I have held that, in some way, staying true to depression, and trying to live it, trying to find out what it wants, being interested in it, may be more revolutionary than we realize. It may be more of a political act than we realize. There are things in the depression that could possibly connect you beyond your own misery. That would be a more alchemical view of it too, where the black begins to turn into blue, where it becomes a communicable disease rather than an isolating disease, and where a certain sensitivity can occur from this sickness, this denseness, and this inured leaden nothing.
Because we are still left having to ask beyond the physiological. What does it want? Because, psychologically, we are obliged to ask that of everything whether it is an appendicitis or a nose bleed, we are obliged, psychologically, to ask, What does it want? and we are not allowed, psychologically, to relegate anything to the body only.
There is no such thing psychologically as only body or only world or only matter. That is the meaning of psychic reality. It does not mean that we are making a positive statement that psyche is in all these things, but as a psychologist our attitude is always, What else is going on here for the psyche, for the soul? It is not a metaphysical statement but a psychological attitude.
— Three Seminars on Melancholy and Depression, On Melancholy & Depression, UE 11