{"id":2315,"date":"2010-02-27T00:58:30","date_gmt":"2010-02-27T07:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2010\/02\/new-york-times-applauds-depression\/"},"modified":"2010-03-02T11:17:18","modified_gmt":"2010-03-02T18:17:18","slug":"new-york-times-applauds-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2010\/02\/27\/new-york-times-applauds-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Times Applauds Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The NY Times<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Depression\u2019s Upside <\/nyt_headline><\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

Ben Weeks<\/em><\/p>\n

By JONAH LEHRER<\/p>\n

The Victorians had many names for depression, <\/span>and Charles Darwin<\/a> used them all. There were his \u201cfits\u201d brought on by \u201cexcitements,\u201d \u201cflurries\u201d leading to an \u201cuncomfortable palpitation of the heart\u201d and \u201cair fatigues\u201d that triggered his \u201chead symptoms.\u201d In one particularly pitiful letter, written to a specialist in \u201cpsychological medicine,\u201d he confessed to \u201cextreme spasmodic daily and nightly flatulence\u201d and \u201chysterical crying\u201d whenever Emma, his devoted wife, left him alone.<\/p>\n

For Darwin, depression was a clarifying force, focusing the mind on its most essential problems. In his autobiography, he speculated on the purpose of such misery; his evolutionary theory was shadowed by his own life story. \u201cPain or suffering of any kind,\u201d he wrote, \u201cif long continued, causes depression and lessens the power of action, yet it is well adapted to make a creature guard itself against any great or sudden evil.\u201d And so sorrow was explained away, because pleasure was not enough. Sometimes, Darwin wrote, it is the sadness that informs as it \u201cleads an animal to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial.\u201d The darkness was a kind of light.<\/p>\n

[ click to read full article at NYTimes.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The NY Times Depression\u2019s Upside Ben Weeks By JONAH LEHRER The Victorians had many names for depression, and Charles Darwin used them all. There were his \u201cfits\u201d brought on by \u201cexcitements,\u201d \u201cflurries\u201d leading to an \u201cuncomfortable palpitation of the heart\u201d and \u201cair fatigues\u201d that triggered his \u201chead symptoms.\u201d In one particularly pitiful letter, written […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}