning, but by the afternoon dark clouds had gathered and he experienced almost unbearable feelings and thoughts into the evening. Only some time after the evening meal did he again experience some respite. Normally a good sleeper, he had to take a prescription tranquilizer to snatch even two to three hours of slumber. He discovered that depression ebbs or becomes rampant according to the hour of the day because physiologically it involves a disruption of the circadian rhythms, which play a strong part in daily mood cycles.

Styron also reports a “helpless stupor” in which normal thinking and logic disappear. Taken to its extreme, depression literally turns people mad. Stress on the neurotransmitters causes a depletion of the brain chemicals norepinephrine and serotonin and an increase of the hormone cortisol. These chemical and hormonal imbalances create “an organ in convulsion” that makes the person feel stricken. He rues the fact that the word “brainstorm” has already been taken in the English language, because the image of a storm raging inside the brain conveys its violent power—fierce, seemingly unrelenting, clouding everything.

Styron writes about his literary inspiration, Albert Camus, whose novels he had discovered relatively late. He had actually arranged to meet Camus when the news came of the novelist's death. Despite never knowing him, Styron felt a great loss. Camus had often battled depression, and many of his novels explore the theme of suicide.

Styron devotes a fair portion of
Darkness Visible
to discussing people he knows who suffered from depression. He wonders how his friend Romain Gary, a distinguished author, former diplomat,
bon vivant
, and womanizer, could become a person who put a bullet to his brain? If someone like this could decide that life was not worth living, could it not happen to anyone?

Families of the dead find it hard to accept that their relative could take their own life. The reason we have a taboo against suicide is that we believe that it indicates cowardice—taking the easy way out—when in fact it is more about an inability to endure the pain of being alive any longer. We forgive people who kill themselves to end physical pain, yet not mental distress.

These days, Styron notes, with greater care and awareness about the condition most people do not end up killing themselves as a result of depression. But if they do, he suggests, “there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.”

Styron observes that artistic types have a greater susceptibility to depression, hence the long roll call of their suicides, including Hart Crane, Vincent van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Diane Arbus, and Marth
Rothko. Vladimir Mayakovsky, a Russian poet, condemned his countryman Sergei Esenin's suicide, only to take his own life a few years later. What message can we take from this? That we should never be judgmental, because those left alive cannot feel or even imagine how people who commit suicide really feel.

Part of the reason that depression can be difficult to treat is that it often has no single identifiable cause. Genetics, chemical imbalances, and past experience and behavior may all be important, and to treat one aspect may leave out another. One can attribute a major depression to a particular crisis, but as Styron notes, most people who go through bad things come out remarkably OK and do not descend into a spiral of illness. This suggests that, rather than the event being the cause, it may simply have been a trigger for an underlying depressive potential lying dormant.

This is what Styron believes happened with him: He gave up drinking for health reasons and this allowed his demons, no longer deadened by alcohol, to fly out of their cave. With his shield against a sort of permanent anxiety gone, he had to feel everything he had narcotized into submission. His first sign of depression was a sort of deadness to things normally delightful to him—walking his dogs in the woods or summer on Martha's Vineyard. He turned in on himself, unable to escape a constant barrage of painful thoughts.

It may seem obvious, but Styron points to the one element underpinning all depression: loss, whether fear of abandonment, or of being alone, or of losing loved ones. In Styron's case this seemed correct, as his mother died when he was 13, an early trauma that gave him a deep and early experience of loss. In
Darkness Visible
he comes to the view that his actual event of depression was simply the manifestation of a deeper, lifelong anxiety. He realizes that similar to Camus, depression and suicide had been constant themes in his books, and reflects that his depression, “when it finally came to me, was in fact no stranger, not even a visitor unannounced; it had been tapping at my door for decades.”

He mentions that his father, a shipyard engineer, was also a sufferer. Between the genetic heritage, the early death of his mother, and his artistic sensibility, Styron was probably a prime candidate for the disease.

Psychotherapy does not do much for people in an advanced staged of depression, and Styron found that neither it nor drugs did anything to alleviate his condition. Despite the claims of many doctors, he knew that for serious depression there is no fast-acting remedy. Antidepressants or cognitive therapy, or a combination of them, may do the job of healing the tortured mind, but
neither can be fully depended on. Despite many advances in treatment, there is no magic bullet, no quick-acting vaccine. Depression's causes remain somewhat of a mystery.

The dénouement of Styron's depression came only after he admitted himself to hospital. He believes that the anonymous stability of the medical routine saved his life, and he wished he had done it sooner. “For me,” he writes, “the real healers were seclusion and time.”

What he took from the experience was a knowledge that although depression seems permanent to the sufferer, it is actually like a storm whose fury always dies out; as long as you can just stay alive you will defeat it. He recalls the theme of Camus's
The Myth of Sisyphus
that we still have an obligation to try to survive, even if there is an absence of hope. Easier said than done, yet nearly all who suffer depression come out the other side relatively unscathed. For those who do come through, a uniquely light or joyous feeling awaits.

Styron believes that much of the literature around depression is “breezily optimistic.” Some patients respond well to certain drugs, or certain forms of therapy, but we are not so far advanced in our knowledge that definite promises can be made. Sufferers are naturally eager to believe in a quick salvation, but it only sets them up for disappointment when there is no speedy alleviation of the misery. Styron was writing over 15 years ago, but the situation has not changed.

When you think that depression is a disease that distorts or brings to the fore issues to do with our very sense of self, surely it is not surprising that cures are not instant. Depression does involve imbalances of brain chemicals and may also result from negative internal conversations, but beyond this it is about the psyche or overall sense of self. Styron, for instance, was only able to make sense of his depressive bouts by reflecting on the entirety of his life. Some of the causes were indeed physical—a withdrawal from alcohol, and an incorrect dosage of tranquilizers—but they went deeper to questions about his identity and past.

Only 84 pages long,
Darkness Visible
will not take you long to read but could be a great teacher. Although so many creative types have succumbed to depression, it is also their responsibility to try to “describe the indescribable,” and Styron's attempt is one of the best. Rather than depressing the reader, his essay is strangely uplifting.

Born in 1925 in Newport News, Virginia, Styron was able to read at an early age and published many short stories in his school newspaper
.

He obtained a BA degree from Duke University, and the following year joined the US Marine Corps, serving as first lieutenant during the last two years of the Second World War. After his discharge he settled in New York, working for the trade division of publisher McGraw-Hill and taking writing classes at the New School for Social Research. He lived in Paris in the early 1950s, where he helped to establish the legendary literary journal
Paris Review.

His first novel,
Lie Down in Darkness
(1951), which followed the suicidal descent of a young woman, was a literary sensation and was awarded the American Academy's Prix de Rome. Other books include the Pulitzer Prizewinning
The Confessions of Nat Turner
(1967), and the bestseller and American Book Award winner
Sophie's Choice
(1979), made into a film starring Meryl Streep. The award mentioned in
Darkness Visible
was the Prix Mondial Cino del Duca, given annually to an artist or scientist who has made a significant contribution to humanism
.