[REVIEW] Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon
Apr. 7th, 2010 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldAndrew Solomon's 2001 book on depression, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, is a title that I first came across in the middle of my most severe recent depression in 2008. Solomon has arguably made his name from this book--his official site is dominated by it--and, I think, he certainly deserves this.
The Noonday Demon is a wonderfully comprehensive survey of the issue, beginning with his own personal experiences and continuing through examinations of the various treatments for depression and depression in history and the different populations subject to depression and how they cope. Even at the time, I could see that he'd achieved something spectacular. Solomon's book is wonderfully brave. Without his personal admissions, the book would have been a useful tome. With his accounts of his depression, The Noonday Demon becomes a powerful book, introducing as well as anyone could the experiences and thinking of the depressed to non-depressed readers. It's such a hard thing to communicate to one's well-meaning friends and partners and families, I'm pleased he's been able to do it.
The book's got problems, of course. Bookslut's Jenna Crispin notes that Solomon's privileged background has allowed him to access any number of therapies, from electric shock therapy to drug cocktails to Senegalese shamans, that would have been unavailable to most poor and middle-class Americans. I am infinitely grateful that OHIP--Ontario's public health plan--covers the cost of all these therapies, though sadly not the drugs. I can only imagine personally what people living in less fortunate jurisdictions would gave to deal with--perhaps they'd be offered a bottle of rotgut whiskey and a rope? Crispin's critique of Solomon's bias is unfounded, I think, inasmuch as Solomon does examine at length the plight of the different socially excluded and marginalized groups, from the Inuit of Greenland to LGBT people to the working-class poor. Solomon's gaze is never anything but inclusive.
More profoundly, as Joyce Carol Oates noted in her New York Times review, Solomon makes bizarre claims about depression as a curative phenomenon, as something that people can learn from and use to better themselves. Perhaps, in the limited sense that the talk therapies--group therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy--often used to treat depression can help people who've exited depression. That's the only way it can help. I know myself that most of the coping techniques that people develop, like self-isolation and ignoring problems and self-indulgence, aren't very adaptive when people manage to exit depression. It leaves me perplexed.
But, despite these flaws, Solomon has succeeded wonderfully. He introduced his readers to depression via his own personal experiences, experiences which weren't that far removed from my own; he examined depression's origins; he examined ways different people coped; he examined the hopes for effective treatment. Solomon succeeded in his project of explaining depression, indeed defining it in a way that the world can understand. I'm so glad that he did that.
The Noonday Demon is a wonderfully comprehensive survey of the issue, beginning with his own personal experiences and continuing through examinations of the various treatments for depression and depression in history and the different populations subject to depression and how they cope. Even at the time, I could see that he'd achieved something spectacular. Solomon's book is wonderfully brave. Without his personal admissions, the book would have been a useful tome. With his accounts of his depression, The Noonday Demon becomes a powerful book, introducing as well as anyone could the experiences and thinking of the depressed to non-depressed readers. It's such a hard thing to communicate to one's well-meaning friends and partners and families, I'm pleased he's been able to do it.
The book's got problems, of course. Bookslut's Jenna Crispin notes that Solomon's privileged background has allowed him to access any number of therapies, from electric shock therapy to drug cocktails to Senegalese shamans, that would have been unavailable to most poor and middle-class Americans. I am infinitely grateful that OHIP--Ontario's public health plan--covers the cost of all these therapies, though sadly not the drugs. I can only imagine personally what people living in less fortunate jurisdictions would gave to deal with--perhaps they'd be offered a bottle of rotgut whiskey and a rope? Crispin's critique of Solomon's bias is unfounded, I think, inasmuch as Solomon does examine at length the plight of the different socially excluded and marginalized groups, from the Inuit of Greenland to LGBT people to the working-class poor. Solomon's gaze is never anything but inclusive.
More profoundly, as Joyce Carol Oates noted in her New York Times review, Solomon makes bizarre claims about depression as a curative phenomenon, as something that people can learn from and use to better themselves. Perhaps, in the limited sense that the talk therapies--group therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy--often used to treat depression can help people who've exited depression. That's the only way it can help. I know myself that most of the coping techniques that people develop, like self-isolation and ignoring problems and self-indulgence, aren't very adaptive when people manage to exit depression. It leaves me perplexed.
But, despite these flaws, Solomon has succeeded wonderfully. He introduced his readers to depression via his own personal experiences, experiences which weren't that far removed from my own; he examined depression's origins; he examined ways different people coped; he examined the hopes for effective treatment. Solomon succeeded in his project of explaining depression, indeed defining it in a way that the world can understand. I'm so glad that he did that.
