A Hell Of Mercy

In your June 2001 Correspondence, Luan Gaines criticizes Tim Farrington’s “A Hell of Mercy” [March 2001], stating that she does not associate depression with the “dark night of the soul,” but views the latter as involving “significantly more complicated moral territory.”

It was my experience that “moral territory” had nothing to do with either affliction. Rather, both came to me unbidden and unmerited.

Tim Farrington’s “Hell of Mercy” touched me in curious ways. I was moved by the suffering that he endured and was reminded that I must face my own inner darkness if I am to find my deepest essence.

Where I differ with Farrington is over his notion that we have to experience the dark night of the soul completely alone. In many cultures, the journey into shadow is a rite of passage on which one chooses to embark, and there are guides and signposts to help us find our way through the death of the ego and the loss of selfhood.

There is, within each of us, an ancestral wisdom that can bring us to our deepest essence. Rites of passage, in which the journeyer is given guidance and support for the descent into the underworld, can help us remember that wisdom. 

Only a man could have written the ponderous “Hell of Mercy.” As a woman who writes, I’ve yet to enjoy the luxury of sitting for four hours in front of my computer without interruption while someone else is preparing my food and washing my clothes. I’m so busy making a living or attending to family responsibilities, I haven’t the energy to think about being depressed. When I am depressed, I either muddle through it as best I can, or get the appropriate help.

I live with a husband who has suffered from chronic depression for twenty years. He has been taking Effexor for four. Even with Effexor, our daily life is often difficult, because medication does not address all the issues of depression. I don’t need to research the current literature to understand or justify depression. When my husband gets help for his condition, he knows he is helping me, as well.

Perhaps the premise behind the essay is faulty. Tim Farrington attempts to compare his own depression with a “dark night of the soul,” a phrase I associate with significantly more complicated moral territory.

Luan Gaines suggests that Tim Farrington’s premise might be wrong when he compares his depression with a “dark night of the soul.” My own experiences with depression and dark nights of the soul have suggested that we cannot always differentiate between the two, and that both involve “complicated moral territory.”

In their book Spiritual Emergency, Stanislav and Christina Grof suggest that some forms of mental disturbance — including types of psychosis — are integral to spiritual growth. Manic psychosis, for instance, may be understood in some cases as a form of spiritual awakening — an accelerated experience of personal transformation. In such instances, one’s normal boundaries fall away, and a sense of mystical oneness occurs. It is normal to experience deep depression in the aftermath of this.

As thankful as I am for recent advances in psychotropic medications, I am concerned about potential overuse of these substances. I am not calling Gaines’s experience with her husband’s medication into question. Depression and manic depression, like other mental illnesses, can be extremely hard on a person’s family and friends. And too much suffering is not good for an individual, either. Medications most certainly have their uses.

But the decision about when medication is necessary is complicated. Who has the right to decide? Should we leave it to the doctors? To the family members who have to cope with their loved one’s disturbance? Or to the individuals who will take the medications? At what point does a person lose the ability to decide for him- or herself? People have a right to spiritual development, and, as a society, we still have decisions to make concerning where those rights end. To curtail a person’s spiritual development can exacerbate disturbance.

The use of the word illness to describe these experiences, though accurate in many ways, has negative connotations. We need to look for new ways to describe mental disturbance. The point of this is not to justify illness, but to seek better approaches to healing. To be called “mentally ill” and told by others that one needs medication is still a stigmatizing experience in our society. And in many cases, the people who say medication is necessary are incorrect.

I do not know whether Farrington’s depression was a true dark night of the soul, but I respect his courage in writing publicly about his spiritual life, and his right to define and label his experience for himself — at least, up to a point. Where that point lies is a difficult judgment call, one on which people are unlikely ever to agree.