Richard Lloyd Jones: The latest studies on depression tell us that chemicals in our brains have gotten all screwed up, or that we've inherited the problem, or that we're burned or stressed out, or that some life trauma is affecting us. But as we're discussing regularly on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, the standard view on everything needs to be reconsidered. Depression is no exception. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we'll try and get the upper hand on depression.
There have been some big strides made in diagnosing and treating this debilitating condition known as depression here at the International Society of Analytical Trilogy in Brazil. Last time the president of that society, Dr. Norberto Keppe, went to Austria, the birthplace of psychoanalysis, and that was about four years ago, the psychoanalysts he met with were blown away by his findings. They acknowledged that he was miles ahead in his understanding and treatment of human psychopathology.
Dr. Keppe's work, then, is a good place to turn to get some new thoughts on depression. Cláudia Pacheco, whom many of you have met already through these programs, is always refreshing and clear, not to mention provocative, in her analysis of a wide range of topics. Today will be no exception. Dr. Pacheco, a year or so ago, the New York Times published a survey to help one determine if he or she was suffering from depression.
This depression rating survey of nine questions included such queries as, do you have little pleasure or interest in doing things? Do you feel down, depressed, or hopeless? Do you have trouble falling or staying asleep? I mean, most of us would fall into this category at some time in our lives, right?
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Yeah, this is absolutely true, especially in the way we live our lives lately or the way society organized the life of people lately.
So we see here a more social problem, psychosocial problem, we could say, which involves philosophy of life, habits, psychological schools or orientations, drugs. So the way we live our lives has become very sick. And it has its psychological causes but also socioeconomic causes and even scientific causes. And when Keppe wrote a book, The Decay of the American People in the United States, he was trying to diagnose this problematic that was manifesting in American society at the time, in the early 80s, when he already realized that American people had lost their joy for living, their health, their capacity to work.
So there was this decay manifested in many areas. And I participated in writing this book with Dr. Keppe to see if the American people would become conscious of the causes of this problematic, they would be able to correct, to change, and save their population and their society. Yeah, you talk
Richard: in that book, and you've been stressing it again here, actually, that our society is making us sick.
This is important to see, isn't it? Because, as I said at the beginning, we see the causes of depression in trauma or physical chemical changes, right?
Cláudia: Yeah. I do not exclude these factors. The factor in a serious depressive state, it manifests itself for sure because our emotions change our chemistry in the brain. All emotions can change the chemistry of our brain. So chronic or serious emotional states of being sad or depressed or lack of hope, or feeling lonely or useless in life.
So all of these sensations, they create an abnormal state of our brain chemistry. Our mind and body, they are all united. They act and manifest at the same time.
Richard: So how will you treat the neuroclinic in Brazil, Cláudia? If people come to you with these various things that are going on, they have family and work problems, or there are various difficulties they see in the society that you've been talking about, the loss of a loved one, anything that causes depression here.
How do you help these people?
Cláudia: So the first thing, Richard, is to see that the situation in the planet is not well at all. We are living in a very sick society. We are sick human beings, and this is no exception. All of us suffer from some sort of problem, from the smallest to the most serious problems. So the first step is to recognize to acknowledge that we are really needing help we are sick and that there is no magic solution for this.
The problem had increased it invades all fields of life economic social religious psychological philosophical and relationships in the work genetically speaking ecologically speaking. So now we must face a sick world that was made so by the sickness of human beings. So we didn't take care enough to the psychological aspect of humanity and our inner selves created a society which is sick as a consequence at our resemblance.
So the first thing as i said is to recognize i'm sick i live in a sick society and there are no magic steps to be given. We need to see the causes of this and go deeper and try to stop scaping and running away from the perception of the problem so we can treat them. We can go to the root so we can really do something effective other than just putting a band-aid or taking drugs to cover up the symptoms.
Because these symptoms will tend to increase in strength and intensity, frequency and seriousness if we just cover it up. I take it
Richard: from your answer then that taking drugs to solve depression is absolutely the wrong way
Cláudia: to go. Yeah this is absolutely counterproductive. Taking drugs not only cover up the the cause of these diseases which are manifesting in all humanity. Not only this, but they increase the problem because they tend to reinforce the chemical unbalance in our brains and take away our consciousness and our perception.
And that's what we need the most, consciousness and perception and intuition. And we need a very very clear lucid inner life, psychological life, in order to be able to cope with this crazier and crazier society.
Richard: Okay, so I guess the next question, Cláudia, would be then, how do you see the causes of depression?
Cláudia: We get depressed every time we deny some perception in our lives, when we want things to be different from what we see they are when we deny our inner reality or outer reality. So we depress consciousness depress is like to push away to try to conceal try to censor not accepting reality and the reality we are living is a pseudo reality which is already a consequence of many wrong ways of being.
I'll mention some for you. This megalomaniac, this theomaniac attitude that human beings have has been fed enormously by socioeconomic powerful people. We have an economy which is fed by taking advantage of our envy and envy of people. You should have what other people have, so you should buy, buy, buy, and have, have, have, and not be. So having instead of being is a philosophical questioning which is needs to be addressed in order to go back to some of our humanity.
And the more you have and the more you expect getting happiness from sensorial material external things other than our through our inner selves, which is our aspect of ethics, of good action, of love, of reason, knowledge, mostly the ethical aspects, the idealistic aspects of ourselves, these are the only way to have fulfillment in life.
So our fulfillment our happiness our balance comes from our inner selves, the way we deal with life, what we do, the way we live. Are we living for ourselves, for our egotistic purposes, for our megalomania, for our masks, to have power, money, and prestige? Am I living for my performance in society, the way people look at me, the way people see me, in the way they value me? Or am I living my life with a higher purpose, fulfilling something important, being in accordance to the what is necessary to be done, to be useful, to feel useful and needed in terms good
Richard: action, truthful action, and beautiful action.
To me now, Cláudia, you're speaking about something that's very refreshing and hopeful, actually, because strengthening this inner part offers us some fortification somehow in coping with all of this pressure society puts on us and that we put on ourselves. You know, when I travel back to Canada or the United States, I see that people are on this treadmill to get and have more all the time.
You have to be new and improved constantly. You're like branded a loser. There's a certain
Cláudia: thinly veiled desperation hidden in all this, isn't there? Yes, because if you don't fulfill the mask, the expectations you have about yourself to have this role to play in life, and if people expect from you some kind of ideal behavior in terms of having a perfect mask, this is impossible. This is unbearable to be always performing and representing things that we are not.
But you know deep inside of ourselves our essence is much better than what we perform in society. And this is the thing we are disconnected from, this essence, beautiful truthful loving essence, and we want to make up to create something that is artificial and becoming more and more artificial. We disconnect from our inner reality and then depression increases because we are lost we lost who we are who we are so what am i doing here my existence has nothing to do anymore with my essence.
We forgot we were created with an essence, who should be doing good and loving people and being useful in society and building up a better world for everybody, doing good, beautiful and truthful things for us and for society. And we lost this. We have a very aggressive, violent, competitive, consumerist society which has nothing to do anymore with the essential of humanity, with the the essence of a human being is. So we are lost and we think that all this socio-economic psychological philosophical structure would change in seven steps or a pill.
No, we should address it with in a very serious manner.
So i think it's a time to stop reflect
Richard: and give a stop to the destruction of the world and humanity. Wise words you can subscribe to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head on iTunes, and I hope you do, because what's being discussed here in Brazil has enormous possibilities to help humanity at the root of
our problems. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
