az The Cruelty of Depression: On Melancholy: Books: Jacques Hassoun:
From Library Journal ...there is much in this small, dense, literate work to reward those who want to grapple with philosophical psychology. Hassoun gives vivid cases (including Melville's Bartleby) oh I'd forgotten to illustrate his thesis that melancholy is an enigmatic problem of desire, passion, and loss, 'plunging the subject into the infinite sorrow of an impossible bereavement.' that's right. as I remember, I found all I read here to be very relevant to me. The book's difficulty, however, makes it suitable mainly for specialized collections in psychology.

two cust rvws:
-Dr. Hassoun is smart, compassionate, and well-read. He can keep lots of ideas going simultaneously. In this substantial slim book he draws from literature (Proust, Tsvetaeva, Dostoyevsky, Christa Wolf, Kafka, Primo Levi, etc.), history, psychoanalytic studies, especially the works of Jacques Lacan. His own clinical practice informs his observations. He is a French medical doctor, and a Lacanian psychoanalyst - and in this book you must wrap your mind around Lacanian standards such as the Other - defined in a footnote on p. 25 as "that who internally represents all the wealth of signifiers (yet who can nevertheless be imagined as relay for the first Other, the mother)." that works. His thoughts on substance abuse, addiction, eating disorders as they relate to mourning and melancholy are presented well. A main point is that depression and melancholy can't be "cured" with anything quick or pharmaceutical. Dr. Hassoun ranges far and wide in the service of his treatise; he quotes (among others) Thomas Mann, Andre Breton, Cocteau, St. John of the Cross, and his interesting patients - fluidly and appropriately.
-The fact is, a normally healthy and happy woman can descend into a severe postpartum depression, and depressive disorders often run in families. Something is genetically amiss, and to relegate the treatment of this illness to philosphers and psychoanalysts exclusively is a painful and unkind step back into the Dark Ages.
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