The Ideal Ego, according to Lacan, promises a future wholeness. This promise is what sustains the Ego. In my experience, however, it is the Ideal which most frustrates people.
Nietzsche said, “Happiness is the feeling that power is growing.” As usual Nietzsche stated this in a way meant to shock Christian propriety. But the statement is worth examining for what it might mean to us.
Perhaps it means that when a person feels they are moving towards an ideal, towards the mythic sense of wholeness, this what we usually call “happiness”. In an era that defines itself by progress, we naturally consider our worth by our sense of personal progress. The subtle intent of the usual greeting of ‘How are you/How’s it going’ may be to ascertain how someone is progressing towards their ideal. Who are the people that others most often admire? Those who have overcome challenges, those who have worked to achieve some sort of mastery, those who have “progressed” the most.
The issue of depression is of course extremely complex, but many of the people I have known who have suffered from depression do so because they despair over how they have failed to achieve their ideal, or feel that ideal is unachievable. Or they cannot articulate an ideal, but presume it must exist, as it is one of the foundational myths of our culture.
It might be said that this is a privileged position to assume, believing that it is only our inward circumstances that cause depression. Part of the issue here, I think, is an issue with nomenclature. We say ‘oh, that’s depressing’ about anything saddening. Clinical depression can indeed be caused by living circumstances, by horrible events in a person’s life. But there are many who live in challenging circumstances that are able to resist clinical depression. Just as there are those whose lives, from the perspective of social norms, have been successful, who unexpectedly decide to end their own lives.
Our work allows us to subsume our ego in the relative success of our workplace. We can use various technologies to distract us from our ego. We can try to merge our ego with that of a community. Or take drugs that allow us to briefly feel as if our ideal has been achieved. Uppers can make us think more of ourselves. Downers can make us more attracted to everything around us. That’s why the comedown from drugs can be so devastating: as our dopamine abandons us, we recognize how false those feelings were, and how far we remain from our ideal.
Regarding these recognitions, we can assume the pragmatic approach of William James: whether or not what we dedicate ourselves to is ‘true’, it can still be valid as a method of living. But must we merely attempt to adjust ourselves to the concept of progress which our culture dictates to us, and then hopefully discover a way to circumvent that concept?
There is another statement of Nietzsche to consider here: “Be loyal to the earth.” In the context of what he was discussing, I think he meant that we should refuse any hope for a life after death, one that would make this life valid only as a means of testing ourselves for that afterlife. But we can apply this idea to any consideration of ideality—from our progress towards mastery, to our our relative social success, to the Platonic Forms, and the hope for Heaven.
We are being trained to be anxious. When we are anxious we develop dependencies. When we develop dependencies we can no longer be independent. Then our only hopes are to buy our way to momentary release or to wait for someone to release us, whether that be a perfect lover, a demagogue, or a messiah.
What has helped me the most in dealing with my own depression is refusing both anticipation and regret. These feelings arise when considering how we are hoping to achieve or have failed to achieve our ideal. When I abandon the pursuit of happiness, I allow myself to be happy.