Depression and Identity

While others have proposed the idea of being able to live a single human lifetime as multiple persons, none, to my knowledge, have thoroughly confronted what mental illnesses like depression could mean for identity. In this paper I will show that people who suffer with depression become different persons when depressed, shown by the rapid loss of interest in activities that they normally enjoy, as well as an inability to relate to the depressed version of themselves after the depressive state has ended. I will begin by defining Parfit’s R-relations, which he explains in depth in his book Reasons and Persons, and then showing how one loses R-relations to our past selves when depressed, but regains them after the state has ended. Next, I will agree with Jennifer Whiting’s view that intrapersonal concern makes us the same person over time, and use this to show that depressives become different persons. Finally, I will show that we can continuously become new persons while retaining what matters for survival, and conclude that in a single human lifetime, we can be many distinct persons, yet what matters for survival holds, reaffirming some of Parfit’s conclusions about R-relations and personal identity.

Parfit takes great care in defining Relation R and its effect on personal identity. He defines Relation R as “psychological connectedness and/or continuity, with the right kind of cause,” adding that “In an account of what matters, the right kind of cause could be any cause” (Parfit, 215). Psychological connectedness he defines as “the holding of particular direct psychological connections”, while psychological continuity he defines as “the holding of overlapping chains of strong connectedness” (Parfit, 206). Connectedness, he says, is the more important and relevant of the two, and the one that is the simplest. If a person at time X today can remember having some experiences at time Y in the past, that makes this the same person at time X and Y. These direct connections can also be other psychological features, like “that which holds between an intention and the later act in which this intention is carried out. … [or] those which hold when a belief, or a desire, or any other psychological feature, continues to be had” (Parfit, 205). These could be things like the continued interest in a hobby, or the pursuit of a long-term goal.

Psychological continuity is Parfit’s addition to Locke’s experience-memory theory of personal identity. Locke’s view would require that we remember things for them to have actually happened to us, which seems obviously false when considering all of the events that did occur which we’ve forgotten over our lives (Parfit 204). None of us can remember being born, for example. Seeing these flaws in Locke’s strict view, Parfit posits that in addition to direct psychological connections, we can add overlapping chains psychological experience, linking together all parts of our past which we have ever been capable of remembering. These chains function as follows: X today and Y yesterday have potentially thousands of psychological connections, and Y has connections with the day before yesterday, and so on, all the way back through our conscious lives (Parfit, 205-206). 

Parfit argues throughout Reasons and Persons that R-relations are what matters for survival. This follows from Parfit’s conclusion that personal identity is based in our R-relations: Our personalities and psychological features consistently change over our lives, yet we continue to survive as a continuing psychological entity. So, the persistence of our continued psychological connections are what matters in survival.

Now, depression makes for some interesting challenges to any theory based in psychological features and persistence. One of the hallmarks of a depressed person is the loss of interest in activities and things that they normally enjoy, or things they have been striving for. One can lose the desire to fulfill even long-held goals and ambitions, like losing the will to complete school work required for an eventual graduation, or to save for some dream purchase. Or, as we can now say, when someone enters a depressive state, they lose some R-relations with themselves from before they became depressed.

Once the depressive state has passed, however, one regains these R-relations. Past desires and goals regain their value, and interest in activities is restored. One’s psychological features and preferences are restored to what they were before the depressive state. One survives as the same person after the depression, but at some points during that depression, one loses some of the R-relations that make them a continuing person.

As an account of what makes us the same continuing person over time, Whiting proposes that special concern for ourselves is what confers on our future selves the status of future selves (Whiting, 566). “Without such concern,” she says, “psychological continuity disintegrates, taking with it our selves” (Whiting, 566). What does this mean for depressives? Another hallmark of severe depression is the loss of concern for future selves, manifested in suicidal thoughts. Care for a continued existence vanishes and one no longer has any interest in the future. 

Does Whiting’s view mean that depressives are no longer persons when they become sufficiently severely depressed? That doesn’t seem probable. It would be bizarre to argue that one is a person, then loses personhood when depressed, then regains it, constantly back and forth as depression wanes on and off. Clearly non-depressed persons and depressed persons are still persons. 

Intrapersonal concern isn’t the only psychological ability or feature that Whiting thinks constitutes our continued psychological continuity, either. She also proposes “memory-connectedness and the continuity of impersonal beliefs and intentions,” echoing Parfit (Whiting, 566). While depressives lose intrapersonal concern and some continuity of intentions, they retain memory-connectedness and probably impersonal beliefs.

I argue that Whitings view is correct, and that intrapersonal concern, along with consistent intentions, are a large part of what makes us the same person over time. This doesn’t mean that depressives lose personhood altogether, rather it means that depressives become a different person when in a state of depression, and return to roughly the same stream of personhood they were in before the depression once it has passed. 

This seems rather intuitive to me, as I’ve dealt with depression myself for many years. Once you lose interest in the hobbies you normally enjoy, disconnect from previously held intentions, and stop caring about your future, you feel like an entirely different person. One of the most poignant examples, for me, is the inability to relate to the depressed version of oneself. Often I will write poetry when I am severely depressed, but rarely do I finish it while in that state. Once the depressive state has passed, if I try to go back to finish the poem, I simply can’t. I feel I’ve lost my connection to what I was writing, and what I write when not depressed sounds like its coming from an entirely different person with their own voice. 

The psychological features that remain constant when depressed, like memory-connectedness, don’t seem strong enough alone to confidently say, “I am still the same person.” A depressed person thinks and acts in different ways when depressed and when not depressed. If you were to describe two people who look the same, but act and think in entirely different ways, people listening to your description would think you were describing twins who didn’t get along with each other.

What does this mean for depressed people? Ultimately, I don’t think it is much different from ordinary continued survival, it’s simply a faster, more radical shift than what normally takes place. In a normal human lifetime, a person can and often does, change belief systems, abandon old goals and intentions for new ones, lose interest in old hobbies in favor of new ones, and so on. Normally, this is a slow process, unfolding over years of experiencing novel things and growing to appreciate new things. Old interests die out naturally as new ones grow to replace them. It is even common for people to use language like “that’s not me anymore,” and “I’m a different person now” when talking about themselves at times in the past. The changes that come about during depression are just like this, only much quicker, like a rubber band being pulled out of place and snapping back to its old position. 

To this point I’ve talked about being depressed and not being depressed as binary, almost opposite, states of being, but clearly this is not always the case, and not how depression really works. One can be very depressed while not being depressed enough to have suicidal thoughts, or at the beginning of a depressive state where it is only a slight dip from their normal psychological state. These less extreme states of being can involve their own changes in our psychology, like the extreme cases, but may not be large enough to constitute a change of person. In addition, these concepts can apply to many large shifts and changes that occur in life, such as the loss of a loved one or the sudden onset of unexpected fame. Many people in these situations make drastically different decisions and can begin to think in new, foreign ways. These new ways of acting and thinking will be different proportional to the effects of the change and the character of the person, possibly resulting in these people exhibiting the behavior of a different person from who they were before.

If this process of becoming a new person when depressed is just like ordinary life, just considerably sped up, then it would seem that what matters in our continued survival holds just as it does in a regular life, even after showing significant changes of character. We can evolve and change, becoming new persons who act and think in new ways, while continuing to survive. It follows, then, that in an account of what matters for survival, the continued numerical sameness of persons isn’t what matters.

If depressives can have their psychological features changed radically from one day to the next, yet persist as a continuing psychological entity, it would seem that one can be many different, numerically distinct persons over a single lifetime, yet what matters for our survival continues to hold.

Works Cited

Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Clarendon Press, 1987.

Whiting, Jennifer. “Friends and Future Selves.” The Philosophical Review, vol. 95, no. 4, 1986, p. 547., doi:10.2307/2185050.