[syndicate] Notes on the topology of depression

[Alan Sondheim]

Notes on the topology of depression


a Trigger events - these are often catalysts of memories/trauma or remin-
ders of aporia. Once triggered, depression is out of control. Avoidance
(circumvention) is sometimes possible through 'bypass' - constructing
other pathways, deflecting the events, redirecting attention.

b Cascade - once a trigger event occurs, a constellation of symptoms and
aporia appears. These are interlocked; a cascade, often overwhelming and
mute, occurs. The result is a sense of inescapable mourning which often
appears without origin. Think of chain reactions, holarchic and scatter-
ing, Waddington's chreod as potential model. Everything feeds into every-
thing, sourceless, targetless, vector as line segment out of nowhere. One
feels an almost literal 'rise' of chemical imbalance, the body drenched in
potential tears, chemistry gone awry. There's a 'mountaineer's equation'
based on the constants in play when a topology is sliced (H.B. Griffiths,
Surfaces) - it's as if the body is subject to planar slicing, as limbs,
thorax, mind are transformed. It's the same old topology, the same proc-
esses at work, time and time again, remaining forever on or beneath the
surface. (In depression, all surfaces are one.) (Depression seeks its own
level.)

c Syzygy - the cascade is a multiply-connected manifold or tension,
torsion; any movement (physical or psychological) threatens to tear the
psyche apart. The syzygy is vectored, barbed, often resulting in the
obsessive construction of subjunctive ('if only I had') narratives. The
past is active, crippling; the present neutral, the future passive. It's
as if the psyche skitters across nodes; the best one can hope for is
endurance.

d Horizon - horizon disappears; the manifold of lived experiences is
expelled. What remains is debris - part-objects, broken memories, the
equally broken syntax of existence. Nothing coheres.

e Decathection - the states and processes of the world are disinvested,
without boundary or 'lip' - things fall away without falling or failure.
The result is a world of loss, but what is lost has already and perman-
ently disappeared.

f Defuge - with decathection comes exhaustion, enervation; one sinks into
an abjection without transgression. Pleasure is inconceivable, words lose
their performativity, disgust and sorrow come and go in the midst of a
blunt neutrality replete with death, decay, nothing at all. The result is
defuge, a state of abject hopelessness.

e Emptied - the world is emptied without emptying. What separates this
from meditation is the accompaniment of sorrow, mourning over ghosts, an
endless and horizon-less suffering. This is a useless state, a state of
uselessness.

f Comfort - beneath the surface, there is a comfort zone constructed from
the remnants of defense and memory; one nests in depression, which makes
it so difficult to remedy. The nesting is the sinking-towards-death; the
potential final - and only - remaining process is suicide. Everything else
has disappeared. But comfort alleviates suicide, and one may stay in this
state, always faltering, indefinitely.

g Cure - cure breaks through the topology from the outside; it may also
redefine the epistemology of the topology as evanescent, not of this or
any other world. The former might be a talking cure, and the latter,
medication. But all too often both become a continuous mode of existence,
itself impenetrable, itself calling out (from the outside, from the
outset) for a cure. One is lost in the maze, often sinking beneath the
surface to localized symptoms or the return of the depression in full
force.

h Death - cure is no cure, of which death puts an end to it. Electroshock
and other imposed traumas may permanently change the course of depression,
but these occur to someone else.

i Someone else - Someone else is always outside, perhaps capable of a
fundamental recuperation of the self with greatly reduced depression. Even
without imposed traumas or cures, there is often the glimmer of another
way, an elsewhere, which appears from time to time. The other way, how-
ever, appears far out of reach; it is someone else's way and, within
depression, has no bearing on one's state. Depressive time is always dusk,
no matter how dark the initial conditions, and in this manner it relates
to sleep as well.


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