Depression also manifests itself by a lack of positives. Many people experience depression as a lack of pleasure rather than as the presence of pain.
The lack of pleasure as a symptom of depression is known medically as anhedonia-- an meaning "not" and hedonia meaning "pleasure."
Anhedonia is the inability to experience pleasure -- or even true contentment -- for any significant period of time.
The original title for Woody Allen's film Annie Hall was Anne Hedonia. Although he changed the title of the film, anhedonia remains the perfect description of Woody Allen's character in almost all his films -- a person who, for the most part, is not enjoying life.
Woody Allen began Annie Hall with a joke from a 1919 Fanny Brice monologue:
Two elderly women are in a Catskill Mountain resort and one of them says, "Boy, the food in this place is really terrible."
The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions."
That's essentially how I feel about life.
And a perfect description of anhedonia.
Copyright © 1996 by Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D. and Peter McWilliams
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