Shame, Depression, and Social Melancholy

Abstract

The pathologization of women’s depression covers over the social and institutional causes of that symptomology. Insofar as patriarchal values continue to devalue and debase women and mothers in ways that colonize psychic space, and depression becomes a cover for what I call ‘social melancholy.’ This is not the melancholy of traditional psychoanalysis, but a form of melancholy that results from oppression, domination, and the colonization of psychic space. Social melancholy differs from both Freud’s notion of melancholy in that it is the result of social factors that constitute the depressed subject as ashamed and lacking agency. Crucial to my analysis is a distinction between shame and guilt missing from traditional psychoanalytic accounts of melancholy and depression.