Depression
Depression is a time of suffering. One of the four noble truths of Buddhism is that there is suffering in life. I remember understanding this for the first time on reading “ The Road Less Travelled” by Scott Peck. It was on the first page. When a person gets depressed very often it is because the conditions of their external world are triggering a complex or wound in the psyche that is unconscious to them. However as the wound comes to the surface it brings with it the pain associated with that experience in the past, pain that for various reasons was not experienced at the time. It was too painful to face then and is too painful to experience now. But if that person gets the appropriate help and they can face that pain in a safe environment, they can face their own frailty and vulnerability, the wound is allowed to come to consciousness and the suffering is released and transformed. Their conscious world expands. The person grows psychologically. Such a wound might be trauma in childhood, or perhaps the death of a parent . At the time of the parents death the loss was so great that the person cannot allow themselves to experience it. With time the pain gets layered over in the unconscious and forgotten. But it is still there. Most people who have been depressed and have worked through it will eagerly acknowledge that fact. A client who had been severely depressed for two years was very upset when I suggested to her that as there was no therapist available to her, she would have suffered less by taking medication. She felt that she had grown in that experience of suffering and was grateful for it. There are many many books around this subject. A particularly good one is “Swamplands of the Soul” by James Ellis Another good one is “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron.
Psychiatry,
Psychology, Psychotherapy
People often think that these three modalities are the same. They are not.
Psychiatry involves the study of brain chemistry and collections of behaviour patterns or symptoms When you have a certain number of features or behaviour patterns these are brought together and a diagnosis is made. In most cases medication is prescribed. In the case of depression, medication has been very successful in relieving symptoms in recent years. However these drugs have many side effects which can also be a source of much distress to some patients. A psychiatrist has been through a training as a doctor and then decides to study exclusively this area. They also deal with very disturbed people and people with severe mental abnormalities and have at their disposal hospital care to deal with these conditions.
Psychology is a science which studies the behaviour patterns of individuals and groups and families. A Psycholgist usually has a university education. Assistance from a psychologist will help a person identify the dynamics that may exist in their relationships with others and will help in this way. Neither the psychiatrist or psychologist have necessarily done any work on their own psyche, apart from the growth that occurs through their experience of their own lives.
Pychotherapy; The psychotherapist, depending on the type of psychotherapy in question, will in almost all cases have dealt with their own unconscious material. In Jungian psychotherapy which is sometimes refered to as depth psychology, the therapist will have definitely dealt with their own unconscious material to some extent. They will therefore be able to provide an emotional space where the client can experience the pain that is the cause of their problem. This is not usually a painful experience but a healing one for the client. The psychotherapist is sometimes able to actually feel what the patient is feeling through what is called projective identification. I think this is what Anthony de Mello is speaking of in the last section of his book, “The Way to Love”.