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A review by shorshewitch
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron
5.0
I stumbled upon a passage from this book in one of the articles about depression on Brain Pickings. The passage went like this:
“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed “melancholia,” a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.”
The moment I read it I knew I wanted to read the whole essay. This was originally a lecture which later was turned into an essay for a magazine and then this book titled “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness”. It tells us William Styron’s personal journey into and through the claws of depression.
As per a recent survey (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-09-14/the-10-most-depressed-countries) India ranks number 1 in the list of depressed countries. And there is hardly any awareness.
I have always said this and would stand by it that “depression” as a word may sound elementary, but it ravages the mind akin to a cancerous tumor - A malignant, mutant tumor. When I hear an unaffected person saying, “What was there to commit suicide? Everyone goes through problems”, what they are failing to understand is a suicidal individual is no longer “thinking about problems”. They are numb, listless, hopeless, and sometimes constantly anxious.
Like Styron says,
“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time—and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases—most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer."
Therefore, awareness is a necessity. Although since ages, we have been striving hard to jot down the ifs and buts of the disease, not much material can be accurate to the point because this disease doesn’t wreak havoc in any certain way. The ones affected can hardly acknowledge and the ones impervious to it can hardly understand.
If I look at Styron’s essay through the eyes of a victim, I find it patronizing in some places. Because as a victim I may tend to not agree with a few statements he has made. But one cannot forget that Styron has made these statements particularly through his own point of view, as a diseased. These may not and are not applicable to all cases. If I keep that in mind, and look at the essay objectively, no longer from the eyes of the victim, but from the eyes of the person looking at the victim, the essay makes a lot of sense. It then looks like a comprehensive breakdown of the tumult that goes in a depressed mind.
As a victim, I may not rate it at all but as a third person I will rate it a 5/5, essentially because, although it may not be an extensive source of depression material, it attempts to familiarize the unaffected with most of the dreadful symptoms of the malady, thus addressing its gravity in the minds of people who might think a depressed person is just being negative, is not making required efforts, can be pulled out of it easily and any such thoughts which fail to grasp the sensitivity of the issue.
Thus, I would recommend it to all to be read at least once (not as a be-all exhaustive material but as an informative piece), because it is essential – because “the wind of the wing of madness” might just be around you or your loved one and you would have no idea till it turns out into a full blown fatal typhoon.
“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed “melancholia,” a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.”
The moment I read it I knew I wanted to read the whole essay. This was originally a lecture which later was turned into an essay for a magazine and then this book titled “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness”. It tells us William Styron’s personal journey into and through the claws of depression.
As per a recent survey (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-09-14/the-10-most-depressed-countries) India ranks number 1 in the list of depressed countries. And there is hardly any awareness.
I have always said this and would stand by it that “depression” as a word may sound elementary, but it ravages the mind akin to a cancerous tumor - A malignant, mutant tumor. When I hear an unaffected person saying, “What was there to commit suicide? Everyone goes through problems”, what they are failing to understand is a suicidal individual is no longer “thinking about problems”. They are numb, listless, hopeless, and sometimes constantly anxious.
Like Styron says,
“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time—and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases—most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer."
Therefore, awareness is a necessity. Although since ages, we have been striving hard to jot down the ifs and buts of the disease, not much material can be accurate to the point because this disease doesn’t wreak havoc in any certain way. The ones affected can hardly acknowledge and the ones impervious to it can hardly understand.
If I look at Styron’s essay through the eyes of a victim, I find it patronizing in some places. Because as a victim I may tend to not agree with a few statements he has made. But one cannot forget that Styron has made these statements particularly through his own point of view, as a diseased. These may not and are not applicable to all cases. If I keep that in mind, and look at the essay objectively, no longer from the eyes of the victim, but from the eyes of the person looking at the victim, the essay makes a lot of sense. It then looks like a comprehensive breakdown of the tumult that goes in a depressed mind.
As a victim, I may not rate it at all but as a third person I will rate it a 5/5, essentially because, although it may not be an extensive source of depression material, it attempts to familiarize the unaffected with most of the dreadful symptoms of the malady, thus addressing its gravity in the minds of people who might think a depressed person is just being negative, is not making required efforts, can be pulled out of it easily and any such thoughts which fail to grasp the sensitivity of the issue.
Thus, I would recommend it to all to be read at least once (not as a be-all exhaustive material but as an informative piece), because it is essential – because “the wind of the wing of madness” might just be around you or your loved one and you would have no idea till it turns out into a full blown fatal typhoon.