The depressive feels both overwhelmed by inner death and utterly evacuated
Evidence
The depressive experiences himself as walled off from the lifeworld, so that his own frozen inner life – or inner death – overwhelms everything; at the same time, he experiences himself as evacuated, totally denuded, a shell: there is nothing except the inside, but the inside is empty. For the depressive, the habits of the former lifeworld now seem to be, precisely, a mode of playacting, a series of pantomime gestures (‘a circus complete with all fools’), which they are both no longer capable of performing and which they no longer wish to perform – there’s no point, everything is a sham. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 140
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: A precise two-sided phenomenology of depression - both full-of-nothing (inner death overwhelms) and empty shell - compressed into a few sentences.
- XREF: connects to: Depression is a philosophical disposition, not merely sadness or a state of mind — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 141; A person can simultaneously feel mortal fear and detached, buoyant calm — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 436; The unconscious itself is exposed to irreversible destruction — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 1418 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- A person can simultaneously feel mortal fear and detached, buoyant calm
#expands(0.80) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 436 - The unconscious itself is exposed to irreversible destruction
#expands(0.78) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 1418 - Anguish arises when consciousness sees itself cut from its essence by nothingness
#expands(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 246 - Neurological suffering poses the question of the psyche surviving its own annihilation
#complicates(0.72) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 1289