Aesthetic Realism: The Answer to Depression

This is the first part of an updated article I wrote that appeared in various newspapers, including the Staten Island Register and the Bangor Daily News.

In the wake of the FDA's warning that the use of antidepressants by adolescents may lead to suicide, I want people reading this to know that there is an answer to depression. Eli Siegel, the American philosopher and educator who founded Aesthetic Realism in 1941, understood the cause of mental trouble and the beautiful, scientific solution. I know with the conviction of my life that Aesthetic Realism can end depression because it understands and criticizes its cause--contempt. Mr. Siegel defined contempt as "the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it."

Contempt is very ordinary, like looking down on the way some­one dresses, or inwardly gloating at another person's mistake. I learned from Aesthetic Realism that the false superiority people get from contempt always makes us ashamed and we punish ourselves for it. "The deepest desire of every person," Aesthetic Realism teaches, "is to like the world on an honest or accurate basis." And liking the world, seeing meaning in it and in people, is what enables a person to truly like oneself!

In a 1949 lecture Eli Siegel gave titled Mind and Questions, he said:

"Life is a constant interaction between a self that wants to be entirely alone and not care for anything, and a self that is as friendly as the sunshine over a large city, wants to be nice to everybody....One thing in us would like to despise ev­erything. It would be like two piles: you make this pile low, the other pile goes up. So, in the seesaw of self, the more you can get the other one down, the more this one goes up."

These sentences described me. In high school, I was lively, nice to everybody, but also conceited. Knowing conceit wouldn't make me popular, I tried to conceal it, but in my mind I compared myself to other girls and felt superior to them all. I envied Joanne who had traveled to Europe, but I told myself I was more earthy, rugged than she was. When Marlene got better grades, I thought, "She's got brains but she's not smart and cool, like me." Without knowing it, I felt the more flaws I found in other people, the better I was.

But I had no idea why, if I was so smart, cool and deep, I hated myself so much. In the international journal The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known issue 842, Mr. Siegel explains:

"If a person likes himself excessively, is too lofty, he is likely also to go to the pit. If you make your own mountain­tops, you are also a pit manufacturer: good at peaks, good at chasms."

In my senior year in high school, I wrote in my journal,

"I'm so down now, so pre-occupied with myself that I can't really give to anyone around me. And for some reason, I'm so afraid to let go of myself--I'm protecting myself so much that I've built huge walls around me. Why can't I destroy my conscience? Why do I punish myself?"

I needed to hear then this question asked and answered by Mr. Siegel in Mind and Questions:

"One of the important questions...is this: "Is there something in me that is always wanting to be unhappy?" Yes. If every self wants to be nothing but itself, it will pay the price of being depressed....[We] are disposed to think that...we can be pure by putting [the whole world] aside in the ash can of time. Depression, therefore, is the highest form, the deepest, the most subtle form of conceit."

Nothing I heard from the psychiatrist I went to could change this hurtful state of mind; and what the psychologist I later saw at college told me--that the other students wore defensive masks that I was too sensitive to maintain--only added to my contempt. In my sophomore year I had what was called an acute anxiety attack and was given tranquilizers. I was terrified this would happen again, but I was so fortunate that a friend told me about Aesthetic Realism. The next year I began having Aesthetic Realism consultations.

Check back soon for part 2

Regards, Sally Ross

Here are some other links that I recommend:

Aesthetic Realism Foundation Home Page
Eli Siegel, Biographical Information
The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method
"Is a Person an Aesthetic Situation?" by Eli Siegel, Founder of Aesthetic Realism
The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, issue 449 "Against Coldness in Ourselves" about Hawthorne's important short story "The Man of Adamant."
"The Ordinary Doom" by Eli Siegel. This is a wonderful essay on the very common situation of a person's not feeling known or understood.
Lynette Abel, writing on literature, economics, love ; see her blog
Michael Palmer, writing on history, sports, art; see his blog
A New Perspective for Anthropology: The Aesthetic Realism method
Aesthetic Realism vs. Racism
Photography Education: the Aesthetic Realism Viewpoint
Self-Expression and What Interferes: an Aesthetic Realism Discussion
Donita Ellison, Art Educator and Aesthetic Realism Associate
Aesthetic Realism Resources
The Terrain Gallery / Aesthetic Realism Foundation
The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known (TRO)