The more that the symptoms [of depression] are seen as signs of deviance or unadapted behaviour, the more the sufferer will feel the weight of the norm, of what they are supposed to be. They become casualties of today's view of human beings as 'resources', in which a person is just a unit of energy, a packet of skills and competencies which can be bought and sold in the market-place.

Darian Leader, The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia, and Depression

Leon Berkowitz
Big Bend No. II (Double Violet)
Oil on canvas, circa 1976

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). Study of Flowers, c. 1845 - 1850.

Our “will to meaning” is an innate inner necessity, the chronic frustration of which can result in anger, rage, despair and depression. In extreme cases, frustration of the “will to meaning”—[or] existential frustration—may engender a deep-rooted rage, that gradually turns into a...hatred of oneself, one’s world, and of the people populating it. This bitter resentment toward life—a life devoid of meaning, significance, freedom, dignity, passion and love—is intimately tied to Sigmund Freud’s idea of the “death instinct,” which drives one to destroy life.

Stephen A. Diamond, Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity

Pyramid Film & Video, Butterflies, 1990

Alexander Tkachev
Guitar, clock and cat
2002