Continued (2) — On the Usefulness of Depression

Depression may operate as a force that intensifies concentration on a particular activity, creativity and analytical thought, leading to scientific, artistic and philosophical discoveries and creations and, through this route, advancing human consciousness. But the question is whether the suffering of the individual in order to turn the wheel of evolution should be stopped. Is there another way to become free of the suffering of depression and anxiety in life instead of using antidepressants, which in a historicist estimation might not only have an anti-evolutionary function but may also carry long-term psychological and physical side effects for the individual?

James Hillman, one of Jung’s intellectual descendants and the founder of archetypal psychology, writes in his brilliant and profoundly insightful work on psychological alchemy that ancient alchemy contains a saying to the effect that “the alchemical process begins with lead and is stopped from continuing by lead.”

In his perspective, lead is the metal of depression. The feeling we receive from lead is one of limitation, heaviness and darkness, and this is the feeling we find within ourselves in depression. In the form of depth psychology that Hillman introduces, the first metal with which the alchemist begins the process of reaching gold—the Self—is lead: depression.

In his alchemy, there is a stage before lead in which no metal has yet emerged. He calls this the inarticulate and confused prima materia, massa confusa: a substance in which the seeds of all metals are present, yet which is itself of the nature of chaos.

In this view, there is something below depression that must first be overcome: a raw, inarticulate and chaotic mind—a mind that is not even depressed, but confused. In depth psychology, depression—lead—is itself the alchemist’s first achievement. Reaching the black and heavy matter signifies the end of chaos and the beginning of the alchemical process. Yet there is also a danger to which ancient alchemists referred. The alchemical process not only begins with lead—with black, dark and heavy matter—it can also end there, because liberation from lead and its transcendence are the alchemist’s greatest difficulty and most perilous task. This requires much, for the more lead is heated and hammered, the softer it becomes; but finding this heat, and finding the kind of heat through which lead can be transformed, is never easy.

There is another alchemical expression to the effect that lead is the only substance that causes the diamond to suffer and takes away its brilliance. No light or ray passes through lead, which is why lead is used today in radiology to stop radiation. As you can see, this use of figurative and metaphorical language employs archetypes in order to transform the image held by the mind: using the alchemist archetype and lead to invite the mind, at its deepest level, to transform the darkness and heaviness of depression through transcendence into light and the liberation of the Self.

In my view, the human tendency towards transcendence is our most important existential characteristic. The human being is not merely a speaking animal, nor even simply a thinking or tool-making animal. More than any of these characteristics, our orientation towards transcendence expresses our psychological structure and our ontological truth. The human being is the only creature we have so far known that looks at the world and sees it not merely as what it is, but as what it can become. We look at ourselves, other people and the world and continually see in the image before us a capacity that can be realised. Through this most fundamental characteristic, we created civilisation and culture and did not stop advancing. What has propelled us forward throughout history is our unique capacity for transcendence. For no obvious evolutionary reason, we are saddened when a flower withers and delighted when it blossoms, because in it we perceive a capacity either unrealised or realised.