Some depression is compulsive pleasure-seeking, not loss of pleasure

Evidence

Many of the teenage students I encountered seemed to be in a state of what I would call depressive hedonia. Depression is usually characterized as a state of anhedonia, but the condition I’m referring to is constituted not by an inability to get pleasure so much as it by an inability to do anything else except pursue pleasure. There is a sense that ‘something is missing’ – but no appreciation that this mysterious, missing enjoyment can only be accessed beyond the pleasure principle. In large part this is a consequence of students’ ambiguous structural position, stranded between their old role as subjects of disciplinary institutions and their new status as consumers of services. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 47

Categorization

• DEFINE: Coins and distinguishes ‘depressive hedonia’ from anhedonia; inverts the standard psychiatric picture of depression.
• FICTION: A character who cannot stop consuming pleasure while feeling something vital is missing — think of the entropic protagonists in Egan’s Goon Squad or an addict in a control society — would dramatize depressive hedonia directly.
• XREF: connects to: Functioning addiction can hide depression behind a normal facade — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 607; Pleasure follows from desire rather than desire being caused by pleasure — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2231; Total abandonment and isolation can register as pleasure rather than dread — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 506 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Functioning addiction can hide depression behind a normal facade #expands (0.80) — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 607
• Moralistic self-denial weakens and coarsens the capacity for immediate pleasure #corroborates (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 738
• Total abandonment and isolation can register as pleasure rather than dread #complicates (0.75) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 506
• Pleasure follows from desire rather than desire being caused by pleasure #corroborates (0.70) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2231
• Limiting desire may intensify rather than deaden it #corroborates (0.70) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 164