Challenging Depression & Despair: A Medication-Free, Self-Help Programme That Will Change Your Life Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Angela Patmore
had failed and intended to give it all up. Yet Beethoven stayed his hand, and went on to write the most triumphant music of his or any life.
Despair vanquished: the case of Etty Hillesum
You may never have heard of Etty, who like Anne Frank kept a diary during the war and lived in Amsterdam. Like Anne she was Jewish and eventually killed by the Nazis. But Etty was 27, fully aware of what was going on, and her diary shows her transformation from utter despair and terror to inspiration and courage. The entry for Thursday, 10 November 1941 reads: ‘Mortal fear in every fibre. Complete collapse. Lack of self-confidence. Aversion. Panic.’ Yet by 1942 she was writing: ‘I am a happy person and I hold life dear indeed … I know just as long as one small street is left to us, the whole firmament still stretches far above it. I’ve died a thousand deaths in a thousand concentration camps … and yet I find life beautiful and meaningful. From minute to minute.’ 1
Despair vanquished: the case of Winston Churchill
Churchill suffered from terrible bouts of apathy and despair. He called it his ‘black dog’. He took to painting not terribly good pictures, building brick walls in his garden and voracious reading to win back his ferocious fighting spirit. Because his ‘lion-hearted nation’ knew that he had done this, they were willing to trust his leadership during the Blitz when their world seemed very dark indeed. Churchill’s wartime speeches are among the most famous calls to courage ever recorded, and they galvanised a nation.
SCIENTISTS ‘DISCOVER’ LITERATURE
One branch of the arts that may be especially useful to you when you are beginning your fightback against despair is literature. Reading is now officially recognised as beneficial to our emotions. If you have never read a classic novel or a powerful poem, you have missed the door to an Aladdin’s cave, one that may give you back your sense of wonder and purpose. There’s growing scientific evidence that enjoying the great works of fiction and verse can make us feel and function better. Mankind has known about this link for centuries – we just haven’t always exploited it.
In January 2009 a Wellcome Collection event in London, promoted jointly by the UK’s Reader Organisation and the medical journal The Lancet, highlighted the workof international scientists and doctors on the health-giving effects of literature. ‘The Reading Cure’ publicised new evidence linking reading with healthful brain changes that promote creativity, empathy and self-belief. This was not just another boffin conference. It may affect the way British doctors treat depression in the future. Professor Louis Appleby, NHS Director of Mental Health, said that this was ‘exactly the kind of work we at the Department of Health want to develop over the next ten years.’
HOW LITERATURE ‘WORKS’
Oh, literature – ho hum, you may think if you have never gone there. Why the fuss? Well, in a classic work of fiction, the reader communes not only with the writer but with characters on their emotional adventures, experiencing and understanding the effects on them. Reading is very different from watching characters in a television series. You are alone with the writer, who is a wordsmith with special insight into language that invokes powerful emotions and ideas. That language is specialised and highly concentrated. In a poem this is signalled by short lines on the page.
In a classic novel you go through what the characters go through, and often there is a hero or heroine whose journey you share. Very important is that your experience with them is resolved and complete – you are not left hanging in the air at the finish, as you so often are with television series and soaps. The writer makes vivid what the characters are thinking and feeling, and the ending makes sense of the whole.
A great novel or poem can throw light on even the most soul-desiccating and turbulent human emotions –
Despair vanquished: the case of Etty Hillesum
You may never have heard of Etty, who like Anne Frank kept a diary during the war and lived in Amsterdam. Like Anne she was Jewish and eventually killed by the Nazis. But Etty was 27, fully aware of what was going on, and her diary shows her transformation from utter despair and terror to inspiration and courage. The entry for Thursday, 10 November 1941 reads: ‘Mortal fear in every fibre. Complete collapse. Lack of self-confidence. Aversion. Panic.’ Yet by 1942 she was writing: ‘I am a happy person and I hold life dear indeed … I know just as long as one small street is left to us, the whole firmament still stretches far above it. I’ve died a thousand deaths in a thousand concentration camps … and yet I find life beautiful and meaningful. From minute to minute.’ 1
Despair vanquished: the case of Winston Churchill
Churchill suffered from terrible bouts of apathy and despair. He called it his ‘black dog’. He took to painting not terribly good pictures, building brick walls in his garden and voracious reading to win back his ferocious fighting spirit. Because his ‘lion-hearted nation’ knew that he had done this, they were willing to trust his leadership during the Blitz when their world seemed very dark indeed. Churchill’s wartime speeches are among the most famous calls to courage ever recorded, and they galvanised a nation.
SCIENTISTS ‘DISCOVER’ LITERATURE
One branch of the arts that may be especially useful to you when you are beginning your fightback against despair is literature. Reading is now officially recognised as beneficial to our emotions. If you have never read a classic novel or a powerful poem, you have missed the door to an Aladdin’s cave, one that may give you back your sense of wonder and purpose. There’s growing scientific evidence that enjoying the great works of fiction and verse can make us feel and function better. Mankind has known about this link for centuries – we just haven’t always exploited it.
In January 2009 a Wellcome Collection event in London, promoted jointly by the UK’s Reader Organisation and the medical journal The Lancet, highlighted the workof international scientists and doctors on the health-giving effects of literature. ‘The Reading Cure’ publicised new evidence linking reading with healthful brain changes that promote creativity, empathy and self-belief. This was not just another boffin conference. It may affect the way British doctors treat depression in the future. Professor Louis Appleby, NHS Director of Mental Health, said that this was ‘exactly the kind of work we at the Department of Health want to develop over the next ten years.’
HOW LITERATURE ‘WORKS’
Oh, literature – ho hum, you may think if you have never gone there. Why the fuss? Well, in a classic work of fiction, the reader communes not only with the writer but with characters on their emotional adventures, experiencing and understanding the effects on them. Reading is very different from watching characters in a television series. You are alone with the writer, who is a wordsmith with special insight into language that invokes powerful emotions and ideas. That language is specialised and highly concentrated. In a poem this is signalled by short lines on the page.
In a classic novel you go through what the characters go through, and often there is a hero or heroine whose journey you share. Very important is that your experience with them is resolved and complete – you are not left hanging in the air at the finish, as you so often are with television series and soaps. The writer makes vivid what the characters are thinking and feeling, and the ending makes sense of the whole.
A great novel or poem can throw light on even the most soul-desiccating and turbulent human emotions –
Similar Books
A Crime of Fashion
Carina Axelsson
Beach Combing
Emma Lee-Potter
The Manor House School
Angela Brazil
Dear Nobody
Berlie Doherty
The Alphas Game - Complete Set
JJ Jones
Doosra
Vish Dhamija
Wheel Wizards
Matt Christopher
The Great Husband Hunt
Laurie Graham
Storm Front
John Sandford