The Neglected Soul: Ancient Monastic Teachings on Depression for the Modern World
Daniel Ibraheem, Yale School of Medicine, and Andreh Labib, Duquesne University College of Osteopathic Medicine
In the 4th Century AD, a man named Evagrius of Pontus fled honor and high ecclesiastical office, seeking a life of solitude in the harsh Egyptian desert. In his years as a member of the early monastic movement, he dedicated himself to self-reflection, contemplation, and teaching his disciples from all over the world about maintaining the love of God in one’s heart unceasingly. In fact, this desert father had a particular expertise, one that involved the discerning of the thoughts that cause the many sicknesses of the human soul. One of these aggressive attackers of the soul was known as ἀκηδία, best translated as despondency. This “Noonday demon” plagued monks and would put them in a state of resistance to what is; a state of hatred of one's current place but lack of desire for anywhere else. Another one of these persistent thoughts was that of λύπη, translated as dejection. Dejection came upon those who, due to the consistent frustration of their desires, are given over to a deep dissatisfaction with their current state. Both of these thoughts, according to Evagrius, threaten falling down the paths of ἀπόγνωσις (despair) and ἀναίσθησία (numbness) in the spiritual life. This framework would form the foundation of understandings of uncontrollable thoughts in both the eastern and western Christian worlds.
More than a millennium later, thinkers over the past 300 years have been reconstructing their understanding of a fairly common psychological experience known under the names of melancholia and/or depression. With a combination of features from psychoanalytic thought, the perspective of the behaviorists of the 20th century, and the strongly physiological based perspective of humanity in the secular world, modern psychiatry has developed a framework for this experience that millions of people suffer from every single day. The perspective of this disorder that most psychiatrists are taught is based most strongly on the scientific, biochemical aspects of this framework for thinking of the human psyche. The biological discoveries have greatly influenced our ability to treat this disorder with pharmacological interventions that have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.However, the limits of this model of mental illness have begun to become apparent in recent years. Strictly scientific explanations have begun to show significant weaknesses and have made the academy less confident about the serotonin models that promised to entirely explain this condition. Furthermore, both patients and clinicians have begun acknowledging that a simple “chemical imbalance” understanding has been extremely reductive and has excluded the aspects of psychological, social, and spiritual experience that are central to the experience of this illness. For this reason, there may be great benefit in returning back to one of these more ancient, holistic perspectives that existed before the age of the scientific revolution, in order to balance our perspective of depression.
In this presentation, we hope to describe how Evagrius Ponticus’s descriptions of despondency, sadness, numbness, and despair can provide fresh frameworks on what we now call depression. Evagrius’s framework represents an ancient viewpoint on how people could cope and struggle with various thought patterns parallel to depression, the experience they entail, and what could be done for them. The concept of despondency is similar to the experience of loss of interest that plagues people with depression, and it also helps us understand what aspects of our modern environment cultivates this negative experience. Dejection captures much of the real desires of depressed people and how their circumstances do not allow those desires to be fulfilled. Despair tells us about the hopelessness that might come with this condition, and Evagrius’s description of numbness very much captures the anhedonia that comes with this illness. Speaking primarily from a spiritual perspective, Evagrius offers wisdom that might be of great use for those looking to learn how to account for the spiritual elements of a condition that has been largely biologized. Furthermore, Evagrius’s distinction between despondency and sadness might prove to be an important distinction that is not often made in modern psychiatric circles. Despair and numbness as the final states of these persistent thoughts can also help us understand some of the subjective experiences of people that have depression. We also explain that spiritual considerations of depression are not in competition with biological models; they instead create room for multi-layered understandings of a disorder that appears to impact the whole human: body, soul, and mind.
More than a millennium later, thinkers over the past 300 years have been reconstructing their understanding of a fairly common psychological experience known under the names of melancholia and/or depression. With a combination of features from psychoanalytic thought, the perspective of the behaviorists of the 20th century, and the strongly physiological based perspective of humanity in the secular world, modern psychiatry has developed a framework for this experience that millions of people suffer from every single day. The perspective of this disorder that most psychiatrists are taught is based most strongly on the scientific, biochemical aspects of this framework for thinking of the human psyche. The biological discoveries have greatly influenced our ability to treat this disorder with pharmacological interventions that have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.However, the limits of this model of mental illness have begun to become apparent in recent years. Strictly scientific explanations have begun to show significant weaknesses and have made the academy less confident about the serotonin models that promised to entirely explain this condition. Furthermore, both patients and clinicians have begun acknowledging that a simple “chemical imbalance” understanding has been extremely reductive and has excluded the aspects of psychological, social, and spiritual experience that are central to the experience of this illness. For this reason, there may be great benefit in returning back to one of these more ancient, holistic perspectives that existed before the age of the scientific revolution, in order to balance our perspective of depression.
In this presentation, we hope to describe how Evagrius Ponticus’s descriptions of despondency, sadness, numbness, and despair can provide fresh frameworks on what we now call depression. Evagrius’s framework represents an ancient viewpoint on how people could cope and struggle with various thought patterns parallel to depression, the experience they entail, and what could be done for them. The concept of despondency is similar to the experience of loss of interest that plagues people with depression, and it also helps us understand what aspects of our modern environment cultivates this negative experience. Dejection captures much of the real desires of depressed people and how their circumstances do not allow those desires to be fulfilled. Despair tells us about the hopelessness that might come with this condition, and Evagrius’s description of numbness very much captures the anhedonia that comes with this illness. Speaking primarily from a spiritual perspective, Evagrius offers wisdom that might be of great use for those looking to learn how to account for the spiritual elements of a condition that has been largely biologized. Furthermore, Evagrius’s distinction between despondency and sadness might prove to be an important distinction that is not often made in modern psychiatric circles. Despair and numbness as the final states of these persistent thoughts can also help us understand some of the subjective experiences of people that have depression. We also explain that spiritual considerations of depression are not in competition with biological models; they instead create room for multi-layered understandings of a disorder that appears to impact the whole human: body, soul, and mind.