Melancholia

a person going through life with a constant feeling of emotional pain with the inability to enjoy pleasure or social support from friends and family would be defined as depression. Some psychologists believe that depression is a disease of the mind, or a biological disorder that is genetically inherited. And then there are others who do not view depression as a disease, but as a continuing deepening of emotional feelings. Thirdly, depression has also been viewed as a manifestation due to intense external or environmental influences, which can be treated with medication and therapy. Though many question the validity of an environment creating clinical depression in a person. (Schwartz 5-9) In ancient times depression was referred to as melancholia, meaning to mourn and was believed to be an aliment caused through an imbalance in a person’s black bile. This was one of the four bodily fluids, or humors that maintained overall health in a person. For over two-thousand years this belief held firm until the emergence of modern medicine. Robert Burton, a 17th scholar, believed that melancholy could be treated through proper diet, sleep, work, and social interactions. The term depression, meaning to press down in Latin, and was first used by English author Richard Baker 's in 1665 referring to someone with great depression. In the 20th century, German psychiatrist Kurt Schneider put forth a system for categorizing all forms of depression into either external causes or internal…

The trope of nostalgic and wistful people looking back on their teen years, the good years, approaches stereotype. Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, on the surface, appears to employ the same stereotype of a wistful old man experiencing a bout of retrospection for his lost friend and the times he once had. The narrator of Carson McCullers’s “Ballad of the Sad Café” in The Ballad of the Sad Café works with the same forlorn recollection of when the town was more alive. Both narrators use two…

This year was insane. As I reflect upon my year, it still astounds me that I managed to muddle through. It was calming knowing I had a few laudable and precocious mentors to help guide me through this year, for which they nearly made up for the actions of those inexorable people. Aside from the incompetent and avid acquaintances, many factors made this inscrutable place a little less scary. I can’t speak for others, but I loved this year, and truly wonder how I will be able to leave such…

Though a relationship between melancholy and mania can be traced back to as early as the first century AD, the classification of bipolar disorder was first seen in the 1952 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and was referred to as “manic depressive disorder.” It wasn’t until the third edition was published in 1980 that the manual approached mental illness with a biomedical etiology rather than a psychodynamic one, and that the name of the illness was changed to bipolar…

The British composer, singer, and lutenist John Dowland was born in London Westminster in 1563 AD. There is still uncertainty of this man, who takes part of the Renaissance Era, exact birth date, but just like him many other composers from the Renaissance Era fall into the same situation. Not a lot is known from his childhood history, but it is known that he had a boy named Robert Dowland who took his same career path as a lutenist and composer. As to his wife’s name and/or proof of any other…

Five years later, Magnolia Pictures released “Melancholia” starring Kristen Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Kiefer Sutherland. Directed by Lars von Trier, a well know director from Denmark , “Melancholia” is about two sisters, their tense relationship, and a “mysterious new planet” that threatens to destroy life on Earth. Justine (played by Dunst) is getting married on her sister, Claire’s (played by Gainsbourg) estate. The affair turns into a complete disaster as the family turns on one…

real, but their judgments were counter answered by others who proved logically and rationally that Hamlet’s madness was feigned or assumed, but not real and genuine. The very first argument given by them is that, “A mentally deranged Hamlet could not have proved a tragic hero, because in our definition of the Shakespearean tragedy we have seen that the tragic consequences must proceed mainly from the protagonist’s conscious acts or from some flaws in his characters. A mad man cannot be said to…

In “Mourning and Melancholia,” Sigmund Freud suggests that when an object of love is lost, the ego recreates an image of the loved one inside the self. This image, or “shadow,” is not fully integrated into the personality, thereby enabling the ego to split off. In this “ego splitting,” a part of the ego sits in judgment on the rest of the ego, criticizing it, attacking it. Suicide is the ultimate expression of this dynamic; because one cannot kill this person, one “kills” them by destroying the…

Bubble, Melancholia, and Whitey were all released in day-and-date format, but that is not their only point of similarity. To begin, Bubble and Whitey both lack star studded casts. For Bubble this choice was likely made for two reasons; amateur actors gave a more authentic feel to the town about a small town, and it was an experimental film that did not need to specifically do well. Soderbergh had already been promised a contract for several additional films no matter the outcome of the first.…

feels alienated and abandoned as he is obsessed by the memories of home. He is set against the landscape of loneliness, on the seashore and beneath the vaulted vastness of the night sky, echoing similar landscape as in Edvard Munch’s Melancholia (1902) or Anselm Kiefer’s Sternenfall (1995). Liminal sites are thought to echo loneliness and longing (Bowring 2008: 72), and as seen in this example, the in between spaces of land – sea and land – sky emphasize the melancholy of the narrator. The…