In a recently published essay, I argue that Kierkegaard’s conception of “melancholy” or “depression” (Tungsind) can be related to the rise of social media over the last fifteen years. Off the cuff, such an association may seem surprising, but in fact there is an obvious point of overlap. In works such as The Sickness unto Death (Sygdommen til Døden, 1849), Kierkegaard investigates the various ways that people squander “balance and tranquility” and fall into “despair” (Fortvivlelse). Attributed to the pseudonymn Anti-Climacus, who represents a level of Christian ideality that Kierkegaard was unwilling to claim for himself, The Sickness unto Death often resembles a clinical guide to human psychology more than a work of philosophy or theology.
According to Anti-Climacus, the human self is essentially a dynamic process. As a self-reflexive synthesis of dialectical elements (freedom-necessity, finitude-infinitude, etc.), the self is subject to both external demands and internal longings. Thus it is liable to give undue priority to one or another of its constituents. For instance, a person thoroughly absorbed in making money has so rooted herself in finite categories that she has come to neglect her spiritual wellbeing. On the other hand, a person caught up in fantastical ideas and desires has so drifted into limitless possibilities that he fails to attend to his immediate bodily environment.
In both cases, analogies to social-media use are discernible, though perhaps the latter example is most fitting. For Anti-Climacus, depression in particular can be understood as a crushing lack of necessity. In other words, depression emerges when the self’s superfluity of possibility gives it a sense of being “unreal.” The one lost in this state is not so much chasing what he wants as what he is anxious about, and “melancholically enamored” in this way, he ultimately is led “away from himself so that he is a victim of anxiety or a victim about which he was anxious.” Here “anxiety” does not just indicate nervousness or worry; it entails a dizzying sense of freedom, so much so that the self becomes unmoored from its intrinsic meaning and purpose. The depressed self is, to quote Bob Dylan, “[d]rifting from scene to scene” (“Highlands”).
Yet, for all of its nuance, Anti-Climacus’ analysis rests on a plain assumption—that people are often unhappy and that their unhappiness stems, quite literally, from a dis-order within the self. Such a self is not intended to be this way, nor must it stay this way. With the right course of therapy, as it were, the self can be restored to equilibrium and “the sickness unto death” (or despair) be overcome. In Kierkegaard’s era, as in most historical periods, these assumptions would not have been shocking; indeed, they would have been standard. To paraphrase Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, Kierkegaard’s formal creativity and élan often wow and occasionally stupefy audiences, but his content, for better or for worse, hews close to the mainstream of the Western tradition.
What would happen, then, if Kierkegaard’s underlying presuppositions were to become culturally inappropriate? That is to say, what if the very notion of “sickness” were to be deemed problematic, even offensive? These questions may seem farfetched, but recently they have become the center of much discussion. A couple of months ago, journalist Daniel Bergner published his latest book The Mind and the Moon: My Brother's Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches, a work that purports to “reframe” the debate regarding mental illness. The younger brother of one suffering from bipolar disorder, Bergner argues that modern psychiatry has not progressed alongside other contemporary scientific fields. For that reason, he believes that it is time for people to reconsider a number of presuppositions with respect to mental illness. Bergner’s case takes principal aim at the pharmaceutical industry, which assumes that affective disorders and psychotic episodes are best managed with drugs—a dubious supposition, which has indeed come under increased scrutiny. Still, the question remains: what does Bergner propose as an alternative?
Recently, Bergner has been associated with the “Hearing Voices Movement” (HVM)—a network of doctors, patients, and care providers that, following the research of Dutch psychiatrist Marius Romme, has advocated for a “deconstruction” of medical language regarding mental health. According to HVM, the difference between a psychologically healthy individual and a mentally ill one is a false binary. In fact, the one who “hears voices” is healthy, insofar as this phenomenon, however taboo we make it, can be explained in terms of past trauma, diverse understandings of the spiritual life, and/or responses to modern life. With this in mind, the goal of HVM is to create “safe spaces” where people can share experiences that otherwise may seem untoward. As Jacqui Dillon, a representative of HVM, has put it:
We encourage and support people to listen to their voices and attest to their reality in order to better understand their meaning. We acknowledge that people are having normal reactions to abnormal stress. Instead of asking people—what is wrong with you? We ask them—what has happened to you?
For HVM, then, bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, and other related conditions need to be understood in context. They are not sicknesses per se, still less are they personal flaws. On the contrary, they are diverse psycho-emotional responses to universal human experiences. Hence, while demands for acceptance are often associated with race and sexuality, they are no less relevant to mental health: “We celebrate our differences,” Dillon writes.
Critics, however, claim that Bergner’s book in particular, and HVM in general, are politicizing mental health. Instead of treating aberrant psychological conditions as genuine health concerns, they are relabeling them as unique personality traits. Indeed, at its extreme, this viewpoint has come to conceive of mental illness as an expression of individuality—not unlike other stylistic tastes, whether in clothing or in personal behavior. In a recent podcast, Bari Weiss and Freddie deBoer analyze this phenomenon, observing that declarations of mental illness are becoming increasingly popular on social media, especially on TikTok. For deBoer, who has been diagnosed as bipolar, this development is nothing short of tragic. In an impassioned video released on YouTube, deBoer claims that disabilities (particularly mental ones) have become “gentrified.” People who are truly sick are receiving less and less care, while social-media mavens “buy up” the attention given to mental illness and “flip” it for fame on TikTok or Instagram. For those who actually suffer from bipolar disorder, deBoer insists, it is simply too dangerous to go off medication:
I am someone with a psychotic disorder who has suffered under the influence of medication for a long time. But I’m also someone who needs to be medicated, and the absolutely relentless insistence that I have to love my disorder, that I have to act like its somehow a super power or positive in my life is very tiring to me… I’m just so tired of being told that there’s something so wrong with my medication that it outweighs the benefits.
In sympathy with deBoer, Michael Brendan Dougherty contends that Bergner’s position represents the “modern Left’s full-spectrum devotion to equality.” Everything must be normalized, even sicknesses that are, in medical terms, life-threatening aberrations. That the New York Times ran a feature on Bergner’s book only adds to the problem, says Dougherty. We live in an age of “journalistic malpractice,” during which “activists” are allowed to dress political positions in medical clothing.
I myself first came across this controversy on Weiss’ podcast, which begins with a few minutes of footage documenting how this issue is manifesting itself on social media. It is a striking, and worrying, montage. Consequently, it occurred to me that, from a Kierkegaardian perspective, the attempt to turn debilitating psychological sicknesses into cool personality traits would void not only his theory of the self but, quite possibly, Christian anthropology writ large. If human beings are “okay” even when they’re unwell, there is really nothing left for the tradition to do. After all, Jesus is portrayed as a “healer” (Lk 7:17, Jn 4:46-47, etc.)—and not just in a supernatural sense. And yet, as I familiarized myself more with HVM, it also occurred to me that Kierkegaard would likely approve of its skepticism regarding the pharmaceutical industry, which tends to reduce the self to a bio-medical object. Whatever else one may say about psychological medication, it clearly has not been successful in eliminating psychiatric disorders. In fact, just as prescription drug use is fast increasing, so are rates of mental illness. Kierkegaard, it seems to me, would not be surprised by this ostensible paradox. For him, the self is a spirit, and it cannot be healed by material substances alone.
Hence, while this is hardly a fully developed response to this very complex problem, I’d situate Kierkegaard somewhere in the middle of this debate. He would clearly be wary of any attempts to downplay psycho-spiritual sickness. In fact, he’d argue that such sickness is far more prevalent than people are often willing to admit: even a person who appears healthy from a medical and societal standpoint is always already capable of despair and sin. On the other hand, not unlike HVM, Kierkegaard would insist that pharmaceutical drugs cannot cure mental illness. For Kierkegaard, a healthy self can only be accomplished in relationships—with itself, with creation, with other human beings, and ultimately with God.
Catching up with you on this one: powerful and perceptive. I haven't read enough SK to quite follow along as a decently equipped Kierkegaardian with you on this, not having read "Sickness unto Death", yet. But attempting to follow here, picking up on the dialectics of freedom-necessity and infinity-finitude, and the danger of an extreme of limitlessness: "On the other hand, a person caught up in fantastical ideas and desires has so drifted into limitless possibilities that he fails to attend to his immediate bodily environment."
Could we say, perhaps, that someone who redefines mental health so radically that there is no more sickness requiring help, no more problems or breaking-points, is pushing on the "freedom" and "infinite" dialectic too far at the risk of narrating away need? i.e. I have such limitless self-narrating possibilities as to say that even my breaking-points of what others would say are problems related to mental health where I need help are really just the expression of my freedom?
On the other hand, the over medicalization of mental health as if it is only a matter of chemistry and applying pharmaceutical interventions to restore a clinically "healthy" equilibrium, that's having pushed too far in the "necessity" direction, as if there is no self that has to come to terms in the form of one's own life story with the fact of mental health?