Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression [Hardcover]

Lewis Wolpert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 14, 2000

Lewis Wolpert had it all -- a successful scientific career and a happy home life -- when his struggles with clinical depression began. Although he had often dealt with the blues, he had never been seriously depressed before the illness took over his life. Overwhelmed, he was no longer able to think properly, let alone work, and his mind turned to suicide. When eventually he recovered with the help of psychotherapy and drug treatment, Dr. Wolpert had to confront the stigma and shame attached to what he considered a terrible, but treatable, disease. It is an affliction that this accomplished biologist and writer -- astonished that he was vulnerable to what is so often classified as a mood or emotional disorder -- believed he had to try to understand in scientific and human terms.

Frustrated by the lack of information available to those who battle depression, Dr. Wolpert decided to go public with his carefully guarded secret and his search for its causes. The result is "Malignant Sadness," a uniquely empathetic international bestseller that mines the core of one of society's most quietly pervasive illnesses. Although one in five of us will endure its pain and helplessness, depression remains obscured by a range of misconceptions.

Part memoir, part scientific and historical inquiry, "Malignant Sadness" carefully weaves Dr. Wolpert's revelation of his own struggle with a succinct and humane discussion of everything that is known about depression and its treatments, from the history of the melancholy temperament to contemporary brain science. Is depression rooted in genetics, bad parenting, a single trauma, or a combination of causes? Do different cultures experience depressionin different ways? Can it be avoided altogether? His wide-ranging exploration of the two main ways science attempts to understand depression -- the biological and the psychological -- convinced Dr. Wolpert that we need a more holistic approach to helping those in its grip.

Not since "Darkness Visible" has anyone created such a compelling picture of what it means to experience the disease that Wolpert so eloquently names "malignant sadness."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

After he captures the essence of his subject so succinctly in his title, it's a wonder that noted scientist Lewis Wolpert went on to write a whole book. Luckily for us, Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression lives up to its title, explaining the state of our knowledge and enlightening bystanders who have never been crippled by psychic pain about just what they're missing. Wolpert's training as a developmental biologist helps him sift through the scientific literature, while his devastating episode of depression is the base of his eloquent descriptions of its subjective experience. Far from a deficit, his lack of psychiatric training allows him to explore more freely the unclear and ambiguous depths of our understanding of this all-too-common ailment.

Given his background, one would expect Wolpert to emphasize biological causes and relief, but he gives psychological and environmental factors their due. As anyone with a debilitating disease will agree, any course of action promising recovery is worth pursuing, and Malignant Sadness carefully looks into many alternate explanations and therapies. Evolution, psychotherapy, Prozac and its ilk, and non-Western medicine all play roles in Wolpert's drama, and his engaging prose keeps the reader intrigued throughout. Either you or someone close to you is practically certain to be struck by some form of depression during your lifetime--read Malignant Sadness and be prepared. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

Depression is to sadness what cancer is to normal cell division, says Wolpert, a British biologist. Hence "malignant sadness," or depression, is sadness gone out of control. Unfortunately, this primer on depression for sufferers and those who care about them is for the most part as dry and clinical as a medical textbook. After an all-too-brief and moving description of his own experience with "malignant sadness," Wolpert takes a brief walk through medicine's knowledge of depression, then embarks on a detailed discussion of how depression is defined in the psychiatric handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In two provocative chapters, Wolpert discusses whether depression is a malady specific to the West, or whether it is found in all societies around the world (in general, his answer is that it exists in non-Western cultures but that there it tends to be expressed in physical rather than emotional symptoms). In a very thorough but dull chapter on who is susceptible to depression, he rattles off the results of study after study with little examination; some of the findings are familiar (women are more susceptible to depression than men, depression is to a large extent hereditary), others less so (postpartum depression has been found in cultures as different as Malaysia, Japan and Brazil). Wolpert does a thorough job of presenting all the important topics, from the biological roots of depression to its various treatments and their effectiveness, but much of this material is covered with more grace and warmth by Peter Kramer in Listening to Prozac and in Peter Whybrow's A Mood Apart. Agent, Anne Engel. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (March 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684870584
• ISBN-13: 978-0684870588
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #480,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A biologist explores depression; not a self-help book., April 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression (Hardcover)

Lewis Wolpert is an outstanding developmental biologist who has made major contributions to understanding the basic biology of how embryos grow. He also suffered from a bout of clinical depression, which caused to him investigate what is known of depression and how professionals think of the disease. The result of his investigations is this short book which limns our historical understanding of the disease, as well as the current molecular and psychological theories about the origins of the disease and a review of current therapies. I found the book useful in that it reviews a huge mass of scientific studies and that Wolpert views most of it with an appropriately critical eye. In the end, Wolpert is frustrated by our poor understanding of this disease, but he points out that certain therapies do work for a percentage of depressed people. So, this is likely to be a useful book for those interested in a critical appraisal -- wonderfully well and clearly written -- of what we think we know about depression. Though Wolpert does give some suggestions about therapies based on his own experience, this is not a self-help book, but rather a serious investigation of depression.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important, Provocative, & Informative Book On Depression!, December 29, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression (Hardcover)

In a time so significantly distinguished by mass dyspepsia and personal crisis, this book is a significant contribution to better public understanding. In a country so singularly obsessed with the simple-minded solution of feeling better through pharmaceutical support by way of Prozac, Zoloft and all the whole class of new central psycho-active and regulative brain drugs of that ilk, this book shines a bright and illuminating light into the morass of serious psychiatric darkness. Indeed, what is most striking and valuable about Wolpert's approach to this massively interesting and endlessly complex issue is the fact that he makes a great effort to explain and detail exactly where the current state of knowledge is about this often baffling and extremely debilitating affliction. Depression is so widespread and so commonplace that the public knows it by a variety of everyday names such as the blues, or being "off", or just as being down.

Few of us are unaffected by its massive effects, since either we ourselves or someone we know and love is so profoundly affected by its symptoms. He threads his way knowingly through a mountain of data and scientific literature, sifting out tidbits of knowledge from to help us understand just how Depression works its evil within us. His balancing act as both an observer and a sufferer from its effects make his perceptions especially acute and valuable, as his description of what the experience itself is like is a powerful demonstration of just how disabling depression can be. I must also admit that I found his views especially interesting since I admit to a long-standing personal bias against psychiatrists and mental health care professionals based on my own adolescent and adult experiences with depression, which left me suspicious of both physicians and psychiatric professionals who often seem all too ready for simple solutions such as simply medicating the symptoms away, refusing to deal with what one believes to be the underlying causes of the malady.

Certainly Wolpert mounts a wall of impressive research findings to support his own perceptions, and his combination of such data with his own experiences sounded a responsive chord in my own admittedly limited experiences. He does not disappoint the reader in the sense that while one expects him to over-emphasize biological causes and the subsequent recourse to pharmaceutical relief, yet Wolpert (to his considerable credit) also examines and evaluates both psychological and environmental factors their due. Thus, while admitting that the current theory that serotonin plays a major role in depression is given too much credence, he also admits that he believes that pharmaceutically altering brain chemistry may offer a major possibility for relief from depression in the future.

My only qualm concerning his approach or his intellectual stance is that he seems to underplay what many believe are overwhelming indications that social and cultural factors may significantly influence the onset of depression and also often exacerbate its symptoms. In this sense the book falls short of being truly comprehensive, for without due consideration of the ways in which such social factors contribute to and foster the development and extension of depression in its members, we can never truly understand the degree to which its development is a psychiatric, as opposed to philosophical, response by increasingly vulnerable and sensitive individuals to the manifest ills of a world gone absolutely bonkers. This is a book I highly recommend.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A True Comfort, March 30, 2000

By 

Melanie Wille - See all my reviews

This review is from: Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression (Hardcover)

Thank you so much! The true, down to earth feelings that the author expressed when depressed and the feelings that coinsided were 100%! In this country as he talks about diseases such as Cancer are sympathised about, not Depression. It is thought of as a "weak person's disease, which family and friends try to keep quiet." It's not wrong to be depressed and certainly not wrong to share what you feel, and thank you for telling the world just that in your book! It was a comfort and an affirmation that there are successful people who are depressed, and can overcome it, only when they and the people around them are willing to accept it! Thank you again!