Back in the 1800's, scientists marveled at the movement of large flocks of birds. Imagine hundreds of birds all taking flight at the same time. The patterns that the flock generates are amazing, shifting and transforming from one shape to the next. It makes you wonder how each individual bird can possibly play a part in engineering these complex flight movements. It's as if the birds somehow collaborated, like synchronized swimmers, to put on a show of wonder.
These early scientists were so buffled that they theorized that perhaps there was a certain collective force that dictated the movements, a special animated spirit, if you will, that emerged when all the birds came together.
Nowadays, scientists know that this 'emergent' phenomenon, although it seems magical, is simply a collection of individual patterns that react to nearby cues. Think of a crowded subway platform, packed with people trying to get onto an escalator. From afar, it almost looks like grains of sands floating through an hourglass (which is also, by the way, an example of emergence). Each individual person--just like a grain of sand in the hourglass or a bird in flight--is moving in relation to the individual/particle/bird next to it, and these seemingly coordinated movements produce complex patterns.
And that's the property of emergence. Complex phenomena emerge from simpler "things" that come together. There's nothing extraordinary about a bird flying, but put hundreds of them together in close proximity and you have all these intriguing patterns taking shape.
Or think of a tornado. You have this cone-shaped twister wreaking havoc, and it's basically made up of water droplets and wind currents. There are certain things that must be in place in order for a tornado to form. You need to have a merge between a cold front and a warm front, you need to have a thunderstorm cell develop, and if you get a certain particular rotation going, then a tornado forms. It's impossible to predict exactly when and where a tornado will develop (there are too many changing variables in play), but as meteorologists and storm chasers know, when all the "right" conditions are present, there's a decent chance that a tornado will emerge.
Depression is also an emergent phenomenon. Psychologists can't predict where or when it will manifest, but we know that given a certain array of conditions and stressors, depression is more apt to occur. Life circumstances (e.g. losing a job, divorce, lack of friends), unpleasant events from the past (e.g. family discord, abuse), strong negative feelings (e.g. sadness, emptiness) and personality predispositions (e.g. being sensitive) can all come together to produce depression. And just like only certain thunderstorms ever produce depression, these psychological factors don't necessarily result in depression. There's a lot of variability from person to person and situation to situation. But the emergent phenomenon of depression, once it is formed, has a lot of distinct characteristics.
Most people who are not familiar with depression assume that it is a state of feeling really, really sad. All of us have felt sad before, the reasoning goes, but depressed people feel super sad. But that's like saying that a tornado is a really strong thunderstorm. In a way that's accurate, a tornado takes thunderstorm to an extreme, but that description loses sight of the emergant properties. No one who's lived through a tornado would describe it as a "really bad thunderstorm." There is something other-worldly about a tornado. It's a monster all to itself. And the same thing is true about depression. Yes, people who feel depressed also feel sad, but there are other elements involved that make the experience very distinct from sadness as we know it:
- Depression has a long-term component to it. A person who feels depressed is operating under the belief that he or she is going to remain depressed for a very long time, if not forever.
- People who are dealing with depression blame themselves for what's going on, through guilt (i.e. anger turned on the self), self-deprecation, or regrets.
- Depression depletes motivation to complete daily tasks.
- And depression also takes away the "natural rhythm" or "voice" of a person. People who feel depressed begin to doubt their own selves. "I'm not sure anymore what I really want or what I really believe in."
And these are some of the emergent properties of depression. That's the difference between someone who's simply gone through hard times or experienced bad luck and someone who feels depressed. You're never going to meet a depressed person who'll tell you that they know that their situation can be significantly improved in a relatively short period of time, that it's not really their fault, that they feel motivated in their life, and that they are as clear about what they want in life as they've ever been.
And that's key to battling depression. Just as if we had control over the weather we could dissasemble a tornado (e.g. move the cold front away from the warm front), being aware of the emergent phenomena of depression is very helpful when it comes to the healing process.
As a therapist I most often try to get at the core voice or "authentic self" of the person. In the case of depression, that core voice gets usurped by a meaner, more cynical, critical black-and-white thinking perception. As a psychologist, if I can understand the initial "simple" factors that contributed to the depression--in other words, the stressors that acted on the person--and how these are feeding the meaner voice, then I have a lot to work with. Just like a tornado is "fed" by the collision of the cold and warm fronts, depression is also fed by the connection between the life stressors and the interpretation of the distorting voice. Fortunately, the underlying logic of this connection is weak. It usually takes a few weeks or a few months to shift gears and get the authentic voice back into place
And to me that's the promising aspect of depression. Just like it has the power to emerge, under the right conditions, depression can also be deconstructed and curtailed.
