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A Phenomenological Exploration: The Black Bile Of Depression, Charles L. Dunlap Ii, M.A.

Counseling and Family Therapy Scholarship Review

The phenomenon of depression manifests itself in many different forms, haunting us with its simultaneously inescapable, diffuse and pervasive presence. The rich thickness of depression is often severely drained and confined within the overall field of psychology, in which this phenomenon is regularly expressed as an all-encompassing, diagnostic label, to limitedly describe an almost endless number of symptomatic permutations. We shall attempt to distill something of depression’s essence in returning to its ancient, etymological, spiritual and metaphysical roots, in order to begin transcending the traditional clinical notion of depression as simply a disease to be cured and suppressed. The relatively …