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Deep into life, and having seen all kinds of folks, I've concluded that we are each born with a temperament somewhere on the spectrum that runs from miserable to satisfied.
And I've observed that the net value (and I don't mean monetary value) of a person has little to do with whether they are melancholic or sanguine. (Randomly grab the biographies of 10 significant people and you'll see that what they accomplished in life has little to do with how cheerful they were.)
My extended family includes individuals who clearly struggle (or struggled) with depression and individuals who have (or had) what my mother used to call the happiness gene. Depressive family members are more vulnerable to set-backs and have less life resiliancy. Family members with the so-called happiness gene, endure set-backs with optimism and resiliancy.
Those of us who struggle with depression, have intrinsic low self-esteem and often struggle to meet the basic requirements for day to day survival. Those of us with the happiness gene have an intrinsic sense of self-worth and seem to accomplish the basics, and then some, with relative ease.
So where do we lay the blame when depression becomes intractable and overwhelming, when it destroys a depressed person - whether by chronic substance abuse, compulsive risky behavior, or outright suicide?
As parents, educators, and health-care providers, we need to love, value and nurture our children - even and especially - our morose, sassy, gloomy, grouchy, and unduly worried children. These children need to be seen, appreciated for their strengths, and understood. And we need to deliberately teach them behavioral tools that they can use to manage their intense and vulnerable temperaments. Good and loving parents have always done this.
About "the delusion that human responsibility lies behind every misery, the conviction that each suffering must have an author, that somebody must be to blame" I would say this.
Where depression runs in a family, it may also be the case (but not always) that family members are much influenced by destructive cultural norms along the lines of "keeping up with the Jones." In addition, there may not be an ounce of common sense about how to actually be kind to others. So, yes, in these families you may see a family style of competitive behavior, recrimminations, and finger pointing. So much the worse for their vulnerable family members.
But when vunerable people are subjected to overly harsh childhoods, let's lay the blame on society at large, rather than individual families. Most families do the best they can with what they have been given and what they have been taught.
