Image by Dawid Planeta
Depression, Bibliotherapy, and Catharsis: How Art Can Be a Compassionate Force
A reader suffering from depression asked the Paris Review editors if they could recommend a list of books that portray why and how one should live, as well as those “to help escape [the] present torture.” The writer Sadie Stein (married to former Paris Review editor Lorin Stein) replied on behalf of the magazine in her response essay titled “Life-Affirming Reads” that “everyone’s recovery process is different” and personal tastes tend to correspond to personal histories; she can only say what’s worked for her. Stein says “it is crucial to be with others who understand” and this also applies to books. Mrs. Stein recommends the memoir An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison, whose “hard-won” successes were “tremendously inspiring and deeply comforting.” She goes on to recommend both books that inspire indulgence and escapism as well as those that are life affirming, and her list is an impressive one.
I was taken aback by Stein’s compassion and honesty, how thoughtfully she answered the reader’s letter. I found myself cheering on both Stein and her mentee, because I too know the comforts of bibliotherapy, and I know what it is to be depressed. I have written extensively about depression in my blog, short stories, poems, and my novel A Portal to Vibrancy in hopes of understanding its symptoms and root causes.
I have learned that depression and its bedfellow anxiety can be caused by life changes, seasonal changes, ennui, grandiose expectations (perfectionism), biochemistry, worldly events, and profound feelings of inadequacy (rejection). There is a certain “brain type” prone to depression via the process of rumination, and this is often related to creativity. In my blog post “Naming the Snake,” I explain how practicing meditation and compassion, towards oneself and towards others, can mitigate the negative diatribe of depression. (For an intimate look at this negative diatribe, you can read "The Depressed Person" by David Foster Wallace, if you can bear it.)
I have also learned that catharsis works. Kay Redfield Jamison, who is on both sides of the fence as clinical psychologist and patient of manic depression, quotes a Chinese adage in her book An Unquiet Mind: “Before you can conquer a beast, you must first make it beautiful.” Getting the monster out of one’s head and onto the paper or the canvas, etc., is necessary to gain back power. In this way catharsis is a compassionate act toward the self.
The feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman discusses this very thing in her essay, “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper.” She claims that “work” is necessary to combat mental illness. Gilman’s doctor, the famous nineteenth century physician Silas Weir Mitchell, told her to cure herself by “never [touching] pen, brush, or pencil again for as long as she lived.” This advice nearly brought her to “utter mental ruin.” Gilman discovered that only by indulging in her work (writing) did she again experience “joy and growth and service.” Moreover, Gilman claims she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” purposely to reach women who were suffering from depression, and by presenting them with an “ideal,” (i.e. what would happen to one who obeyed the tenets of “the rest cure”) saved them from insanity. This is in itself, a compassionate act.
I have also learned, most importantly, that the vulnerability one feels with depression can promote profound connections to other people and to animals, as contributor Nikki Hodgson explains in “Managing Depression: How Horses Can Help and Heal,” an essay about her work at Medicine Horse, an equine-assisted psychotherapy facility.
We’re including the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” in this edition, as well as Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” quite possibly the most ingenious short story ever written, and one that portrays the dichotomy of depression and compassion (or lack thereof). Also included here are the potent images of the Polish artist Dawid Planeta of Huffington Post fame, Elephant Journal writer Ciara Hall on romanticizing the fight and not the illness of depression, and other inspirational and empathetic poetry and art.
In this era when mental health is again forefront, we believe there are answers out there on how to heal. Making art, bibliotherapy, catharsis can all be part of the process.
Yours in compassion and creativity,
A reader suffering from depression asked the Paris Review editors if they could recommend a list of books that portray why and how one should live, as well as those “to help escape [the] present torture.” The writer Sadie Stein (married to former Paris Review editor Lorin Stein) replied on behalf of the magazine in her response essay titled “Life-Affirming Reads” that “everyone’s recovery process is different” and personal tastes tend to correspond to personal histories; she can only say what’s worked for her. Stein says “it is crucial to be with others who understand” and this also applies to books. Mrs. Stein recommends the memoir An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison, whose “hard-won” successes were “tremendously inspiring and deeply comforting.” She goes on to recommend both books that inspire indulgence and escapism as well as those that are life affirming, and her list is an impressive one.
I was taken aback by Stein’s compassion and honesty, how thoughtfully she answered the reader’s letter. I found myself cheering on both Stein and her mentee, because I too know the comforts of bibliotherapy, and I know what it is to be depressed. I have written extensively about depression in my blog, short stories, poems, and my novel A Portal to Vibrancy in hopes of understanding its symptoms and root causes.
I have learned that depression and its bedfellow anxiety can be caused by life changes, seasonal changes, ennui, grandiose expectations (perfectionism), biochemistry, worldly events, and profound feelings of inadequacy (rejection). There is a certain “brain type” prone to depression via the process of rumination, and this is often related to creativity. In my blog post “Naming the Snake,” I explain how practicing meditation and compassion, towards oneself and towards others, can mitigate the negative diatribe of depression. (For an intimate look at this negative diatribe, you can read "The Depressed Person" by David Foster Wallace, if you can bear it.)
I have also learned that catharsis works. Kay Redfield Jamison, who is on both sides of the fence as clinical psychologist and patient of manic depression, quotes a Chinese adage in her book An Unquiet Mind: “Before you can conquer a beast, you must first make it beautiful.” Getting the monster out of one’s head and onto the paper or the canvas, etc., is necessary to gain back power. In this way catharsis is a compassionate act toward the self.
The feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman discusses this very thing in her essay, “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper.” She claims that “work” is necessary to combat mental illness. Gilman’s doctor, the famous nineteenth century physician Silas Weir Mitchell, told her to cure herself by “never [touching] pen, brush, or pencil again for as long as she lived.” This advice nearly brought her to “utter mental ruin.” Gilman discovered that only by indulging in her work (writing) did she again experience “joy and growth and service.” Moreover, Gilman claims she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” purposely to reach women who were suffering from depression, and by presenting them with an “ideal,” (i.e. what would happen to one who obeyed the tenets of “the rest cure”) saved them from insanity. This is in itself, a compassionate act.
I have also learned, most importantly, that the vulnerability one feels with depression can promote profound connections to other people and to animals, as contributor Nikki Hodgson explains in “Managing Depression: How Horses Can Help and Heal,” an essay about her work at Medicine Horse, an equine-assisted psychotherapy facility.
We’re including the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” in this edition, as well as Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” quite possibly the most ingenious short story ever written, and one that portrays the dichotomy of depression and compassion (or lack thereof). Also included here are the potent images of the Polish artist Dawid Planeta of Huffington Post fame, Elephant Journal writer Ciara Hall on romanticizing the fight and not the illness of depression, and other inspirational and empathetic poetry and art.
In this era when mental health is again forefront, we believe there are answers out there on how to heal. Making art, bibliotherapy, catharsis can all be part of the process.
Yours in compassion and creativity,
Laurette Folk is Senior Editor of The Compassion Anthology.
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