Friday, July 17, 2015

Depression: Compulsive Self-Deception

"The categorical denial of the pain we suffered at the beginning of our lives is harmful in the extreme. Suppose someone setting out on a long walk sprains an ankle right at the outset. That person may decide to ignore the pain and to soldier on because he/she has been looking forward to the outing, but sooner or later others will notice that they are limping and will ask what has happened. When they hear the whole story they will understand why this person is limping and advise him/her to go for treatment. But in connection with the sufferings of childhood, which play a similar role in our lives to a sprained ankle at the beginning of a long hike, then things are different. Those sufferings cannot be "played down," they will leave their mark on the whole enterprise. The crucial difference in this case is that normally no one will take any notice. The whole of society is, as it were, in unison with the sufferer, who cannot say what has happened. It may well be that, despite the violation of their integrity, people who have been injured in this way really have no memories. If they have to spend their whole lives with people who play down the traumas of childhood, then they have no choice but to connive in this self-delusion. Their lives will progress in much the same way as the outing of the hiker who has sprained his ankle but pretends that nothing has happened. Should they, however, encounter people who know about the long-term effects of childhood traumas, then they will have the chance to abandon their denial and good prospects of healing the wounds they have been carrying around with them.

 Many world-famous stars who are envied and idolized are in fact profoundly lonely people. As the example of Dalida indicates, they were misunderstood precisely because they could not understand themselves. And they were not able to understand themselves because their environment responded to them with admiration rather than understanding. Finally, they took their own lives. This vortex tells us a lot about the mechanisms of depression. People seek understanding by pinning their hopes to success, they take endless trouble to achieve such success and to arouse the admiration of an ever-larger audience. But this admiration cannot provide any real sustenance as long as understanding is absent. Despite the success they have made of their careers, life is meaningless because they remain strangers to themselves. And this self-alienation persists because they want to completely forget what happened to them in their early lives and to deny the sufferings of childhood. As this is the way society functions, these stars were bound to remain misunderstood and suffered the torments of chronic loneliness." -- Alice Miller
above excerpt from the article ion: Depression Compulsive Self-Decept
by Alice Miller

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