紙 倉 庫

Healthy Depression

(此文約於8月份寫成，經William修改)



Being depressed, we all teach ourselves well.

The second distinction in the Object Relation Theory would be, in my point of view and my phrase, the “Healthy Depression”.

Depression has generally a negative connotation. Hence reading Klein’s Depressive Position as a normal and positive condition in infant’s development, I was impressed, and eventually convinced.

Klein presumes two primary positions beginning in the first months of human development: the first coming Paranoid Position and by terms with the later Depressive Position. These positions can be referred to cognizing the actual world that babies have not yet realized. First, a baby comes to the Paranoid Position, in which he splits things into two categories: the satisfying ones to be eternally good, the frustrating ones to be eternally bad. This is how babies perceive the world.

However, the baby’s world is very limited, and mostly centres around the one person –the mother. The satisfaction usually refers to a breast show on time, and the frustration as the contrast. Splitting the same person, the same breast into two –the good one and the bad one, as individuals –, we are precisely acknowledged that the baby does not know the world enough well. This is the position of a baby with his love and hate divided.

After that, if things go well, a baby comes to the Depressive Position. In this position, baby finds out that the loving one and the hating one in fact to be the same object. Hence the eternal caring, loving role does not exist, as a never achievable wish, Klein called this cognition of reality as depressive. For an accurate understanding to the world, this is a necessary depression.

We may at first be astonished to know the real world is so depressing, however, Klein seems convincing. Before we adjust our conceptions and our expressions to fit into this world, we have to know this world in advance. In another phrase, we have to install the knowledge about this world, which means to revise, or to replace our primary knowledge, our primary wish and belief.

These dichotomic positions seem remain in place today, long after we think we had grown up and known about this world well enough. Ask yourself if you still believe in the ultimate Heaven and Hall, as you know the real world is neither both. They exist in human culture as neither fact nor fraud, but rather a shared mental position –a paranoid wish. We know we must distinguish expectation from reality, depressingly. Or we may boldly presume: where there is reality, there is depression. Because both reality and will never compromise, and the only certain thing is uncertainty. Even though we are so sure that our life always fulfills new satisfying surprises, it may result from that we had been excluded our ultimate wishes long time before. We have been exposed in this depression too often and too long, therefore we already get used to laugh depressingly, cry depressingly, expect depressingly, satisfied and frustrated depressingly.

In Klein’s eyes, maybe taking the world to be whether too good or too bad –to mistake the reality –, is more dangerous. Taking depressive position is the best way to know the world.


Or we shall say, depression is the real taste of the world.


(圖：Edward Gorey; postcard)