In this episode I try to provide some understanding of how and why so many people get depressed around Christmas time. I begin by noting that there are broad cultural and social issues here at stake, including the ways in which non-Christians can experience themselves as excluded and depressively relegated to the sidelines in a culture that, driven by the capitalist engine, literally floods us every day with commodities and the promise that if we purchase and consume these commodities we will be happy. However, my interest here is in exploring the internal interest psychic world in which people react to various parts of this holiday with depression and disappointment. And I argue that this is an expression of the ways that the child in us affects our adult emotional life. As children, we symbolically equate receiving gifts with receiving love, and this stimulates various narcissistic wishes for perfection that are doomed to be frustrated and disappointed. It is these moments of discrepancy between the longed for and fantasized gratification of our wish for perfect love and the reality that depression arises. While common, “Christmas depression” is by no means universal and my analysis in no way denies that some or even many people might avoid suffering and even enjoy this time of year. Still, the pressures and undercurrents of depression, disappointment, loss and envy are great enough to warrant discussion.
In this webcast, I am interested in using the insights of psychoanalysis to better understand what is going on in the wider social, political, and cultural worlds. I have been a practicing psychotherapist and psychoanalyst for over 40 years and have written extensively about these issues at the interface of psychology and the social/political/cultural worlds (see my publications on this website). I hope to explore matters that are related to current events, but also provide some discussion and understanding of more general issues about human development and psychology.
Why We Cry at Happy Endings
When we find ourselves crying at movies or when reading books and stories, it’s often at happy endings, not during the parts that are objectively sad. The reason, it turns out, is that the unconscious mind regulates when and how we express and experience painful affects, and it does so according to its assessments of danger and safety. When we arrive at a “happy ending”—for example, the endangered hero is rescued or redeemed—our minds allow us to experience feelings that were present before this ‘resolution,” but were too threatening to fully experience. Examples from film, from stories of PTSD, and even politics are cited and explored.
Gaslighting: Child Abuse and the MAGA Right
The concept of “gaslighting” seems to be increasingly appearing in the media and public life. In this webcast I discuss The meaning of gaslight and explain how exactly it works. Gaslighting is a particular way in which someone is driven crazy because of being presented with conflicting views of reality, a sort of “confusion of tongues” that is made worse nowadays because of all the ways that the MAGA Right have undermined the authority of institutions that people normally rely on to adjudicate truth claims, institutions like science, government, religious institutions, and the judiciary. Gaslighting was first described as a form of child abuse but is now considered, tragically, the way things are and the way they’re supposed to be.
When Things Don’t Work and We’re Put On Hold: Helplessness in Modern Life
I offer some thoughts and, hopefully, understanding of a problem that some might think of as a “First World Problem”– namely, the frequency with which things break down in our everyday life and our inability to get the proper and prompt help we need to fix them. This happens primarily in the digital world, including our devices, website functionality, internet connectivity, and –the elephant in the room—our inability to get direct human help from anyone to fix problems or breakdowns in any of these arenas. The result is a toxic feeling of helplessness which is, perhaps, the most toxic of all human emotions. People react to and defend themselves against helplessness in only three ways: 1) they become depressed, 2) they get angry, or 3) they somehow go about making other people feel helpless. I argue that the blame for these breakdowns and for the absence of adequate support and help in our digital world lies with the corporations, the companies, the institutions that seek to save money by reducing funding for Customer or Technical Support.
