Defossez Ellen
Department of Communication, 1117 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, 4200 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA.
J Med Humanit. 2018 Mar;39(1):15-27. doi: 10.1007/s10912-017-9478-9.
In 1997, David Foster Wallace published "The Depressed Person," a short story about a privileged, deeply unhappy woman dedicated to exploring and recounting the texture and etiology of her chronic depression. This essay argues that "The Depressed Person" challenges the long-standing assumption that narrativizing the pain of depression is crucial to overcoming it, and the contemporary view that empathic responses from others promote recovery of the depressed. Taken together, these two critiques inform Wallace's portrayal of chronic depression as an interactive phenomenon that is articulated, sustained, and regenerated through problematic contexts of interaction. Written at a time when public knowledge of and talk about depression was surging, "The Depressed Person" holds an important, if presently under-recognized place, in the expansive corpus of depression texts that emerged in the 1990s.
1997年，大卫·福斯特·华莱士发表了短篇小说《抑郁的人》，讲述了一个享有特权却极度不快乐的女人，她致力于探索和叙述自己慢性抑郁症的状况及病因。本文认为，《抑郁的人》挑战了一个长期以来的假设，即讲述抑郁之痛对克服抑郁至关重要，同时也挑战了当代观点，即他人的共情反应能促进抑郁症患者的康复。综合来看，这两种批判构成了华莱士对慢性抑郁症的描绘，即它是一种通过有问题的互动情境来表达、维持和再生的互动现象。《抑郁的人》写于公众对抑郁症的了解和谈论激增之时，在20世纪90年代出现的大量抑郁症文本中占据着重要地位，尽管目前尚未得到充分认可。
