A Functional View on Depression

Depression is an intellectual illness, it is an emotional response to the hardness of the contact between truth and power that intellectual activity yields.

There are pills and hypnotic techniques to assuage the discomfort of it, but these interrupt the intellectual process which entanglement will effectively rout the depression by an instinctive separation from an unaproachability.

The functional way to treat this state is as a passing symptom, let the contact form fully and allow for the next state that will lead to depression. Sticking to the emotional approach to intellect at all costs, with no exacerbating entanglements.

This is the perfect justice for the perfect crime. Also, the pacing that Nietzsche so bravely did without. In Nietzsche's case: intellectual approach to emotion at all costs.

The functional approach reaps what the Nietzschean approach sows. The latter begins from power, the former begins power.

Pezer wrote:

Depression is an intellectual illness, it is an emotional response to the hardness of the contact between truth and power that intellectual activity yields.

There are pills and hypnotic techniques to assuage the discomfort of it, but these interrupt the intellectual process which entanglement will effectively rout the depression by an instinctive separation from an unaproachability.

The functional way to treat this state is as a passing symptom, let the contact form fully and allow for the next state that will lead to depression. Sticking to the emotional approach to intellect at all costs, with no exacerbating entanglements.

This is the perfect justice for the perfect crime. Also, the pacing that Nietzsche so bravely did without. In Nietzsche's case: intellectual approach to emotion at all costs.

The functional approach reaps what the Nietzschean approach sows. The latter begins from power, the former begins power.

Does that really work? I mean, if I understand you, you're saying that intelligence and reason can ward off depression or keep it in balance?
Depression is a form of mental unbalance, so how would that work - unless as I said, I am misunderstanding you here.

Pezer wrote:

Depression is an intellectual illness, it is an emotional response to the hardness of the contact between truth and power that intellectual activity yields.

There are pills and hypnotic techniques to assuage the discomfort of it, but these interrupt the intellectual process which entanglement will effectively rout the depression by an instinctive separation from an unaproachability.

The functional way to treat this state is as a passing symptom, let the contact form fully and allow for the next state that will lead to depression. Sticking to the emotional approach to intellect at all costs, with no exacerbating entanglements.

This is the perfect justice for the perfect crime. Also, the pacing that Nietzsche so bravely did without. In Nietzsche's case: intellectual approach to emotion at all costs.

The functional approach reaps what the Nietzschean approach sows. The latter begins from power, the former begins power.

Yes I've found this to be the case. Depression comes in degrees but should be dealt with the same in any degree: letting it pass as a natural symptom. It isn't as if, when we have the flu, we focus totally on our symptoms and refuse to identify the flu that is causing those symptoms.. I don't sit around when having the flu and obsess over the fever, low energy, muscle aches, and even as these symptoms start to gradually decline as I get better I wouldn't continue to focus and emphasize on the symptoms as if they were their own reality. Depression is a symptom, period; it isn't an illness.

The DSM is a very damaging and "evil" (inhuman) manual. For example it classifies what it calls "Tobacco Use Disorder" and lays out criteria by which a person is deemed to have a mental illness, a "disorder" because one smokes or chews tobacco. The subtlety of these tactics belies our ability to directly approach them from a rational level and refuse them rationally, so forces our more human responses and defenses against this madness into one of two categories: either a person can simply refuse the DSM paradigm outright and in a "belligerent" and non-rational way, or a person can critique the DSM paradigm. Most people wouldn't be able to do the critique approach and so use the first one, of blatant refusal. This is a human response to the inhumanity of DSM, and probably the best response to take, but unfortunately since the larger system is already capitulated to the DSM paradigm this natural refusal ends up disempowering oneself with respect to keeping oneself safe and effective against the system... This is why so many people end up institutionalized for mental illness and have their rights stripped away, permanent diagnosis placed on their medical file from which they will now never escape. This is how the system works: you are free to simply ignore and refuse it from a healthy human angle, but then the system simply labels your ignoring and refusal as a disorder too. "Non-compliance", "lack of insight", "uncooperative", "anti-social", "danger to self", etc. Courts strip away people's rights every day based on these classifications.

That is why I focus more on direct and rational refusal, so we need to force ourselves to understand the insanity of DSM-based paradigm and approaches so we can effectively talk about how and why these are incorrect. With tobacco for example-- smoking is a choice and like many things involves cost and benefit, every "addiction" is a choice that generates tension based on the detriments involved in the choice. Pleasure reward isn't the only domain of "addictive" power of an activity, mostly it is about securing meaning for ourselves: when we have other reasons in life that push pain and lack of meaning on us we naturally resist by generating meaning and pleasure elsewhere, we stay human in this way; smoking and drugs generally are one way of doing that. With more hardcore drugs these can warp the mind and body with long-term use and overuse, same with alcohol and even tobacco to some extent, but that is an example of overdose. That some substances are more prone to overdose use than others is really the heart of what it means for something to be a "drug". Pretty much any drug in moderate or small doses and used only infrequently would be healthy. Most drugs are not poisons or toxins, but can have a toxic and harmful effect on the body, mind and emotions with overuse.

Engaging in addictive behavior is a choice, as Fixed said recently it comes down to "what we really really want". Desires and desires in conflict. I have a new system for helping people break "addictions" and it is very different from AA, NA etc.

On the subject of depression, one can actively resist the DSM paradigm by realizing that depression is a healthy and honest reaction to threats against one's health and self, especially where these threats are of an existential and phenomenological nature. Because many people lack the tools and insights with which to combat such threats their bodies, minds and emotions response with symptoms of shutting down to the problem: lack of energy, sadness, inability to feel pleasure, lack of motivation, apathy, self-harmful activity are all symptoms of one's perceived inability to fight back against these subtle threats. But life naturally carries itself forward and beyond the threat, in time we are naturally and "unconsciously" intelligent enough to find ways of saving ourselves... Depression occurs as the symptoms associated to the point before which we have become capable of acting in our own self-defense and for our own self-valuing; freedom and an openness to the world as well as the generally chaotic nature of life tend to "shake up" the threats against us and we naturally find ways out of them. But the real danger is that instead of those natural cures we capitulate absolutely not only to the symptoms but also to the existential and phenomenological threats, meaning we remove the chaos and life-openness that would allow the unconscious-natural efforts to break free ourselves from the threats and we treat the symptoms as entities in themselves, as hard realities. This is the result of taking pills and going with the DSM paradigm, is that the threats become impossible to deal with in human terms, in terms of our own self-value, and the symptoms are given their own reality status and classified as a "medical disease", which flies in the face of what medicine and medical disease etiology are actually all about. In this case with the DSM paradigm a person's depression can and often does become permanent.