The Origin of Depression1

When Winnicott was president of the British Psycho-Analytical Society he pioneered two profitable meetings without papers on discussions of two themes: (1) on “black” and (2) on “string.” The discussions were stimulating to all, but, as far as I know, no summaries of these profitable discussions have been published. I have never ceased to be stimulated by my memories of the discussions on “strings.” String theory has become a recent innovation in mathematics and physics. This I do not pretend to understand. I have come up with a model of strings of words as lines to show shapes, which help me to imagine how people relate love/hate, grief and mourning. Take a stick2 [sic] signifying a lifeline on which sometimes there is gladness and sometimes there is madness. As life progresses on, sometimes new relationships between being in conflict as to whether to be glad or mad come about, and when I remember that I have been both glad and mad, and as these feelings could come into conflict in a moment, the feeling that emerges I call “sad.” Thereafter, memories are related in different ways to being glad that I remember being mad, to being mad that I remember being glad, and to be glad or mad that I remember being sad. But life does not stop there, and new progressive relationships begin between the three states which I call “attempts at mourning” to find something better but still remember these old states and their relationships. The new state emerging will be making up in some way for all that has led to the sadness, by using capacities for gladness to make up for any damage that was done by the