The Mystery Known as Depression, Part 2/12

2. DEPRESSION AND THE PRIMAL PARADIGM

Let me begin by proffering my definition of depression, and how it is understood within the paradigm of Primal Therapy. One caveat before proceeding: Our understanding of depression arises from an observational, not statistical, perspective. Ours is basically an empirical science; wanting to know rather than knowing what we want. What I describe has been seen in hundreds of our patients over 45 years. It is a new paradigm, a departure from the conventional notions of depression. If we try to understand it within the old frame of reference we will fail. Depression has its roots in the earliest moments of a patient’s life, during gestation and birth. Since first espousing these theories more than four decades ago, advancements in brain research have offered mounting evidence to support our theory about the role of early trauma in causing mental illness. What is still difficult to accept by some is our assertion that reliving those traumatic experiences, including birth, is the way to reverse depression. In this sense, exploring the mind has been a little like exploring the world to prove it is round; it often can’t be believed until somebody actually makes the journey. In the development of our therapy, we have made no a priori assumptions in our observations. From the beginning, we have always let ourselves be guided by one unassailable truth – the experience of our patients.
Not long ago, a group of my depressive patients met to discuss their problems and the overwhelming pain that surrounds them. As they talked it became apparent that there were numerous things they had in common. Looking back at the experience of their lives, they identified certain symptoms and tendencies in their feelings and behavior, including:


. A feeling of constant suffering
· Difficulty concentrating
· Extreme fatigue
· Immobilized and paralyzed
· Feeling helpless to change a situation
· An inability to talk
· Lack of energy
· Can’t move, enclosed, stuck in a dark abyss
· Not being able to find anything to live for
· A monotonous, inner deadness
· Feeling that nothing is going to change
· Something wants out
· An inability to feel pleasure.
· Unable to make a decision, or make something stop
· Numbness and ponderous, labored movements
· Recurrence of a wish to die
· Sense of isolation
· Falling into a black hole
· Not getting anywhere
· An overall heaviness or deadness
· An effort to breathe or even lift an arm
· Not interested in anything
. No sexual interest
· Despair, resignation and wanting to give up
· What’s the use of living? Don’t want to go onlike this

This group of “symptoms” is based on my experience with my depressives describing their own general condition. But in addition, what these patients have come to realize, however, is that they were describing the sensations of a birth trauma, the common denominator of their communal experience. No one suggested this in any way because we would not have known what to suggest.
If we were to overlay a transparency illustrating the characteristics of depression over one showing the effects of the birth trauma, we would find that they match perfectly. Everything a person felt during the birth trauma back then is reflected in the description of her current depression. Clear examples are contained in the list of depressive symptoms enumerated by my group of patients; they are expressing exactly what they felt as infants being born. The traumas set down in the womb, at birth and during infancy are coded, registered and stored in the nervous system. They become a template for what happens later.