ABSTRACT
Depression is a strategic retreat from the normal world, which shares a similarity of form with the more drastic strategic withdrawal that occurs in various kinds of psychosis, including schizophrenia. Depression originates in some malfunction of brain structure or function; the life change called major depression is the result of this malfunction; and the first line of attack against this disease is antidepressant medication. Depression is rooted in the power of a biologically sustained consciousness—the capacity of the self as active agent to choose one option over another—to replace rational instrumentality with magical thinking. In the kind of depression that becomes the ground for suicide, people find themselves isolated, alone and in despair. Guilt, shame, anger and other negative emotions dominate. Grief is sometimes complicated by what has been called survivor guilt. This is the feeling that, while the gift of life continues for one person, it was taken, perhaps prematurely and unjustly, from the deceased.
