ORGANIC LONELINESS AND ORGANIC DEPRESSION Distinguishing between non-organic and organic emotions is crucial to understanding, and to selecting treatment. Drugging a person experiencing life problems cheats the individual of the chance for growth and fulfillment. Emphasizing dissatisfactions within the self, when the disorder calls for chemical intervention, cruelly blames the patient for the symptoms. Distinguishing between non-organic and organic emotions is difficult. The two clusters of behavior look alike. The term depression, for instance, commonly refers to both. Both clusters can be associated with loneliness, but the ways of understanding the clusters are distinct and not interchangeable. One depression is a reaction to being stuck in uncongenial life circumstances. One depression is an organic irregularity. The word organic means fundamental, constitutional, bodily. In particular, in medicine, organic disorders are structural disorders; disorders which we know, or suspect, have biochemical, physiological origins. I know at least eight models of depression. I am excluding the first cluster of five, both the psychological and the social models. I am using the word "depression" here narrowly to reflect my interest in depression and loneliness in this organic sense. Like the word depression, the word loneliness is often imprecisely used by both medical and non-medical diagnosticians. I am exploring organic loneliness as a characteristic of organic depression -- as one of many manifestations of the root depression. I have learned that my depression reveals an aspect of itself as my loneliness. I have been avoiding writing about my awareness. The energy of avoidance has led productively to finishing several other projects. When the desk is finally clear and I do start to formulate and compose, the subject of loneliness saddens me. My inner self cautions that I am too revealed if I write this in my own voice, that I must use the third person and some passive verbs. Yet when I try to frame the discussion neutrally my message weakens. I am admitting my social failure and it will be taxing and exacting to write in the first person about how lonely I am. Whether I produce or not, I leave my work area unhappy and burdened. I feel lonely. How can I respond to my feeling and not be a burden on myself, not be a burden on my children, not become a blighted figure, crabbed and whining into my old age? I think about shared living and volunteer service, and the myriad suggestions in the media, as antidotes to loneliness. Despite being able to list solutions, I am unable to act on them. Imagining myself always having company at breakfast doesn't ease my pain. Ultimately I realize the solutions are not right because the problem definition is not accurate, and that the loneliness is not a stand-alone condition. I realize that the loneliness that I experience is not an emptiness for me to fill with social involvement and productive work. It is a huge relief to me to discover that this loneliness is a symptom of depression like fatigue and boredom, that loneliness is a secondary concern. Now I have a theory but not enough language for that theory. It is hard to think about ideas without representation for those ideas. It may be impossible to make change without words for reformulation, words for recognition of patterns. I will begin by describing, and then excluding, loneliness during ordinary mood fluctuations and loneliness during extraordinary ups and downs. Then I will connect organic depression and organic loneliness. Ordinary Mood Fluctuations I am not dealing with ordinary-part-of-life belonging and ordinary-part-of-life loneliness. Knowing one is a part of a community enhances the sense of well being and security. Believing one belongs is a requisite for development of the social self. Belonging frees attention for redirection during the next stages of development. There can be an integration of self-confidence, a humble un-self- consciousness, a general sense of well-being. Experience might even stretch to discover heightened intuition and flow. When one feels outside, cut off from one's community, continued suspicion and vigilance are important to feeling safe. Lack of belonging -- described as separation, alienation, narcissism, yearning for roots -- is an experience many people have had. They speak of an inability to sustain involvement, not being a part of what is going on around them, of feeling sluggish, of the ordinary being onerous. Feeling good no longer comes from inside but is sought externally. There may be an awareness that the state is transient, that well being could be restored by a variety of open options. Extraordinary Mood Fluctuations I am also not dealing with mystical fusion and spiritual despair. The mystic experience of oneness describes belonging that reaches an unusual transcendence. There is an inner and outer unity, a sense of tender global compassion, spaciousness, fearlessness, self-emptiness, equanimity. There may be psychological renewal through return to the center. There is a delight in solitude, all the better to sense the cosmic reunion. There may be prophecy. Despair and desolation are often on this path to surpassing usual experience. The inner self is questing for a goal it senses, has once attained, knows is there. The language is of a state lost, not of permanent expulsion. There is hope of restoration implicit in the loss. The anguish is energetic. Psalm 22 that begins "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" is David lamenting this isolation of his soul. Organic Loneliness What I am addressing here is unrelenting loneliness, a perpetual none-ness that does not provide the energy of despair or the passion of desolation. This loneliness is immutable, isolating, beyond remedy. It does not have the memory of being once joined. It is not exclusion of others or being excluded from others. It has the quality of other- than, of never-was, of different-from, an irreversible being-outside-of which is independent of the behavior of others. It may be accompanied by physically perceived pain. It may be a phase in a cycling process with time its only natural antidote. Or it may be that the loneliness will never subside, will never reverse. This is organic loneliness, a frequent characteristic of organic depression. Just as organic disorder can cause pain, tears, anger, elation, so organic disorder can cause loneliness, organic disconnection. When the organic depression lifts or is lifted, the loneliness disperses. It is the depression that is idiopathic. Treating the loneliness as a source problem instead of as a result maintains the suffering by ignoring the depression itself. A way to differentiate organic loneliness is that nothing abates it -- not support, not community, not activity, not a phone call, not a friend, not prayer. The sufferer is not being resistant to relief. Treating organic loneliness through talk is as effective as treating other diseases with talk. Sometimes talk helps. But focusing on alleviating loneliness as a symptom, without acknowledging or investigating the underlying problem, is palliative. The experiencer is still left to somehow subdue the depression and convert the loneliness of organic disorder. Sharewrite (s) 1991 Sylvia Caras. You may reproduce this material if: your recipients may also reproduce it, you do not change it, you include this notice and my name.  This file came from anonymous ftp sjuvm.stjohns.edu cd MADNESS The MADNESS ftp site is a service of MADNESS, an online discussion on LISTSERV@sjuvm.stjohns.edu Please credit the list if you copy this file.