Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression
Lewis Wolpert
(Faber, £7.99)
Buy it at a discount at BOL
This is probably the most important book published so far this year, in that it may save lives. There has already been a trade paperback, but this new edition has an updated introduction (of which more in a minute). This book is important because depression now seems to be prevalent enough to affect the lives of those without it. It is also a good idea not only to discover what those who suffer from depression are going through, but to use the book to perform a bit of self-diagnosis, and to distinguish clinical depression from a case of the blues or indulgent self-pity. (On a personal note: it would appear that my extreme disinclination to do absolutely anything whatsoever is actually sloth, and not depression.)
One quick test, supported if not overtly recommended by Malignant Sadness , is to see whether the final lines of Robert Burton's "Abstract of Melancholy" apply to oneself: "Ile change my state with any wretch, / Thou canst from geale [jail] or dunghill fetch: / My paines past cure, another Hell, / I may not in this torment dwell, / Now desperate I hate my life, / Lend me an halter or a knife. / All my griefs to this are jolly, / Naught so damn'd as Melancholy."
Professor Wolpert is well qualified to write about the subject: not only is he an excellent writer, but he has suffered from depression himself. He is also intelligent enough, and scientifically minded enough, to be able to step aside from the stigma that attaches itself to many sufferers. There should be no shame, however much the mental state the condition drives one into may encourage feelings of guilt. It might help to know that sufferers are in good company: Robert Lowell, Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, John Ruskin, Cowper, Donne, John Stuart Mill, Edgar Allan Poe . . .
None of which is guaranteed to be any help in the treatment of someone undergoing the full-blown symptoms. (Knowing that Poe suffered from it is no help at all.) Wolpert's new introduction describes a bout that occurred after the first publication of Malignant Sadness : "When a friend urged me to read my own book I was not even amused." Sad, that, but understandable. The trick, it would appear, is to keep doing things. Wolpert quotes Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (Wolpert's title is a very deliberate salute to that great work): "I write of Melancholy, by being busy to avoid Melancholy." His work even closes with Burton's advice: "Be not idle."
That is all well and good, and more useful than a well-meaning exhortation to cheer up, but there is much more to this book. Although there is something mildly alarming about saying so, it is worth reading in its own right. Wolpert quotes Stanley Jackson, who has written a history of the subject: "With such distress, we are at the very heart of being human." Chapters address the question of who gets depressed and why, the experience of depression in other cultures, the incidence and risk of suicide, the comparative virtues of psychotherapy and drugs; all in lucid, no-nonsense prose.
No-nonsense is a key quality here, one suspects. Having a no-nonsense partner might help, too. Wolpert, ceaselessly contemplating suicide, writes that his wife "became very angry and said my suicide would have an intolerable effect on her and my children. However, she agreed to help me in a year's time if my condition was unchanged. Fortunately I believed her, and so began my slow recovery."
