Dogs, Monsters and Demons
Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Sally Brampton
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
Her openness to all sorts of treatment, including acupuncture, is refreshing, as is the ease with which she advises friends and family on how to be most helpful. Brampton's story is accessible and endearing. -- Publishers Weekly
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How good does a book about depression have to be before the reader becomes too depressed to read it? The further I got with Sally Brampton's utterly involving memoir, the harder it was to turn the pages. By the end of it, I was mightily relieved: the author had survived and so had I. -- The Guardian
As Andrew Solomon suggests in this exhaustively researched, provocative and often deeply moving survey of depression, depression is ''usually the consequence of a genetic vulnerability activated by external stress.'' -- The New York Times
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Depression is a country that the undepressed can't enter, but Solomon, who has travelled there and knows it well, bends all his energy and talent as a writer to sending us snapshots from this terrifying land (mood, he writes, 'is a frontier like deep ocean or deep space'). -- The Guardian
How Depressives Talk about Depression
Page Contents
Shoot the Damn Dog
"This is a memoir of depression. It is also my story, because I
believe that we learn through stories.
We learn that we are not alone.
My story is no better or worse than the next person's, just as my
depression was no better or worse, although it felt like it at the time. I thought I had no hope of ever making it back to that place I called life. I thought, too, that I was the only one who felt that way. Depression feels like the most isolated place on earth. No wonder they call it a disease of loneliness.
If you are reading this book and you feel that way too then you
are not alone. I understand how you feel. I think that anyone who has suffered from even mild depression understands how it feels. Yet we forget that others understand our suffering. We withdraw, isolate or shut down completely. We lose ourselves in our selves, and in the illness" (Page 1).
It's no secret that one popular way of talking about depression is to use comparisons or metaphors to try to describe the sensation of being depressed. Brampton is no exception to this trend by any means. She kind of overdoes it a little:
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I think metaphors used strategically can be useful for describing depression, especially to people who have never experienced the illness. The fact that metaphors are so common - and the fact that Brampton relies upon them regularly - is evidence of how difficult to describe the pain that is numbness, and how difficult it is to make people see and understand pain that has no visible signs.
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Yet I think there should be a change in what metaphors are employed when we talk about depression. For example, while descriptive and gruesome, I don't find metaphors like this particularly useful: ​"The darkness gathers in my head. It is black, this day. Blacker than black, heavy and suffocating. And the monster is still at my throat. Its form is that of a serpent, with a thick, muscular tail covered in scales that wraps round and around my neck, pulling tight. At its head there is no mouth or eyes, just a single bird's talon, a black claw tipped with sharp silver. The claw sinks into the front of my throat and hangs fast" (Page 29).
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It's like telling someone your headache feels like a knife being stabbed into your head, or that your arm feels like someone ran it over with their car; assuming none of us have experienced being stabbed in the head, these comparisons get us no closer to understanding pain. They make us rely much too heavily upon our imagination. They are useful for helping us imagine the magnitude of the pain, but not as useful in helping us imagine the effect of the pain, or what it must feel like exactly.
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When I am depressed, it feels like I am grieving. It feels as though someone very close to me has died, someone without whom I feel my life can't go on. So I cry a lot, and I stay in bed, and I can't concentrate on anything without thinking of how empty it feels now that he's died.
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I'm sure you've noticed by now that I'm pretty up front with you about my opinion, so it shouldn't surprise you a whole lot when I say I really didn't care for this book at all. There are a lot of great issues surrounding depression that Brampton deals with, but as a whole I think her book missed the mark. Let's talk.
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In my book, Brampton gets tons of points for her honesty; her memoir really bares all to her readers, which is something that I - and I'm sure others - appreciated. It takes guts to do that, especially when we're talking about a disease with a lot of social taboo all over it. She walks us through all three of her stays as an inpatient in the hospital's psychiatric ward, her alcohol binges, the details of her divorce and her subsequent relationship with another man. I mean, all of it.
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But I have a feeling I wasn't Brampton's target audience, and I was sort of put off from the book from the first page, which reads as follows:
The reason I was put off from this is because I'm not all that interested in a book about depression for depressives. I'm more interested in a book that will speak to non-depressives about what depression is like. I'm not heartless - I understand the sentiment behind her purpose - I just don't think it's as useful. If more authors took on the challenge of writing to people who have no understanding of depression, these issues of social exile, moral contempt, and feelings of not being understood would probably go away. Writing for that purpose might even be able to close the gap.
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That being said, I found her
phrase "We lose ourselves in our
selves, and in the illness" (Page
1) really wonderful. Her
description of isolation and
social withdrawal reminds me
of Hansen's Disease. It serves
as a great acknowledgement
that there is a strong social
aspect to depression (which is
there because of the gap), which
makes the illness harder to deal
with.
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Yet her persistent use of the word "we" in the passage also rubbed me the wrong way. I think the intention was to create a sense of community among depressives at the same time as she's acknowledging the tendency to withdraw. It bothers me, however, because I find it self-contradictory, as much of her book ends up being. Brampton writes: "We learn that we are not alone," (Page 1) and "Like all depressives, I like to disappear" (Page 89).
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She also writes: "Depressive illness, as well as being complex, is highly individual" (Page 23). So, on the one hand, we're all alike. On the other, we're all unique.
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I think it isn't so much that she contradicts herself that bothers me, but the fact that she doesn't acknowledge it at all. Depression itself is a complex illness full of contradictions in themselves. She touches on a lot of these contradictions in a lot of different places (whether she means to or not, I'm unsure) but she never unpacks them for us. She has prime opportunities to explore the contradictions built into the disease, but does not.
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For example, she writes, "It was that lack of moral outrage and absence of any feeling that, more than anything else, convinced me that I had to do something to ease the terrible grip depression had on me" (Page 176). Here she tells us she experiences numbness.
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Then, later, she writes about her alcoholism: "But I loved the effect, the way it stopped the pain, stopped me feeling" (Page 225). Here she tells us she experiences pain, and numbs it with alcohol.
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I think both of these sentences are true, in spite of the fact that they contradict each other. I think the most painful thing about depression is how numb it makes you feel. But again, she does not take on the contradiction, and does not take the opportunity to speak to the crowd of non-depressives who might be interested in learning.
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While Brampton's book is great as an honest account of depression, as a recalling of the various therapies, treatments and medications that she tried, and as a testimony to the difficulty of living with depression, the book might actually widen the gap more than close it.
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For example, I jumped for joy reading this: "There is no medical term for the illness of depression. It is known, variously, as clinical, major, or severe depression," (Page 9) because it lays the groundwork for understanding depression as a medical condition which hasn't even been properly inducted into the category of illnesses which have names. And this: "We are people first, depressives second," (Page 17) which demonstrates the phenomenon in which patients' identities are defined by their illness (see: leper). And this: "Inside, they write that they are sorry to hear that I've been unwell. That they have always thought of me as 'such a strong person'. My sickness has a moral tone," (Page 32) which criticizes others' responses to her illness.
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But she really needs to be more careful with passages like this: "So there you have it. My life in two choices. To be happy or to die. I choose happy. It sounds flippant. It's not. If I choose to look up and not down, it's because I know what waits below" (Page 19). I mean, this totally undoes her criticism about people writing her letters with a "moral tone" -- she frames happiness as a choice, re-establishing the problematic ideology that those who attempt suicide choose death over happiness, take the easy way out, and are not morally or emotionally strong enough to overcome. UGGGHH.
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"The monster lives at my gate" (Page 4).
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"Even in the darkness..." (Page 6).
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"...always defining myself by the melancholia that seems to dog my heels; the black dog as it is sometimes known. Frankly, I'd happily shoot the damn dog and be done with it... " (Page 9).
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"It is as if the mind draws a veil across itself" (Page 10).
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"I doubt I am alone in being haunted by my illness" (Page 11).
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"I was down in the black pit and I was crying" (Page 17).
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"The monster is at my throat, claw stuck fast" (Page 26).
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"Depression is the great thief" (Page 33).
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"It felt as if I lost my balance" (Page 42).
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"But in depression as pathology, it seems only capable of chipping away at the solid block of frozen feelings, or lack of feelings characterised by the black hole of which so many sufferers speak" (Page 190).
This was the least terrifying image I found in googling "psych ward"...
The Noonday Demon
"We would all like Prozac to do it for us, but in my experience, Prozac doesn't do it unless we help it along. Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason. These fortune-cookie admonitions sound pat, but the surest way out of depression is to dislike it and not to let yourself grow accustomed to it. Block out the terrible thoughts that invade your mind" (Page 29).
"Similarly, depression hits different people in different
ways: some are predisposed to resist or battle through it, while others are helpless in its grip. Willfulness and pride may allow one person to get through a depression that would fell another whose personality is more gentle and acquiescent.
Depression interacts with personality. Some people are
brave in the face of depression (during it and afterward) and some are weak...If everyone has the capacity for some measure of depression under some circumstances, everyone also has the capacity to fight depression to some degree under some circumstances. Often, the fight takes the form of seeking out the treatments that will be most effective in the battle. It involves finding help while you are still strong enough to do so. It involves making the most of the life you have between your most severe episodes. Some horrendously symptom-ridden people are able to achieve real success in life; and some people are utterly destroyed by the mildest forms of the illness" (Page 23).
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I really think all of us - even great writers like Brampton and Solomon - need to start being a lot more careful about the things we say which might contribute to the part of depression that exists in others' minds as a moral weakness. Depression, like leprosy, seems to carry this taboo that says the person afflicted by the disease is somehow morally or emotionally weaker than others. The above passage from Solomon's book substantiates the myth. I have to believe his intentions were good, taking root in helping the reader understand that depression is different in everybody who experiences it, and responses to depression are therefore different as well. But language like "some people are utterly destroyed by the mildest forms of the illness" sounds really harsh, and sort of implies that not all depressives are weak, but some are.
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Here's another:
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Man, what is it with all these writers getting all preachy on us? It's like when your mom catches you in a moral conundrum and wants to offer words of wisdom that she thinks are really helpful but that are just cliche and make your ears bleed. It's the same thing here. I think we see this type of lecture-esque, fortune-cookie-words-of-wisdom response more for depression than for any other illness out there that I can think of. I for one can't imagine someone lecturing a guy with the flu, or with diabetes or cancer. Why depression?
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I think it goes back to that moral connection, which if I didn't hate before I sure do now. Stopping this type of response, the dolling out of unsolicited advice, might help curb that link between moral weakness and depression. But even if it doesn't, it would sure be less annoying.
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Let's end on a happy note, something about Solomon's book that I actually really love. He deals with the issue of talking in metaphors, comparisons, and abstracts head-on. Here are three passages in rapid succession which I loved:
"[Depression] can be described only in metaphor and allegory. Saint Anthony in the desert, asked how he could differentiate between angels who came to him humble and devils who came in rich disguise, said you could tell by how you felt after they had departed. When an angel left you, you felt strengthened by his presence; when a devil left, you felt horror. Grief is a humble angel who leaves you with strong, clear thoughts and a sense of your own depth. Depression is a demon who leaves you appalled" (Page 16).
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"Depressives use the phrase "over
the edge" all the time to deliniate
the passage from pain to madness.
The very physical description
frequently entails falling "into the
abyss." It's odd that so many people
have such a consistent vocabulary,
because the edge is really quite an
abstracted metaphor. Few of us have
ever fallen off the edge of anything,
and certainly not into an abyss. The
Grand Canyon? A Norwegian fjord?
A South African diamond mine? It's
difficult even to find an abyss to fall
into. When asked, people describe
the abyss pretty consistently. In the
first place, it's dark. You are falling
away from the sunlight toward a place
where the shadows are black. Inside it,
you cannot see, and the dangers are
everywhere (it's neither soft-bottomed
nor soft-sided, the abyss). While you are
falling, you don't know how deep you
can go, or whether you can in any way
stop yourself. You hit invisible things
over and over again until you are
shredded, and yet your environment is
too unstable for you to catch onto
anything" (Page 27).
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"Depression is a condition that is almost unimaginable to anyone who has no known it. A sequence of metaphors -- vines, trees, cliffs, etc. -- is the only way to talk about the experience. It's not an easy diagnosis because it depends on metaphors, and the metaphors one patient chooses are different from those selected by another patient" (Page 29).
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Solomon tells us that depression wants to be talked about in metaphor, then he gives us one of the most common metaphors of all, and then he explains why metaphors are so necessary to our language about the illness. He doesn't just proceed with metaphors about black holes, vines and devils, hoping we will follow along; he spells it out, and when he uses the metaphor of the abyss, he exercises it to its full extent, telling us what the abyss looks like, feels like, etc. Most of us, myself included, like to use metaphors without fully explaining or describing them, because honestly that's most of the fun of metaphors - they're like puzzles. But using them fully and articulately is imperative in this case, because when talking about depression, a disease with so many built-in contradictions and ambiguities, linguistic ambiguity is hard to forgive.
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This book by Andrew Solomon differs from Sally Brampton's approach in that it is much more a research project than a personal narrative. Solomon's own experience as a depressive is incorporated into the book, but his text is more concerned with depression on a larger scale. His book is incredibly well-researched and really thorough in its exploration and analysis of the disease. Solomon explores depression in different geographical regions. He explores depression through law, medicine and science. He explores depression through his personal connection to it. Clocking in at 510 massive pages, not including a bibliography and index, The Noonday Demon is certainly intimidating.
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Due to his approach, language, and the sheer size of the book, Solomon's text is much less accessible than Brampton's. You have to go in prepared for some heavy duty stuff if you want to read this.
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Looking at content, Solomon, like Brampton, includes some really insightful things -- and some things that weren't really my favorite. The first chapter is the one in which he really lays the groundwork for what's to follow; he establishes what depression is, how people talk about it, how it feels, etc. It's an incredibly in-depth primer for understanding the illness.
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For example, in this chapter Solomon writes: "Highly politicized rhetoric has blurred the distinction between depression and its consequences - the distinction between how you feel and how you act in response. This is in part a social and medical phenomenon, but it is also the result of linguistic vagary attached to emotional vagary" (Page 16). AHA!!! It looks like Solomon is talking about the exact same gap I'm thinking about. Think about leprosy, the disease where the consequences (skin lesions, blindness) get confused for the disease itself. As Solomon points out, the same is true for depression, in which one's response to the illness is often mistakenly considered for the illness itself. Thank you, Dr. Solomon!
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He also mentions, much like Brampton mentioned, the part of depression that accounts for the depressive's exile or isolation: "It is the aloneness within us made manifest, and it destroys not only connection to others but also the ability to be peacefully alone with oneself" (Page 15). We need more phrases like this in popular culture, for everyone to read and/or hear. These are the kinds of phases that (I think) would help us close the gap some more. But his acknowledgement of the gap does a lot of work in that area, too, because the more people who acknowledge that there's a serious misunderstanding of depression in much of the population, the easier it will be to close the gap.
But, you know, I can't let Solomon off the hook without criticizing a little.
Works Cited
Brampton, Sally. Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression. New York:
W.W. Norton, 2008. Print.
Solomon, Andrew. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. New York:
Scribner, 2001. Print.
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I think it's fair to say that making a commercial or a movie or anything about depression is really challenging. Movies and commercials have the task of figuring out what a visual representation of depression would look like without relying too heavily on stereotypes, so that we can complicate the notion of depression and what a depressed person looks like. They have to show us a narrative and keep us entertained in order to earn profits, which when I think about my experience with depression (which consists of a lot of sleeping, eating, and repeat) seems nearly impossible.
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Books, on the other hand, have the task of figuring out how to talk about depression using only words; they have to make us see what depression looks like without giving us an image. They have to talk about a condition that resists language and relies heavily upon abstract metaphors, making it all the more confusing. Nonfiction narratives, moreover, tend to be brutally honest (the good ones, at least). So a person who has experience with an illness that has a history of making its victims feel ashamed is expected to bear all truths to his audience. The author has to do this knowing there exists a whole array of myths about their illness, and that they are probably walking on eggshells with every word they write for fear of accidentally substantiating those myths. This is the author's task.