JOSEPH CAMPBELL—THE HERO'S ROAD MAP

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, August 12, 1904:

“We have no reason to distrust our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has an abyss, it is ours. If dangers are there, we must try to love them. And if we would live with faith in the value of what is challenging, then what now appears to us as most alien will become our truest, most trustworthy friend. Let us not forget the ancient myths at the outset of humanity's journey, the myths about dragons that at the last moment transform into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps every terror is, in its deepest essence, something that needs our recognition or help.”

It is hard to imagine that someone born today or any children younger than 10 years old now alive would enjoy a life free of trauma, suffering, and emotional paroxysms. Because they are human beings, they will have their share of causes and conditions that may lead to seasonal affective disorder, being “out of sorts,” melancholia, disappointment, the “blues,” despondency, or outright depression. It is part of the human condition and often part of an individual's constitutional make-up. With some people, depression is a seed within them that lies dormant until watered by some situation of stress, large or small, and it begins to blossom. It is of such a colossal magnitude in its full-blown state that it is able to overwhelm what we think of as a normal cognitive existence. I believe it was just this mild stirring of the demon's presence that I experienced when I was young. Perhaps it was the overpowering of it by the distractions of schoolwork all the way through medical school that kept my personal demon at bay. It wasn't until I experienced a separation anxiety from my professional identity that it found the conditions ripe for germination. One of the best treatments of the full specter of depression is a book by Andrew Solomon titled The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (2001). When one is gripped by the talons of the demon, this is how Solomon describes the immersion:

“Depression is a condition that is almost unimaginable to anyone who has not known it. A sequence of metaphors—vines, trees, cliffs, etc.--is the only way to talk about the experience. It's not an easy diagnosis because it depends on metaphors, and the metaphors one patient chooses are different from those selected by another patient.”

I agree with him about how difficult it is to communicate one's own sinking into depression. And to find the words that hold the full power of it in order to describe it to someone else is not possible. Because of that personal deficit, I will turn to some quotations from Solomon's book to give the reader some flavor of what depression is like from the inside where the demon has full access to all corners of a person's life. Solomon is articulate in communicating what is so difficult to describe. These descriptions are all intended to paint a picture into which Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), a scholar of myth, added brush strokes that link depression and its environs with archetypal myths.

“Perhaps depression can best be described as emotional pain that forces itself on us against our will, and then breaks free of its externals. Depression is not just a lot of pain; but too much pain can compost itself into depression. … Grief is a humble angel who leaves you with strong, clear thoughts and a sense of your own depth. Depression is a demon who leaves you appalled.”

“Major depression is a birth and a death: it is both the new presence of something and the total disappearance of something.”

“Maybe what is present usurps what becomes absent, and maybe the absence of obfuscatory things reveals what is present. Either way, you are less than yourself and in the clutches of something alien. … Rebuilding of the self in and after depression requires love, insight, work, and, most of all, time.”

“There is no essential self that lies pure as a vein of gold under the chaos of experience and chemistry. Anything can be changed, and we must understand the human organism as a sequence of selves that succumb to or choose one another.”

“We are each the sum of certain choices and circumstances; the self exists in the narrow space where the world and our choices come together.”

“I hated being depressed, but it was also in depression that I learned my own acreage, the full extent of my soul.”

“While life is not only about pain, the experience of pain, which is particular in its intensity, is one of the surest signs of the life force.”

“But we must start doing small things now to lower the level of socio-emotional pollution. We must look for faith (in anything: God or the self or other people or politics or beauty or just about anything) and structure.”

“There is a basic emotional spectrum from which we cannot and should not escape, and I believe that depression is in that spectrum, located near not only grief but also love. Indeed I believe that all the strong emotions stand together, and that every one of them is contingent on what we commonly think of as its opposite. I have for the moment managed to contain the disablement that depression causes, but the depression itself lives forever in the cipher of my brain. It is part of me. To wage war on depression is to fight against oneself, and it is important to know that in advance of the battles.”

“Grief is profoundly important to the human condition. I believe that its most important function is in the formation of attachment. If we did not suffer enough loss to fear it, we could not love intensely. One's wish not to injure those whom one loves—indeed, to help them—also serves the preservation of the species. Love keeps us alive when we recognize the difficulties of the world.”

“It is arguably the case that depressed people have a more accurate view of the world around them than do nondepressed people. Those who perceive themselves to be not much liked are probably closer to the mark than those who believe that they enjoy universal love. A depressive may have better judgment than a healthy person.”

“To put an end to grief would be to license monstrous behavior: if we never regretted the consequences of our actions, we would soon destroy one another and the world. Depression is a misfiring of the brain, and if your cortisol is out of control you should get it back in order. But don't get carried away. To give up the essential conflict between what we feel like doing and what we do, to end the dark moods that reflect that conflict and its difficulties—this is to give up what it is to be human, of what is good in being human.”

“People who have been through a depression and are stabilized often have a heightened awareness of the joyfulness of everyday existence. They have a capacity for a kind of ready ecstasy and for an intense appreciation of all that is good in their life.”

“Depression at its worst is the most horrifying loneliness, and from it I learned the value of intimacy.”

“The unexamined life is unavailable to the depressed. That is, perhaps, the greatest revelation I have had: not that depression is compelling but that the people who suffer from it may become compelling because of it. I hope that this basic fact will offer sustenance to those who suffer and will inspire patience and love in those who witness that suffering.”

“So lies the world before us, and with just such steps we tread a solitary way, survivors as we must be of an impoverishing, invaluable knowledge. We go forward with courage and with too much wisdom but determined to find what is beautiful. … That moment of return from the realm of sad belief is always miraculous and can be stupefyingly beautiful. It is nearly worth the voyage out into despair. None of us would have chosen depression out of heaven's grab bag of qualities, but having been given it, those of us who have survived stand to find something in it. It is who we are.”

The multiple quotations from Solomon touch on many aspects of depression that bring to mind what Joseph Campbell describes as “the hero's journey.” And I believe that it is in myth and metaphor that we can begin to think differently about deep grief and the resultant intense depression. Solomon describes what depression looks like and feels like but he doesn't really explore what it can become. He touches on the idea of depression as a seed that is part of one's bones and blood and how the seed can germinate and flourish. He eschews the language of war when it comes to accommodating what is part of one's own constitution, thus throwing one's experience of adapting to depression into the arena of the victor and the vanquished, a less than helpful approach to the persistent presence of depression's seed.

But what if there is another way to think about depression that would alter what we think about it?

Campbell became a popular spokesperson for myth-making in the 1960s and 1970s as a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College but it wasn't until just before his death that a series of interviews with Bill Moyers and a subsequent book of the same name, The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, (1988), elevated him to the status of a sage on the topic of myth. The aspect of his scholarship that fascinates me the most is the segment on “The Hero's Adventure.” I believe it holds some very interesting ideas not only on the universal myth of the hero, but also on implications it has for explaining depression.

It may be that Andrew Solomon was able to survive his three bouts of major depression in a state that allowed him to gain some deeper understanding of the pathology and the experience. But it is important to point out that all people who suffer major depression do not survive it. It is equally important to point out that metaphors and myth interpretations are not often adequate treatment for depression and that a variety of treatment modalities must be incorporated into its treatment. My ideas about myth and metaphor relate to depression in a different way. They are offered here as a different way to think about the condition and, perhaps, can be thought of as priming thoughts that create the conditions for more conventional therapies. Perhaps how we think about depression will alter what we think will be of most benefit.

What is the hero's adventure? I like to think of this as the hero's journey rather than an adventure, as the term adventure brings to mind an unusual experience marked by excitement and suspense, albeit one of risk and hazard. In most cases, though, we adventure in this world hoping we will be surprised by what we find and that we will return to tell others about our experience. But linking the hero's experience in this case to depression underscores the distinct possibility that the person journeying might not survive, just as some depressives do not survive their journey (it really isn't an adventure, is it?). Not all those journeying into the “dark night of the soul” return to tell about what they have seen and experienced.

So, let us look at what Solomon says about depression, the demon, and see how one might think differently about the journey of the hero. Perhaps we would not think of ourselves as a hero (and here I use the single reference that really includes both men and women) in our own lives and I think that is especially true of someone deeply immersed in depression. For most of us a hero is a triumphant figure, someone who has slain a dragon, for instance. There are certainly individuals who fit the description of a hero, but most people who survive depression are not recognized for their survival. But I would like to suggest that each of us and all of us in all walks of life are heroes in our own lives. If this were not so, then our most precious identities would not propel us forward in our life journeys. Ego is a necessity for survival and if we do not see ourselves as heroes in life's journey, then who are we? We come to the very important questions about our lives: Who am I? What am I here for? and What then shall I do?

In most versions of the hero's myth described by Campbell, the individual who makes the journey is selected or is chosen for it. Depression as a journey of heroic proportions chooses its subject. The appearance of depression is not a choice but the subject can choose how to respond to the open road it offers. The prospect of maturity despite depression is often associated with a coming of age ritual in many cultures and so it has the ring of a maturation process. For most who journey there are acts of separation from the ordinary world, experiencing a supreme ideal, a state of identity fragmentation, and a reemergence into the common world in a newly integrated state. Survival is proof of the struggle and that one has overcome those forces that would submerge and perhaps obliterate identity. Transformation is the only way to experience the vagaries of the personal identity scouring process. For me, this simple explanation of the basic steps of the hero's journey parallel closely how Solomon describes is experience with depression. It is also how I have come to understand and to think about my own experiences with depression.

Solomon sees depression as having at its core a relationship with grief. Grief is the resultant emotion from loss of attachment and we often associate that with the loss of someone whom we have loved (and even the love we have for our own selves). It is a tribute to the bonding of relationships that their loss results in such a state of dark loss and loneliness. If we did not love them deeply, then would we grieve so extensively and so long? In my own paradigm of depression, it was my attachment to my identity as a professional person and a caregiver in the lives of my family. When I retired and when my children left home for college, I felt acutely the loss of the bonds that had helped define who I was in my own eyes. The seeds of depression in my store consciousness which had lain dormant for years (or only developed into small plants each season of darkness) blossomed and a form of death resulted in a long period of grief. I did not see my journey through the darkness as a hero's journey at the time, but I think that is what it was. And I think that is how we might think of the small melancholias and large depressions that are a part of the lives of many people. There was separation from the outer world. There was a supreme ordeal, as my depression had as one of its dragons the specter of suicide and the nearness with which I felt its hot breath. And there was an eventual reintegration of identity that, strangely enough, didn't resemble anything I had imagined and didn't come as a fully formed entity. What my new birth resembled was more a process of maturation and an ongoing journey of growth. In some ways, I emerged with a more fragmented idea of who I was but it was bolstered by the conviction that there were more possibilities for reconstructing the pieces. I had developed more trust in myself and my abilities and capacities. I was new to my old self, but still an ego in search of itself.

There is some scientific evidence (fMRI studies) to indicate that the continuum of grief/depression is processed in the right brain where we are our more creative selves (as contrasted with the left brain functions of analysis and computation, for instance). When we associate artistic genius with “madness” (or depression), perhaps we are bringing together several components of brain function that manifest as some unraveling of normal processes. In my own experiences with depression, I got to the point where I thought that if anything bad were to happen to me, what I could do for my children would be to document my own story, the story of my life. At least, they would have a more rounded picture of me as their father. So, I began to write my memoirs and to bring together some of the memories that animated those stories. It was a hunt-and-peck process, a process of going back in time and then coming forward to more contemporary events. It was this oscillation that brought order to the project. As I looked back on it, it occurred to me that I had gained a clearer picture of myself and my identity and I had reconnected with those parts of my character and personality that I needed in order to find out who I really was. When Solomon says that we must look for faith and structure within depression, I believe that is what I had done with my personal narrative. I had found some way to order the shards of my fragmented self and had decided that what I could see of my life was worth continuing. I also believe that what Campbell describes as the hero's journey is also a way to order one's experience. Humans are known for their need to find patterns and, in doing so, ordering events and thoughts. As one thinks of brain function, perhaps this pattern-finding, this ordering, is left brain processing overdriving the right brain stall in grief/depression. Engaging executive functions may be a path to emerge from the darkness. It is also possible that the archetypal, universal, ancient traditions of the hero's journey connect us with the experiences of millions of people who have suffered as we have and have endured. This connection helps to soften the loneliness that accompanies grief and depression, a loneliness that gnaws away at one's sense of being in relationships with those who contribute to our identity.

I believe that if I had had Joseph Campbell as someone to accompany me on my own journey, I might have attenuated the depth of the journey or perhaps short-circuited it in some way. Given my personality and inheritance, he would not have prevented the journey. Perhaps this little meditation on the hero's journey and depression might be helpful to someone who feels depression and its threats and give them the idea that they are a hero in an ancient journey of testing that has at its end at least a catharsis and the rewards of survival. The link to ancient lineages of heroes makes one feel less alone and isolated. The rewards of survival are what Solomon has described as having a “capacity for a kind of ready ecstasy,” and a “heightened awareness of the joyfulness of everyday life.” So it was for me in the paradoxical realization that contemplation of death and dying brought me back into a world and a life rich with possibilities, including the continued bonds of attachment. But so it goes in cycles: attachments, loss, griefs and depressions and “dark nights of the soul,” wrestling with dragons, and emerging with a new configuration of identity. In any case, it is not an easy journey and it is usually one fraught with risk and uncertainty. Someone outside the ring of darkness of depression may only offer a road map of general distances and milestones, but that is often enough of an assurance of survival to be a lifeline and a path to recovery and a new version of life. May all who suffer small and large traumas and griefs find the road maps that they can trust to take them from depression to a new dimension of self. To be joyful about life is to be triumphant, isn't it? Every person is a hero.