The depression epidemic - Part IX (Personal experience; Conclusion)

[Note: There are various sources for what follows - oral testimony of elderly relatives, recollections of what had been told to me by my parents, taped interviews, a few scattered documents and, especially for some of the early history, several books on the history of Hungarian Jewry, as well as the following two : AJP Taylor (1948) The Habsburg monarchy, 1809-1918 (Penguin, 1985); Miklos Molnar (1996) A concise history of Hungary (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Some of the material comes from my own memories, including a few that resulted from my personal healing. These were not what are sometimes derisively called "recovered memories" but, rather, a reliving of early childhood experiences, ones in which "the past" literally became, for a short time, "the present"]. My mother was born during the dying days of both World War I and the Habsburg Empire, in what was then (August 1917) a part of Austria-Hungary and which is now Slovakia. The family moved south to (the north-eastern part of modern) Hungary soon after, part of large scale moves by Hungarians, including Jews, to relocate before the creation of the "successor states" of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and (German) Austria. She was barely one when the world-wide flu pandemic (which my parents referred to as "the Spanish flu") wiped out entire villages (in late 1918), including her own father. At around the same time, her father's parents, that is, her paternal grandparents, also died (I was told but no longer recall the cause of death). Not long after this, on 21 March 1919, when my mother was 18 months old, the revolution brought a Communist government into power, under the leadership of a Hungarian Jew, Bela Kun. It was the only successful revoluton in Europe outside Russia, but would last a mere four months (133 days) before being toppled. The fall of the Kun government, which contained an unusually high percentage of Jews, brought a period of both anti-communism and anti-semitism (under the fascist dictatorship of Miklos Horthy). There were also massacres of both suspected Communists and Jews during this period - as well as socialists and democrats (1919 to the early 1920s). My mother lived - throughout her childhood and adolescence - with her mother and grandmother, that is, her mother's mother. Although the inter-war period, during which my mother experienced both her early childhood and her adolescence, was one in which there was little political freedom and was characterised by anti-semitism, it was also a period of political stability. My mother had the security of a closely-knit family enriched by Judaism and spirituality. Her world must have felt secure and appeared permanent (Putting together everything I have been told by relatives - who do not agree with each other, even about such basic facts as the existence of anti-semitism, which clearly existed - and what is available as recorded history, it is clear that the sense of security and permanence experienced by my mother and some of our relations was based on a large measure of self-deception. This became evident soon after the outbreak of war in 1939).

As a child born soon after the end of World War II, I was told next to nothing about the war, my parents' experiences, or even about our Jewish roots (even though I would eventually discover that both my parents grew up in strict, Orthodox Jewish families). Occasional references would be made to "the war" and to the fact that my mother had "lost her entire family" (which proved to be only partially true - she still has relatives living in New York, London and other places). It was clearly implied that she had been affected, but this was not spelled out and I don't recall her being referred to as "sick" or "ill". I have a vague recollection of words like "sensitive" and "weak" being used to refer to her and of my being characterised in a similar fashion. I would eventually learn - after she had died - that, after the German army invaded in March 1944, the Jewish population of Gyongyos, where she grew up, was deported to Auschwitz (in June 1944) and that this included both her mother and grandmother and several aunts, uncles and cousins. The few who survived, like herself, lived in the capital, Budapest. Although as a child I assumed she was normal, it is clear that her spirit had been broken and that she had given up on life. If she were living today it is probable that she would be diagnosed with depression.

Like my mother, I, too, was born into a world that was about to disappear - my parents' world, although that had really disappeared in 1944. The Russian army, which had liberated us from the Germans and from Nazism towards the end of 1944 (continuing into early 1945), stayed on and, at the time of my birth in September 1947, was on the verge of imposing a Communist dictatorship. My early childhood was spent under this regime, until the outbreak of revolution.
Soon after the outbreak of the Hungarian revolution in October 1956, we became refugees, fleeing across the border into Austria, eventually migrating to Sydney, Australia (We arrived in Sydney at the beginning of February 1957).

From the time we became refugees, a kind of mist descended on my early childhood, so that I remembered virtually nothing of our previous lives, except that it had been a time of security, comfort and happiness. I experienced a very definite rupture with something I had assumed to have been permanent. There was a sense of my life beginning in Sydney, of there being nothing before. For a long time I felt like an alien in a foreign world and tried to assimilate, forgetting as much as possible of the Hungarian culture, including the Hungarian language.

Although a letter written by my mother within weeks of our arrival (which I discovered on my third trip to Hungary in 1986) makes it clear that she fell into a depression almost immediately, I was unaware of it at first. I also have no idea whether she received any treatment at this time (1957-1958). However, soon after my eleventh birthday she began to make several attempts on her life and this continued for the next five years. During this time she received regular treatment from a Psychiatrist and was in and out of hospital. During this period she not only became more and more depressed, she also became more and more "crazy" (I can't think of a better word). By the time of her eventual, successful suicide in November 1963 she was behaving in a way that can only be called "mad", in particular the way she related to me and to my father.

At first I went numb. Then I felt relief. The next three months were a time of rebellion and happiness, a time during which, for the first time, I started a relationship and even found that I was popular with girls. Then, at the beginning of February 1964, I left Sydney and moved into a boarding school in the New South Wales Highlands, to do my final year of High School. Again I felt as if I'd lost my bearings. My girl friend ended our relationship and I fell into a devastating depression lasting almost 18 months. I spent the next three years at university studying Philosophy, Politics and French literature, started a new relationship with a woman whom I would marry in 1968 but found that I was still haunted by feelings of deep sadness and grief, anxiety and self-contempt. Much of this I have already related at www.consciouslivingseminars.com/andrews_story.html

A series of poor decisions led to my failing uni and being out of work, feeling even more of a failure than before. By the time I returned to uni at the beginning of 1970, to complete my studies in Philosophy, at the age of 22, I felt totally worthless, was filled with guilt, anxiety and rage and was finding life almost unbearable. The story of the period between 1971 - when I discovered Psychology and when my baby daughter was born - and 1984, when I began my personal growth experiences with Self Transformation Seminars (ST) has been told elsewhere and I will not repeat it here. Suffice it to say that, even after graduating with First Class Honours (1974) and then with a Doctorate in Philosophy, in spite of a loving relationship with the woman who would become my second wife and in spite of having gained considerable intellectual insight into my depression, anxiety, self-contempt and fits of rage, I continued to feel all these feelings, found it impossible to hold a job and saw my relationship deteriorate.

As I related it on the CLS website at www.consciouslivingseminars.com/andrews_story.html I thought I had freed myself from depression as a result of my (1984) seminar experiences (in paricular, a very moving weekend workshop in the course of which I mourned my mother's death), only to find it return with a vengeance at the end of 1986, when my second marriage came to an end. What I feel is worth doing here is something I didn't go into on the CLS website, namely, describe my healing journey, leading to what appears to be permanent freedom from depression (I have now been free of depression for almost 19 years) (To be concluded).