Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love (41 page)

15
. O’Connor, M. F., Wellisch, D. K., Stanton, A. L., Eisenberger, N. I., Irwin, M. R., and Lieberman, M. D., ‘Craving love? Enduring grief activates brain’s reward center’,
Neuroimage
, 42 (2008), 969–72.

16
. Following the evolution of psychiatric thinking and advances in clinical and neurological research, depression assumed different forms and was given various names, including ‘involutional melancholia’, ‘depressive reaction’, ‘manic depressive illness’ and ‘depressive neurosis’. See Gruenberg, A. M., Goldstein, R. D., and Pincus, H. A., ‘Classification of depression: Research and diagnostic criteria: DSM-IV and ICD-10’, in Licinio, J., and Wong, M. L. (eds),
Biology of Depression: From Novel Insights to Therapeutic Strategies
, Wiley-VCH Verlag, 2005. For a comprehensive history of the concept of depression, see Jackson, S. W.,
Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times
, Yale University Press, 1986.

17
. Freud, S.,
Mourning and Melancholia
(originally published 1917), 14th edn, Vintage, 1998.

18
. American Psychiatric Association,
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
, 4th edn, Text Revision (DSM-IV TR), American Psychiatric Press, 2000.

19
. The American Psychiatric Association has published proposals and preliminary drafts for the fifth edition of the DSM on www.dsm5.org

20
. Kendler, K. S., Myers, J. M. S., and Zisook, S., ‘Does bereavement-related major depression differ from major depression associated with other stressful life events?’,
American Journal of Psychiatry
, 165 (2008), 1449–55.

21
. Prigerson, H. G., Horowitz, M. J., Jacobs, S. C.,
et al.
, ‘Prolonged Grief Disorder: Psychometric validation of criteria proposed for DSM-V and ICD-11’,
PLOS Medicine
, 6 (2009), e1000121. For instance, the O’Connor
et al.
brain-imaging study that found similarities between pain and grief (see n. 15 above) was designed to identify the specific regions of activation in bereaved patients who had manifested severe symptoms of depression, and compare them with the regions of activation in a group manifesting milder symptoms. The authors argue that in patients with severe symptoms there is higher activity in the nucleus accumbens, one of the tissues in the brain’s reward system, which I will talk about in the chapter on joy. They interpret this to be the consequence of an unresolved yearning in connection with wishful reveries about the deceased spouse that is not necessarily useful in coping with the loss or in paving the way to acceptance of the spouse’s death.

22
. Bromet, E.,
et al.
,
BMC Medicine
, 9 (2011), 90. These figures report the number of people who have actually been diagnosed and are under observation or being treated, either through psychotherapy or with drugs or both.

23
. Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf.

24
. See for instance: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-
distress/201008/good-grief-vs-major-depressive-disorder. Also: Frances, Allen,
Saving Normal: An Insider Revolts against Out-of-control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Everyday Life
, William Morrow, 2013.

25
. For a moving appeal against the inclusion of grief in the DSM, see Arthur Kleinman’s editorial in the
Lancet
, 379 (18 February 2012), 608–9.

26
. I read this quote in an article by Zadie Smith on joy. Apparently Barnes heard this statement from a friend of his who wrote it in a letter of condolence; Smith, Z., ‘Joy’,
New York Review of Books
, 10 January 2013.

27
. Wittgenstein, L.,
Philosophical Investigations
(trans. G. E. M. Anscombe), Oxford University Press, 1953.

28
. For a more extensive background to Wittgenstein and emotions, see Mascolo, M. F., ‘Wittgenstein and the discursive analysis of emotion’,
New Ideas in Psychology
, 27 (2009), 258–74.

29
. Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations
, #66. It is remarkable that Wittgenstein, at least in an early phase of his thinking, had a strong anti-naturalist attitude and completely turned his back on Darwin. For the Austrian thinker, the theory of evolution was not sufficient to explain the ‘multiplicity’ of species in the world. This is made clear in a conversation by letter with Maurice Drury: Drury, M. O’C., ‘Conversations with Wittgenstein’, in
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections
, ed. R. Rhees, Rowman and Littlefield, 1981. However, later, in
Philosophical Investigations
, Wittgenstein gave more importance to the body to account for the operations of the mind and he clearly accorded facial expressions great power in conveying emotion.

30
. This quote is not from
Philosophical Investigations
, but is #570 in Wittgenstein, L.,
Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology
, Vol. II (trans. G. E. M. Anscombe), University of Chicago Press, 1980.

31
. The drawings and quote I use here are from Wittgenstein, L.,
Lectures on Aesthetics
(originally published 1966), University of California Press, 40th Anniversary Edition, 2007.

32
. An emoticon (the word combines ‘emotion’ and ‘icon’) accompanies text to add an emotional tone to a message that could otherwise be misinterpreted.

Many attribute the first use of an emoticon to Professor Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, who on 19 September 1982 wrote :-) in an email to his colleagues at the university, followed by the comment: ‘Read it sideways.’ His aim was to help his college community to achieve the right tone in written communications, so as to avoid misunderstandings. However, the American commercial artist Harvey Ball had designed the smiley
in 1963. An even earlier use of print characters to mimic a facial expression was found in an 1862 transcript of a speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In the transcript, the characters ;) appear after the word ‘laugh’. This may have been a typo, but if not, it is the oldest known documented use of an ‘emoticon’. Emoticons add the visual elements that language inevitably omits. They now abound in virtual communications. When I send a text message with my iPhone and use an emoticon app – the most popular one is Emoji – to accompany or replace words, I am at a loss to know what all those faces mean. I have counted about sixty different images of faces, half of which seem to portray positive expressions and the other half negative ones. There are more emoticons than I can find words to describe them. Does this mean that we can emote in a more sophisticated manner than we used to, or that our language and its public use are richer?

Source on the history of emoticons: Lee, Jennifer, ‘Is that an emoticon in 1862?’,
New York Times
, 19 January 2009.

33
. Hahn, T., ‘Integrating neurobiological markers of depression: An fMRI based pattern classification approach’, PhD thesis, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, 2010.

34
. For a short introduction on research-based diagnostic criteria, see a text by Thomas Insel, current director of the US National Institute of Mental Health: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/directors-biography.shtml

35
. Pies, R., ‘Why psychiatry needs to scrap the DSM system: An immodest proposal’, http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/01/07/why
-psychiatry-needs-to-scrap-the-dsm-system-an-immodest-proposal/

36
. Pletscher, A., Shore, P. A., and Brodie, B. B., ‘Serotonin release as a possible mechanism of reserpine action’,
Science
, 122 (1955), 374–5. For a comprehensive history of antidepressants, see Healy, D.,
The Anti-depressant Era
, Harvard University Press, 1997.

37
. Schildkraut, J. J., ‘The catecholamine hypothesis of affective disorders: A review of the supporting evidence’,
American Journal of Psychiatry
, 122 (1965), 509–22.

38
. The serotonin re-uptake mechanism was discovered by Sir Bernard Katz, Ulf von Euler and Julius Axelrod, who earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine for it in 1970: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/
medicine/laureates/1970/

39
. Data from IMS Health Inc, Biopharma Forecasts and Trends, as reported in Insel, T. R., ‘Next-generation treatments for mental disorders’,
Science Translational Medicine
, 4, Issue 155 (2012), 1–9.

40
. Wittchen, H. U., Jacobi, F., Rehm. A., Gustavsson, A., Svensson, M., Jönsson, B., Olesen, J., Allgulander, C., Alonso, J., Faravelli, C., Fratiglioni, L., Jennum, P., Lieb, R., Marcker, A.,
et al.
, ‘The size and burden of mental disorders and other disorders of the brain in Europe 2010’,
European Neuropsychopharmacology
, 21 (2011), 655–79.

41
. Lacasse, J. R., and Leo, J., ‘Serotonin and depression: A disconnect between the advertisements and the scientific literature’,
PLOS Medicine
, 2, Issue 12 (2005), e392. For a sharp analysis of how ambiguity and uncertainty around the efficacy of antidepressants can be employed to fortify their perceived authority, see McGoey, L., ‘On the will to ignorance in bureaucracy’,
Economy and Society
, 36 (2007), 212–35, and McGoey, L., ‘Profitable failure: Antidepressant drugs and the triumph of flawed experiments’,
History of the Human Sciences
, 23 (2010), 58–78.

42
. Neville, S., ‘GlaxoSmithKline fined $3bn after bribing doctors to increase drug sales’,
Guardian
, 3 July 2012.

43
. Kirsch, I., Deacon, B. F., Huedo-Medina, T. B.,
et al.
, ‘Initial severity and antidepressant benefits: A meta-analysis of data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration’,
PLOS Medicine
, 5, Issue 2 (2008), e45.

44
. Miller, G., ‘Is Pharma running out of brainy ideas?’,
Science
, 329 (2010), 502–4.

45
. For a review of current directions in the discovery of new treatments for mental disorders, see Insel, ‘Next-generation treatments for mental disorders’.

46
. For my summary of the theory of the humours, I have consulted the excellent history of the theory by Noga Arikha:
Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours
, Ecco, 2007.

47
. Lloyd, G. E. R. (ed.),
Hippocratic Writings
(trans. J. Chadwyck and W. N. Mann), Penguin, 1978.