Deep within the William Styron memoir, "Darkness Visible," which we blogged about recently, here, is this observation of his about what might have precipitated his own depression. Because it touches on things we've covered over and over again on this blog, it seemed very worth mentioning -- as well as quite profound:
The morbid condition proceeded, I have come to believe, from my beginning years – from my father, who battled the gorgon for much of his lifetime, and had been hospitalized in my boyhood after a depression spiraling downward that in retrospect I saw greatly resembled mine. The genetic roots of depression seem now to be beyond controversy. But I’m persuaded that an even more significant factor was the death of my mother when I was thirteen; this disorder and early sorrow – the death or disappearance of a parent, especially a mother, before or during puberty – appears repeatedly in the literature on depression as a trauma sometimes likely to create nearly irreparable emotional havoc.
The danger is especially apparent if the young person is affected by what has been termed “incomplete mourning” – has, in effect, been unable to achieve the catharsis of grief, and so carries within himself in later years an insufferable burden of which rage and guilt, and not only damned-up sorrow, are a part, and become the potential seeds of self-destruction.
From Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, by William Styron.
