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Quote by Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Work

Psychopathia Sexualis: A Medico-Legal Study

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Author

Richard von Krafft-Ebing
Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Richard von Krafft-Ebing was a German psychiatrist born on August 14, 1840, and died on December 22, 1902. He made significant contributions to the fields of psychiatry and sexology, particularly for his classification studies on homosexuality and sexual perversions. more

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“Depressed people become unable to remember happy times, or times when they even had a normal mood. The very concept of a normal mood itself becomes alien. I’ve had more than one depressed participant offer me a pained smile during an interview when I asked, -When was the last time you felt like your usual self? – These are the disorientations of chronic depression.”

“I have discussed how the goal of feeling happy is unusual; its not like other goals such as learning to bake a pizza, for which the desire to achieve is half the battle and steady application is the rest. Pressing harder on unfulfilled and unrealistic goals for happiness can paradoxically deepen depression.”

“The tendency for depression to repeat reflects the normal default settings of a plastic mood system that is open to experience. The unfortunate consequence of plasticity is that a long duration of deep depression can reprogram the entire system so that it favors a return to low mood states- the good news is that there is a flip side to plasticity. As wee see with these psychologically based treatments, the mood system can be deprogrammed.”

“The tendency for depression to repeat reflects the normal default settings of a plastic mood system that is open to experience. The unfortunate consequence of plasticity is that a long duration of deep depression can reprogram the entire system so that it favors a return to low mood states- the good news is that there is a flip side to plasticity. As we see with these psychologically based treatments, the mood system can be deprogrammed.”

“Consistent with the idea that combinations of problems may be less manageable than individual problems, one study found that having three stressful life events was actually four times as bad for future depression as having two stressful life events. With each new problem, the mood system must face a longer and more complex equation with more unknown terms.”