The Little Red Riding Hood Path: Depression as a Healing Force

Depression, like anxiety disorders, is often associated with the characteristics of modern life. However, at different times in different cultures, it was given its own names. Jungian analysts believe that depressive states can be found in mythological plots. This painful experience is described in fairy tales and legends of different peoples.

Through folklore, the collective unconscious metaphorically describes depression and helps a person cope with loneliness, get in touch with the experience of previous generations who experienced the same feelings. What’s more, sometimes depression itself is the “treatment.” Perhaps sometimes it even helps us find a way out of a deep crisis, says Simone Matzliakh-Khanoch, author of the book “Tales of Reversible Death. Depression as a healing force” (Cogito Center, 2014).

Not all depression is a healing force on its own. As in a runny nose, cough and other manifestations of the “cold”, doctors today see a protective reaction of the body, and depression at first can be a protective reaction of the psyche to an unbearable situation, says Simone Matzliach-Hanokh. And just as prolonged inflammation can turn into a chronic form, so depression – prolonged, repeated again and again – loses its healing properties and itself turns into a disease, the author of the book believes.

Simone Matzliach-Hanokh cites the words of child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott: “Depressive state indicates that the “I” of a person has not collapsed, is not completely destroyed and can resist.” From this perspective, the disease can indeed be seen as a hopeful sign.

“It is important that we recognize the evolutionary need for the withdrawal from reality, the withdrawal from being, that accompanies depression. And being in its labyrinths, they remembered that in fact the tunnel leading to the surface exists, and at the end there will be light and air, ”she writes.

We are well aware of fairy tales in which the heroines experienced a crisis in one form or another, died and returned to life again in a new capacity. Persephone, Psyche, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood…

“Like us, they knew that there was a way, a road that they had to overcome. But unlike us, they had a map,” writes Simone Matzliach-Khanoch.

These fairy tales, familiar to us since childhood, carry important information, the author of the book believes. Each of them is a map on which the route “to the inner underworld and back” is laid. “In my understanding, fairy tales of reversible death are repeatedly repeated stories about the depressive process, told through plots, where there is necessarily a dive into the underworld of spiritual hell, an endless journey through this hell, and then no less difficult ascent, a kind of rebirth…”.

In this state, the heroines of fairy tales remain outwardly motionless, while the inner work of the soul helps to find the way back – to light and life. Whatever the cause of awakening – a hunter hero who came in time or a handsome prince, a grown-up woman comes out of depression with new strength and new wisdom.

“Sometimes the only way out for the psyche is such suspended animation”

Maria Leibovich, psychiatrist, psychotherapist

From a clinical point of view, there are many depressions. They are different – in particular, in terms of severity. There is a protocol according to which a mild degree is treated with the help of psychotherapy, and with a severe one, medical support is already needed.

I think that the approach proposed by Winnicott and described by the author of the book “Tales of Reversible Death” Simone Matzliach-Hanokh is applicable to exogenous (provoked by external events) depressions of mild and possibly moderate severity. It is important that both Winnicott and the author of the book emphasize that prolonged depression becomes a disease that needs to be treated.

In psychotherapeutic, psychoanalytic work with depression, the specialist pays special attention to what functions this condition has. What are the positives? What can it protect a person from, why does he need it? In my practice, there was a patient who was well aware that he had depression. And he realized that this state was his only trump card in resolving a family conflict. It was depression that became the condition under which the family realized that the problem needed to be addressed.

In conventional, somatic medicine, temperature is a symptom that shows the body’s struggle with an infection or virus, and a runny nose is a way to remove leukocytes that died in this fight. Similarly, depression can play a role in psychiatry.

In practice, one has to see how depression, figuratively speaking, wraps a person in a thick wadded blanket through which he feels nothing. He does not feel joy either, but first of all, the function of this “blanket” is to protect from pain, heavy feelings, negative experiences of high intensity.

For example, this often happens with losses, family conflicts. This is especially evident in adolescents who find themselves in a hopeless situation if their parents do not support their development and independence. Then we see how a child, starting from 12-13 years old and up to adulthood, falls into a certain state, similar to suspended animation. He seems to feel nothing, wants nothing, he has no aspirations. An important problem remains unresolved. Sometimes the only way out for the psyche to save itself is such suspended animation, non-existence, “reversible death.”

I recently treated two patients who both lost babies in early pregnancy. Without giving themselves time to get over the loss, they rushed to fertility doctors, making new attempts to get pregnant. After 3-4 months, both were in a serious depression, lost interest in life. Their fixation on the topic of children remained, but there was no vitality to realize this desire. Without giving themselves the opportunity to grieve, to survive the loss, they left this pain untouched, which does not disappear anywhere from the body, reminds of itself, interferes with their plans, does not allow them to live in the present.

I would like to point out that there are different “types” of depression. And when they are accompanied by symptoms of a more severe register, serious treatment is necessary. For example, with anxious depression, sleep is disturbed, a person feels severe anxiety, and there are somatic disorders.

When dealing with depression, it is always important to consider complications. Most of the time they are social. A person who stays in such “anabiosis” for a long time moves away from others, often loses friends, a partner, a job. How long is he willing to stay in his “reversible death” in order to recover and “reborn”?

The decision is made by a specialist who observes the dynamics of the patient’s condition and suggests when it is time to connect other methods of treatment.