The optics of depression
A hope for a future with meaning
April 2, 2008
Logan Fidler
It is commonly said that people “see what they want to see.” In other words, people see the world around them based on their own expectations, conscious and unconscious, of what it should look like.
During the past three years at Trinity Western University depression has shifted my perceptions of the world and caused me to see things a certain way. A theory called Depressive Realism argues that as a result of depression the way that I see the world may actually be more accurate than the way a non-depressed person sees the world. Although some of the theory has been disproven by recent research, the broad point that happiness may largely be a matter of delusion still holds true.
Slavoj Zizek, working off of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, develops a concept called the objet petit a in his theoretical edifice that can shine light on what might make depressed people see the world as they do and, at the same time, provide hope that the optics of depression can be corrected.
Simply stated, the objet petit a is an object that is created by desire. However, as Slovenian philosopher Zizek points out, objet petit a is no ordinary object like a chair or a top hat rather it is “an object that can be perceived only by a gaze distorted by desire, an object that does not exist for an ‘objective gaze.’ The objet petit a is an object that does not exist apart from human perception because it is nothing but the embodiment of the distorted gaze of human perception, a mapping of human desire onto the contours of objective reality.
A woman with anorexia might look at her body and see fat where a doctor would look at her body and see no fat at all. The fat that the anorexic sees on her body is a good example of an objet petit a. By looking at her body through the lens of her disorder, the anorexic woman sees something that cannot be seen by an objective gaze: fat.
For depressive realism to be an accurate theory, it would have to put forward that depressed individuals lack an interested gaze, a gaze permeated by desire. It would also have to posit that depressed people occupy a gaze that is more objective than others. This would only make sense since an objective gaze would be able to see reality more accurately, like the way the gaze of a doctor looking objectively at an anorexic individual sees the reality of a fragile and deteriorating body.
From my own experience with depression, I would argue that the depressed gaze is rife with desire and thus, like the anorexic gaze, sees things that aren’t actually there. The objet petit a seen by a depressed person, which alters his/her vision of the world, is formed by his/her eschatology, that is, the way s/he envisions the end. The eschatological end seen by a depressed person is full of nothing and for that reason the world seen through the eyes of a depressed person is a world marked everywhere with a lack of meaning. If there is no hope in the future, there is no hope in the present. The eschatology of the depressed subject is therefore a realized eschatology where the events and conditions that belong to the eschatological end are described as if they already belonged to present experience. Constructing hope in times of depression therefore becomes a matter of re-envisioning and rebuilding a future with substantial positive content.
As human beings we are shapers of the world. Our shaping, which is brought about by work, maintains the tension between present and future. The only means to re-envision and rebuild a future with positive content is through work. For the depressed individual, work can keep the empty future from fully spilling into the present. However, merely keeping the empty future at bay is insufficient and only causes more anxiety.
The future, unlike the past, is something we can actively change and re-envision. In the act of working we begin to unconceal a new world and thus a new future. Work can be as simple as writing a journal entry, a small paper or celebrating communion with others at church. In each instance we actively shape the present and thus our orientation towards, and content of, the future.
Re-envisioning and rebuilding the future from nothing is a long and difficult process, but with each stroke of the pen, each conversation and each moment we choose to actively work and build something, we are re-shaping both our vision of the future and the way we see the objet petit a.
Now you go...
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