The Philosophy of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)Do you get SAD? No: not sad; SAD.Seasonal affecti

The Philosophy of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

Do you get SAD? No: not sad; SAD.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a form of depression which tracks seasonal patterns. As summer ominously draws to a close, those who are susceptible to SAD have to prepare themselves for the long struggle ahead through winter.

Beneath the clinical manifestations of SAD there may be something more existential in action, something which expresses a disconnection from the now-decaying world.

To quote Freud on his friend Rilke:

‘Not long ago I went on a summer walk through a smiling countryside in the company of a taciturn friend and of a young but already famous poet. The poet admired the beauty of the scene around us but felt no joy in it. He was disturbed by the thought that all this beauty was fated to extinction, that it would vanish when winter came, like all human beauty and all the beauty and splendour that men have created or may create. All that he would otherwise have loved and admired seemed to him to be shorn of its worth by the transience which was its doom.

Winter is coming.

Read more about SAD here.

(Photo credit: Karol Wiśniewski.)