Kazimierz Dąbrowski (1979), a Polish psychiatrist and psychologist, was the author of the theory of positive disintegration. He meant a process of developmental change, which is immanent to humans – that is it happens to everyone and is a necessary stage in the actualisation of one’s true potential. The moment of disintegration is usually not pleasant, often filled with tension and anxiety, tiredness and pain, doubt or breakdown (let us recall the hardships of puberty: mood swings, hurting body, restlessness). Working on yourself can be compared to a renovation of a house – more or less capital, with or without destruction of the walls. To get better, it must first get a bit worse. In psychotherapy, we rebuild non-functional models of behaving and experiencing into more functional ones. We touch emotions that were long frozen, which we pushed deep under our skin with our willpower (often as children). And after several, several dozen meetings with a psychotherapist it turns out that as we deepen our breathing and regain contact with ourselves and another human being, we have some desires which might be unsatisfied (and it might hurt!), or we get sad or furious when we realise that our parents actually …
Category archives: Knowledge
Depression – disease known for ages
A lot is being talked nowadays about a peculiar epidemic of depression, particularly in highly developed countries. Such unfavourable features of big city life as overpopulation, excessive noise, haste, ubiquitous consumerism and superficial relationships with others all contribute to the widespread sense of loneliness, emptiness or depersonalisation – states leading to depression very frequently (Pużyński, 2005). Depression is a source of suffering for millions of people around the world. In some, it results in only a transient disappearance of the willingness to live, showing by cyclical states of apathy and discouragement; in others, it wreaks havoc in life, often leading to permanent disability and even to the most tragic effect of that terrible disease – suicide. As Erich Fromm (1970) stated, the “age of anxiety,” which reigned during the Cold War, has been followed by the “age of melancholy.” Epidemiologic studies carried out worldwide are showing that ca. 17% of the general population suffers from depression during their lifetime. 12-25% of patients reporting to their general practitioner suffer from depression, out of which a half meets the criteria for moderate or severe version of this disease. However, it would be an oversimplification to state that people did not suffer from …
Mourning or depression?
When we see deep and painful discouragement, cessation of interest in the external world, loss of the ability to love, inhibition of every single skill (Freud, 1970), we see a person engulfed in unhappiness. The image of that unhappiness can be similar in depression and mourning, which is shown in Robert Redford’s film entitled “Ordinary People” (1980). It tells a story of an American family from the upper middle class, whose members deal with the death of Buck, an older son, in very different ways. The mother (Mary Tyler Moore) becomes indifferent and is emotionally distant from the family, but she keeps the appearances of normality. The father (Donald Sutherland) strives to be bursting with joy, willing to bring a living son back to life and take care of him. The main character is Conrad (Timothy Hutton), a teen brother of the dead, who participated in the accident with him. We are introduced to the family when Conrad comes back home from a psychiatric hospital, where he ended up after a suicidal attempt. Until we get to know about the tragic death of Buck, Conrad’s symptoms indicate depression: he has not strength to get up, has no motivation to act, …