Despair: not willing to be oneself (Kierkegaard)
For Kierkegaard despair is not a mood but a misrelation in the self: refusing to be the self you are. It has three forms: not knowing you have a self, not willing to be yourself (weakness: wanting to be someone else, or no one), and defiantly willing to be a self of your own invention (defiance). Most despair is unconscious and sits comfortably inside a successful life.
What drives it
It explains how outwardly fine people can be in despair without feeling it: they have escaped the burden of being themselves through busyness, roles or a self-built image. The defiant form shows in people who would rather control their misery than accept help.
How it shows
Work
The executive who wishes he were a different kind of person and builds an image of that person; the professional who has avoided the question of what they want for decades by staying busy; the defiant version, 'I made myself, I don't need anyone', said by someone visibly struggling.
Relationships
Attempts to be rid of oneself: merging into a partner, drink, endless self-improvement aimed at becoming someone else. The defiant form refuses comfort and insists on going it alone.
Self
A wish to escape yourself, not just your situation, or a quiet sense that your life is happening to someone you are playing.
What tells it apart
Major depression: Depression is a clinical mood state with changes in sleep, energy and appetite; Kierkegaard's despair can sit under a cheerful, productive life, so the absence of depressive symptoms doesn't rule it out.
False self (Winnicott): Winnicott's false self is an adaptation to the early environment; Kierkegaard adds the defiant form, where the person actively authors a self against what they are and makes it a matter of will.
Self-discrepancy (ideal and ought selves): Self-discrepancy is a gap between actual and ideal selves that the person tries to close; despair refuses the actual self altogether, so closing the gap brings no relief.
A test
Ask what they would do if they stopped trying to become someone; in despair they either can't picture it or the picture frightens them.
Questions to carry
- Picturing a life without the effort to become someone, what comes up: nothing, fear, or something real?
- Whose life or image have I been trying to live inside, and what would it mean to stop?
How strong the research is
weak. A theological and philosophical analysis with no direct testing; its partial neighbours are research on self-discrepancy, self-concept clarity and authenticity, which links living out of line with one's own values to depression and anxiety.
Where it comes from
Søren Kierkegaard (as Anti-Climacus), The Sickness unto Death, 1849
On the family tree: Søren Kierkegaard
Sources
- Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death (1849)