Kierkegaard and mood disorders

ABSTRACT

With his writings encompassing such issues as depression, despair, faith, and hope, the nineteenth century Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard is known for his percipient insights into the psychology of spirituality. Here, the author presents a case from his psychiatric practice as a basis for exploring how Kierkegaard’s ideas can be drawn upon when providing spiritually orientated psychotherapy to clients suffering from depression. Kierkegaard’s ideas can inform the work of clinicians who are providing care to individuals with mood disorders regardless of whether it is being provided in the name of spiritually orientated psychotherapy, existential therapy, or pastoral counseling.

KEYWORDS:

• Kierkegaard
• mood disorders
• spiritually orientated psychotherapy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Kierkegaard’s other major published works include Fear and Trembling (1954/1843), Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age: A Literary Review (1978/1846), Practice in Christianity (1991/1850), and Attack Upon “Christendom” (1944/1854-1855). Copious volumes of Kierkegaard’s posthumously published Journals and Notebooks (Cappelørn et al., 2007) also provide invaluable insights into his wide-reaching thought.

2. David R. Law, in chapter 5 of his book Kierkegaard as a Negative Theologian (Law, 1993). describes Kierkegaard’s three existential stages: The aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Individuals who inhabit the first of those stages (or spheres) are concerned with the finite and the temporal. The move from the aesthetic, first to the ethical and then to the religious also reflects a movement toward the infinite Self (i.e., God).

3. It is worth noting that scholars have also attempted to distill psychotherapeutic principles from the writings of other prominent existential thinkers/philosophers. Stolorow & Sanchez (2009), for example, examine Martin Heidegger’s work in this manner, arguing that Heidegger’s identification of two constitutive features of human existence, context-embeddedness and finitude, are important aspects of Heidegger’s “philosophy as therapy” (p. 125). In his exploration of Nietzschean psychotherapy, Bazzano (2019) identifies many elements within Nietzsche’s thought that have therapeutic implications including self-authorship of one’s life and self-affirmation.

4. In his study, Binswanger noted the way in the which the phenomenon of flight of ideas connects the sufferer’s experience of the temporal (temporalen) with the experience of that which is continuous (Kontinuität) and permanent (Dauer). It is in such an encompassing of temporality and permanence that Binswanger finds an echo of the Kierkegaardian motif of finite and infinite.

5. The late post-Jungian thinker James Hillman (2021) conceives of Senex and Puer as contrasting but inter-dependent archetypal principles or psychological attitudes. The stasis and authority of Senex contrasts with the creativity and immediacy of Puer. Always seeking novelty and change, the Puer attitude “displays an aesthetic point of view” (p. 51) and even “resists development” (p. 50). As such, it serves as a counterpoint to the Senex-driven tendency within much of contemporary academia toward generating overly coagulated theoretical structures around such purportedly axiomatic principles as development, growth, and goals.

6. In the chapter “Of the three metamorphoses” of Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche (1969. p. 54) outlines three stages of development of “the spirit” – from camel, to lion, to child. The weight-bearing camel undergoes a transformation to the lion, the master of the will. As powerful as the lion is he, he cannot really step into his own power as a creator until he is able to experience the child’s “innocence and forgetfulness” (p. 55). In Seung’s (2005) illuminating commentary, “the will of a camel is obedient and reverent” (p. 19) in contrast to the lion whose will is “defiant and independent” (p. 20). The final stage in the development of the will is to morph into a child. For Seung (2005) “The will of a child is truly its own because it stands on its relation to itself rather than to some other agents” (p. 20) It is only when such a child-like state is embraced that “the spirit gains the power of creation” (p. 20).