Darkness Visible

Styron, William. New York: Random House, 1990. Hardback, 84 pages; also in paperback.

At DRADA’s 1989 mood disorders symposium acclaimed author William Styron spoke movingly about his experience with depression. That talk evolved into an article in Vanity Fair, which in turn, evolved into this short book. Darkness Visible is subtitled, rather dramatically, “A Memoir of Madness.” In it Styron recounts a severe depressive episode so vividly that even an incurably happy person will likely begin to comprehend his despair.

The story begins in Paris, where Styron—already clinically depressed and knowing it, but not yet in treatment—is receiving a prize for his writing. During the festivities, which “should have sparklingly restored my ego,” writes Styron, “my brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unnameable tide that obliterated any enjoyable response to the living world.” He lists the problems he experiences during a dinner with friends that night as “failure to have an appetite . . . , failure of even forced laughter and, at last, virtually total failure of speech.” As his depression continues unrelieved, he contemplates suicide: “Hideous fantasies [of suicide], which cause well people to shudder, are to the deeply depressed mind what lascivious daydreams are to persons of robust sexuality.”

Styron rails against the general public’s failure to understand the seriousness of depression: “For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devastation would be . . . in bed . . . His invalidism would be . . . unquestioned . . . .” But the depressed person “is thrust into the most intolerable social . . . situations [where] he must try to utter small talk . . . and, God help him, even smile.”

The word “depression,” Styron says, is “a true wimp of a word for such a major illness . . . Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like s slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.” And because getting it under control is not accomplished overnight, “failure of [rapid] alleviation is one of the most distressing factors of the disorder to the victim . . . .”

In addition to the narrative of his descent into depression, survival of urges to suicide, and eventual recovery, the book includes Styron’s views on the morality of suicide; the high prevalence of depression and suicide among “artistic types”; the variety of causes of depression and ways of experiencing it; and the merits of psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and psychiatric hospitalization.

Most DRADA readers will realize that Styron’s discussion of causes and treatments reflects his own views and does not provide a balanced or comprehensive presentation of current medical knowledge. With this caveat understood, this book is highly recommended for relatives, friends, and coworkers of persons with a depressive disorder.

By Anne Maclean Heasty

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