The causes of depression, according to this view, are social. Sustained social pressures are bound to end up affecting our bodies, but the pressures come first, the biological responses second.

This social view is echoed in the perspective of some psychoanalysts, who see depression as a form of protest. As humans are taken to be units of energy in industrialized societies, they will resist, whether they are conscious of this or not. Thus, much of what is today labelled depression could be understood as old-fashioned hysteria, in the sense of a refusal of current forms of mastery and domination. The more that society insists on values of efficiency and economic productivity, the more depression will proliferate as a necessary consequence. In a similar way, the more modern society urges us to attain autonomy and independence in our search for fulfillment, the more resistance will take the form of the exact opposite of those values. It puts misery in the midst of plenty. Depression is thus a way of saying NO to what we are told to be.

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