Habitual Boredom and Depression: Some Qualitative Differences

Abstract

This article will compare and contrast the author’s theory of Habitual Boredom with a phenomenological account of Unipolar Depression. The habitually bored show more external ambivalence, passive avoidance, and shame, as well as a tendency toward passive hope and identity confusion. The depressed show more internal ambivalence, willful (but futile) determination, and guilt as well as tendency toward hopelessness and identity objectification. The article also discusses some of the experiential similarities and developmental differences between the two phenomenon as well as some aspects of the defensive structure that initially prevents the bored from becoming depressed.

Keywords

boredom depression ambivalence hope passivity phenomenology identity confusion identity objectification shame hopelessness

The overlap in symptoms between habitual boredom¹ and unipolar depression are so numerous that there has been a general cry for some theoretical and empirical distinctions between the two syndromes. This is the ultimate goal of this article. Many researchers have theoretically speculated on the differences between the two phenomena. Turner (1984) has accumulated these speculative differences distinguishing depression and boredom based on cognitive, affective, and behavioral symptoms.

The cognitive differences she found included that depressed individuals experience negative self-evaluation (Kovacs & Beck, 1979; Leckart & Weinberger, 1980); blame themselves and feel guilty (Kovacs & Beck, 1979; Leckart & Weinberger, 1980); maintain a rich fantasy life (Greenson, 1953; Miller, 1975); and selectively attend to dysphoric events (Kovacs & Beck, 1979). Bored individuals have a neutral or positive self-evaluation (Hartocollis, 1972); blame the environment for their condition (Bernstein, 1975; Wangh, 1975); have an absence of fantasies (Greenson, 1953; Wangh, 1975); and level out the impact of all events (O’Connor, 1967).

As for affective differences, depressed people experience a primary affect of sadness (Kovacs & Beck, 1979); experience the loss of a valued person or object (Bernstein, 1975); and experience underlying anger (Arieti & Bemporad, 1978; Greenson, 1967). Bored people experience a primary affect of apathy or longing (Greenson, 1953, Maddi, 1970); experience emotional unawareness (Geritsen, Toplak, Sciaraffa, & Eastwood, 2014) but no object loss (Turner, 1984); and have too little investment to feel anger (O’Connor, 1967).

The behavioral differences suggest that depressed persons experience psychomotor retardation (Lewinsohn, Biglan, & Zeiss, 1976), weight gain or loss (Lewinsohn et al., 1976), and either increases or decreases in sleep (Arieti & Bemporad, 1978). Bored persons experience restlessness and agitation (Wangh, 1975; Weinberger & Muller, 1974); if any disturbance, weight gain (Abramson & Stinson, 1977), and if any disturbance, sleep increase (Turner, 1984).

Review of Phenomenological Accounts of Boredom and Depression

Empirically based comparisons between habitual boredom and depression have been called for but are rare. This section will contrast people’s phenomenological experience of habitual boredom as outlined by the author (Bargdill, 1999, 2000a) with a phenomenological structure of people’s experience of unipolar depression (Carter, 1990). Following this brief overview, the two experiences will be contrasted using the author’s conceptualization of boredom (Bargdill, 2014) as the main point of departure.

Bargdill (1999, 2000a, 2000b) analyzed written accounts and follow-up interviews with six participants (three males and three females with an age range between 16 and 67 years) who described being bored with their lives. He found that habitual boredom develops as people become emotionally ambivalent after they have compromised their original life projects, goals, or dreams for less desirable goals. The prebored persons’ ambivalence appears as they foster a split in their awareness about hostile feelings. The prebored people become very aware of feelings of anger and direct blame toward others who they feel have “forced” them to compromise their projects. The prebored persons are less aware of anger, shame, and doubt that they feel about themselves and their abilities. Boredom develops as these hidden self-directed feelings, particularly shame, intensify and erode their confidence and their former positive sense of identity.

As time progresses, people become bored with more aspects of their lives, and they—eventually and unknowingly—adopt passive stances toward aspects of their lives. Their passivity leads the bored people become increasingly aware of their boredom and feelings of emptiness, but they feel that action is futile—that every action would lead to boredom—so their boredom becomes habitual. Bored people experience their lives as stuck in the present, estranged from the past, and alienated from the future. Yet bored persons remain passively hopefully; they magically believe that change will happen to them, rather than resulting from their own actions.

Carter (1990) analyzed written accounts with follow-up interviews from six diagnosed participants (six females² with an age range between 22 and 44 years) who had described their experience of depression. He found that the person who is vulnerable to depression is someone who has a parent who withholds or is nonexpressive of love. The child’s fundamental project becomes to validate one’s own worthiness of being loved. The child begins a pattern of behaving in ways that will attempt to gain approval from that parent. The implicit understanding is that the child will do what the other wants and the other will overtly approve of the child. This will become an often repeated, but unsuccessful, pattern in the relationships with all valued persons as the child develops in to an adult.

The person who becomes depressed is reliant on others for one’s own self-esteem, and eventually, the predepressed individual becomes involved in a self-imposed last chance relationship with another person who will also withhold approval. The depressed person will continually attempt to do what she thinks the “love-withholding other” expects. The depressed person tries harder to please the other, but this makes the other pull away more. When the relationship fails, the depressed person takes complete responsibility for the break. The depressed individual sees one’s self as a failure. The depressed person has a sense of hopelessness because the individual believes that one must do what the other expects but one feels this task is impossible. Over time, the depressed person experiences emptiness, loneliness, and the loss of motivation, purpose, and meaning (Carter, 1990).

Comparing Habitual Boredom and Unipolar Depression

The nature and formation of habits is topic is of interest for phenomenology. According to Moran (2011), Husserl suggests there are two forms of habits: The first is the result of an active ego making, a reflective decision that once made is repeated over and over until the reasoning behind the decision is largely forgotten. For example, on earning voting rights, one might initially struggle in choosing a particular party to vote for. After making the choice, the person gets in the habit of voting for that same party without really remembering those reasons (Husserl, 1931/1977). The second form of habit includes a passive adoption of prereflective actions that is not entirely known by the ego and becomes an “embodied praxis” as it is repeated because the intentions are latent (Husserl, 1938/1975). For example, one might be told by a friend that he always says the same thing when given a choice. His initial response is that friend is wrong, but after thinking about it, he realizes that he did unknowingly have this habit. Habitual boredom appears to be the second type of habit since it is quite difficult to image that a person would explicitly choose to be bored, but rather, it appears that people slowly discover they are bored and then realize that they have been so for quite a while.

Bargdill (2014) put forth a theory of habitual boredom that suggests that it is a unique and discreet phenomenon based on five themes. Habitually bored people exhibit an external ambivalence, a passive avoidance stance, a passive sense of hope, a propensity toward shameful feelings, and these all lead to identity confusion. Using this model, habitual boredom will be contrasted with Carter’s phenomenological structure of unipolar depression.

Ambivalence: External Versus Internal

The origins of habitual boredom and depression are similar because they are both responses to an unforeseen failure. In habitual boredom, the person experiences the failure to achieve a goal that the individual has set for one’s self. In depression, the person experiences the failure to receive the love that, as a child, the individual expects to receive from a parent. In both cases, the result of this failure is the formation of ambivalence. Ambivalence means that the person attributes negative feelings about the failure toward others and also toward one’s self. However, only one set of these feelings will be in reflective awareness (conscious) while the other set will be prereflective (unconscious).

According to Bargdill (2000b, 2014), ambivalent feelings develop in prebored persons once they give up on personal goals that have run into significant obstacles. These persons, with help of advisors of some kind, accept and begin to work on compromised or modified projects that they understand as being less desirable. They soon found their hearts were not into these projects. Those who became bored, for the most part, would be reflectively aware of anger and also direct blame toward others who had advised them to modify their goals. Some of the people who became bored would later come to understand this “compromise” as being something “forced” on them by others. It is interesting to note that although the bored person blames and is angry with others, these others were mostly unaware of the hostile feelings because the bored have not made these feelings explicit.

The people who became bored were well aware of these other-directed feelings but were less aware of self-directed feelings.³ The prebored, prereflectively, felt anger and directed blame toward their selves since they had not taken a stand and had given up on their original projects without putting forth the appropriate effort to maintain them. The prebored people did not seem to be fully aware of these self-directed emotions, and attempts to deny or ignore self-directed feelings, ultimately, leads to an intensification of those self-directed feelings over time. In addition, by attributing the problem to others, habitually bored people do not feel they can change their situation, and thus, do not take corrective actions. They began to adopt a passive approach to their lives.

The ambivalence in depression seems to be of the opposite quality of habitual boredom. Prebored persons attribute negative feelings toward the other that seem like they ought to be neutral, while predepressed individuals have positive feelings toward others that seem like they could easily be less than neutral. In Carter’s (1990) study of depression, the fundamental project for those who would become depressed was to “be confirmed absolutely and unambiguously as worthy of love in the eyes of her parents” (p. 226). The predepressed child will make an implicit decision that if her⁴ withholding parents do not love her for who she is then she will make them love her for what she does. Thus, the child seeks approval from others and “grants them sole power and authority to confirm or disconfirm her worthiness of approval” (p. 226).

The predepressed child does not seem to be aware of the angry feelings that might rightfully be directed toward the love-withholding parent. Instead, the child blames her self for the apparent inability to do what is necessary to draw the approval out of the parent. The predepressed individual attempts to control the other by compliance and perfectionism. When these attempts fail, the predepressed person blames her self. Thus, the predepressed individual is more aware of self-directed feelings rather than other-directed feelings. These negative self-directed feelings have been often recognized as a signature of the depressed experience (Kovacs & Beck, 1979; Leckart & Weinberger, 1980).

Passivity Versus Willfulness

The experience of ambivalence that is present in both habitual boredom and depression will continue to have opposite effects on the person’s sense of agency. Agency is largely composed of initiating the action of a project, taking responsibility for both positive and negative outcomes of that project, and continuing to work and adjust to a project once obstacles appear. Once again, two distinct styles appear: a passive style in boredom and a willfully determined style in depression. In boredom, the person often accepts a handed-down project, avoids responsibility by blaming outside influences, avoids seeking help once the project breaks down, and continues to repeat failed efforts instead of trying new approaches. In depression, the person initiates a “silent contract” with partners who do not know they are making a deal. The depressed individual then works hard to keep her part of the contract while the oblivious other fails to provide her with the approval that she thinks she has earned. The depressed takes full responsibility for the failure and works harder, but the person who tries hard to impress often does not. Her redoubled efforts, while possibly different, continue to push away the person she most wants to attract.

The bored persons’ passive agency means that they do not initiate their modified project but, after consulting with some advisor, accepts it as a compromise—a reasonable alternative, but less desired, project or sometimes simply a path of least resistance (Bargdill, 2014). George Vameşul (2010) suggests, that for Husserl, a person’s passivity mediates the relations between one’s ownness and someone else’s otherness (also see Biceaga, 2010). In other words, there must be two persons in order that one can defer to the other. In this case, the bored person seems to accept the project suggested by the other but also displaces the responsibility for the project’s outcome onto the other person.

The bored person does not take responsibility for the failure of their initial project blaming the failure on others; there is no recognition of the coconstituted nature of the failure. This points toward the defensiveness that is associated with boredom (Turner, 1984). In addition, blaming others is an action that concentrates on the causes of the situation instead of the solution, and thus is an avoidant practice (Neu, 1998).

A further consequence of blaming is that, ironically, bored people also seem to expect the solutions to their boredom to be provided by others. Yet, when these others provide opportunities for change, the bored persons did not take advantage of those possibilities (Bargdill, 2014). Greenson (1953) adds, “When one is bored even the most exciting events can be felt as boring” (p. 17). When the bored person’s modified project hits an obstacle, the prebored people, for the first time, recognize their boredom. Their attempts to circumvent the obstacles take on a repetitive quality—they try the same thing over and over and obtain the same poor results (Bargdill, 2014). Instead of imagining real solutions to the problem, bored persons turn to fantasizing about another person, place, or time when the problem will magically be solved (Bargdill, 2000b).

The benefit of avoiding responsibility for bored people appears to be that they protect themselves from depression, at least initially. Wangh (1979) and Greenson (1953) both suggest that boredom is a defensive posture that prevents people from falling into depression since they externalize their problems. By doing so, habitually bored people understand others to be constraining them (O’Hanlon, 1981) and retain a positive or at least neutral sense of self (Hartocollis, 1972). Those who internalize their problems through self-reproach and self-criticism are more likely to become depressed (Anthony & Benedek, 1975).

In the developing stages of depression, Carter (1990) suggests that the predepressed individual demonstrates a willful agency. He writes,

In taking this stance toward her parents she invents a silent contract between them: she will do what they want, and they will give her their approval. The child recovers her autonomy through implicitly adopting the illusion that she can control the feelings and behavior of others, and achieve affirmation through effort. (p. 227)

Here the project is clearly initiated by the child and only prereflectively experienced by the parent. The child has decided, for herself, to take her own modified project, instead of genuine love from a willing parent, she will take approval from a withholding parent. Carter (1990) writes,

If her parents will not love her for who she is, she hopes that they will love her for what she can do. Feeling already rejected, the child adopts earning parental approval as her only way of demonstrating to them, and herself, that she is worthy of love. (p. 226)

Once the predepressed person begins the silent project with her parents, it is doomed to run into obstacles. Carter (1990) states, “She implicitly grants them the sole power and authority to confirm or disconfirm her worthiness of approval” (p. 226). He later adds, “The child . . . repeatedly brushes aside this slavish feeling with determined self declarations that she wants to please her parents and that she know she can if she tries hard enough” (p. 226). The predepressed individual shows that she is able to take responsibility for this impossible project, and reexert her willful agency. Carter (1990) writes,

But having taken responsibility for the feelings and behavior of her valued other, she believes that her failure to earn his or her approval is . . . evidence that she is not doing what is expected of her. She takes up the feeling of failure . . . [T]his can be overcome by trying harder. (p. 228)

The depressed person’s sense of determination and effort is in stark contrast to the passivity displayed by bored people. Due to this, depressed people will feel guilt when their impossible project fails, while bored people will feel ashamed that they did not try harder.

Shame Versus Guilt

One key distinction is that habitually bored people seem to experience a stronger sense of shame and depressed individuals experience deeper feelings of guilt that have long been associated with depression (Abraham, 1968; American Psychological Association, 1987; Beck, 1967; Freud, 1917; Klein, 1948; Tellenbach, 1980). Shame is indicated by avoiding others, fearing the criticism of others, and deceptively avoiding personal responsibility (Tangney, 1993). Often, the bored person’s fear and avoidance of others centers on imagined expectations the bored person believes others hold for them. For example, bored people might believe that if they ask a supervisor for help that this would make them look incompetent; they only find out later that the supervisor did not hold the same belief. In guilt, a person is likely to blame oneself—sometimes unfairly (Kovacs & Beck, 1979), is self-reproaching or self-critical (Leckart & Weinberger, 1980), and is unable to forgive one’s self for a past event (Boss, 1983).

The habitually bored individual rarely admits to feeling shame; rather, it is apparent from the way that they hide and avoid others who might be able to help out. The reason for this hiding is that bored persons are ashamed that they have not been able to overcome the obstacles to their project by themselves. They are afraid that others who believe in them will come to see them as incompetent or incapable. This appears to be the fundamental project of the bored—to be seen as capable. They find that they cannot make progress on their project and they continue to spin their wheels by repeating the same procedures that failed the previous time. They avoid others, instead of breaking the cycle by admitting they need help. Bored people begin to feel stuck and they experience time dragging since no progress on their project is being made. Shame can be maintained indefinitely unless there is an external reckoning (e.g., the supervisor addresses the avoidance). At that point, the bored persons’ other-directed feelings can change in to self-directed feelings as they are confronted with the fact that they have wasted their time and the time of others. If shame collapses into guilt, boredom can turn into depression.

In guilt, we see self-flagellation that occurs with deep self-criticisms as if the child has become the introjected mouthpiece of the withholding parent. Carter (1990) suggests, “Her self-reproaches express the hopelessness of simultaneously giving up on, and continuing to nurture a commitment to her impossible project. She believes this: ‘I am no good. I never was. I never will be. But I should be’” (p. 229). It is clear from this quote that the depressed individual has a tendency to objectify one’s personality with totalizing judgments (Beck, 2002).

In guilt, the person is also focused on a past event that depressed cannot come to terms with. Often this past event is the failure of her to win the parental approval that is now repeated in the last chance relationship. It is this failure to maintain the impossible relationship that the depressed person blames one’s self. Carter (1990) states, “[T]he depressed person feels totally responsible for having lost her last chance to obtain the approval she needs to validate herself as a person” (p. 230). With this past event holding such a magnetic spell on the depressed individual, the future becomes nonexistent and hopelessness sets in.

Passive Hope Versus Hopelessness

As long as a person is able to experience hope, their future is still open (Bargdill, 2000b; Straus, 1980). It is no coincidence that Erikson (1963) places hope as the initial virtue of his psychosocial stages of life since a person’s whole life is entirely ahead of them. Hope keeps us aiming at the future by throwing forward possibilities that the person can work to achieve. If hope is not present, then the future closes and the person is stuck living in the present or the past. In habitual boredom, the future is held slightly open because the bored person has the belief that someone will save them from their current situation. In depression, people frequently experience hopelessness. If all hope is lost, then so is the future and if every day offers no hope for change, then the person experiences stagnation and objectification that often leads to suicidal thoughts and actions.

In habitual boredom, the people retained a sense of hope that was passive. Their hope was that someone, some situation, or some time would save them from their predicament. Bored people fantasize about other people coming to their rescue, winning the lottery, or getting to an age (e.g., retirement) where they are suddenly not bored. None of the solutions to their boredom involve the bored persons actively working toward changing their lives. Passive hope means that bored individuals simply do nothing and hope that the circumstances cause a positive change without their input (Bargdill, 2014). In short, bored persons appear to believe their lives are controlled by fate instead of being partially responsible for their own destiny (Bargdill, 2006).

In depression, Carter (1990) places the emergence of feelings of hopelessness as the moment the individual transitions from predepressed to depressed. He writes,

Depression emerges when the person begins to become hopeless about being able to do what her valued other expects of her. She expresses her depressive hopelessness in the conflicting beliefs that she must do what is expected of her, but that she cannot. The present is lived as a losing struggle in which neither action nor inaction will bring the approval she must have . . . the depressed person feels helpless and without choices to change the past or effect the future. She lives the past as a fatalistic prophecy of a future in which she will be condemned to life forever with doubt about her worthiness. (p. 228)

As the self-imposed last chance relationship breaks up, the depressed person finds that their present project to heal the troubled past is going to fail. Since the depressed individual has wagered their future solely on this fundamental project, its failure collapses the hope for the future. Without the hope, the depressed person sees the future as closed off and her self as condemned to a painful past. Hence, Carter (1990) writes, “The person’s world becomes increasingly small as she does less and less. It is a dark world whose light and hope are eclipsed by the looming possibility that she really is unworthy of approval” (p. 231). As the depression strengthens, the person’s identity begins to become one dimensional and objectified; she sees herself as a failure and there is no hope for change. Carter (1990) states, “[T]he depressed person is almost totally hopeless and begins to unwillingly give up. She believes this: ‘I am unworthy. My life is meaningless. I do not care if I live or die.’”(p. 231). In the hopelessness of depression—to contrast with the passive hope of boredom—there is no heroic savior to wait for, no fantastic experience to believe in, and no future time when everything will be different.

Identity Confusion Versus Identity Objectification

Peoples’ identities are made up of who they have been in the past, how they find themselves now, and what they intend to become (Heidegger, 1962, Kobasa & Maddi, 1977; Straus, 1980). To become is to proceed toward the future by setting goals in present and then attempting to actualize those possible goals. Goals are chosen in the present through interpreting experiences from one’s past and then projecting those goals forward in the future. The past informs the present but it is not fixed since it can be reinterpreted; we can look back on a negative event years later and understand this was ultimately a positive occurrence. Future goals, like a map, set the agenda for the present—if we want to arrive at a destination, there are certain maneuvers that we have to make now. Thus, in a healthy situation, a person’s becoming means that the past, present, and future are all fluid (Kobasa & Maddi, 1977); the past can be rewritten; the present may require improvisation; and future goals may need to be adjusted to meet unforeseen circumstances. When becoming is blocked, people are unable to foresee meaningful futures (Straus, 1980); people no longer experience themselves as a process; rather, they experience stagnation.

In habitual boredom, the person’s process of becoming also takes on a passive quality. People experience habitual boredom because they are not actively working toward goals. They have gotten stuck while working on their modified projects and they are caught in a cycle of repeating the same failed attempts at a solution. In addition, they avoid getting help from others because they feel ashamed of themselves since they believe they should be able to complete this task easily. At first, they recognize boredom with that project, but soon their boredom spreads to other aspects of their lives including activities they used to enjoy in the past. In fact, bored people start to notice that they are not the same people who they were in the past; once upon a time, they had been interesting, active people. Being habitually bored means being estranged from one’s own past. By becoming passive, bored people implicitly gave up control of inventing their selves and simply waiting for change. Eventually, the bored person recognizes that they passively have changed—only they feel they are becoming people whom they do not like (Bargdill, 1999; Sartre, 1956). Therefore, habitual boredom means living in the dragging present, waiting to be saved in the future by the actions of others, and feeling estranged from the past when one had been an active person. This self-estrangement may account for the alienation that Tolor (1989) associated with boredom.

In depression, becoming appears to be completely blocked. Depressed people are unable to hope for or imagine a future that can be any different from the present or past. Without a vision of what could be, or how tomorrow might be different than today, the depressed person is left to see the present as “increasingly irrelevant. She believes that if she cannot do that which means everything to her there is not much point in doing anything”(Carter, 1990, p. 230). The past becomes the main time orientation for the depressed (Wyrick & Wyrick, 1977). Carter (1990) writes, “[T]he depressed person feels stuck, helpless, and without choices. The past usurps the future as the person feels condemned to live forever with doubt about her worthiness” (p. 249). The depressed person, also, is not able to reinterpret the past; for example, depressed people do not seem to hold accountable their withholding parent for being neglectful which might free them from the unworthy label. Carter (1990) does mention that some reinterpretation of the past will be therapeutically necessary to overcome depression.

The depressed person is not confused about one’s identity, rather instead of the dynamic identity of the healthy person who can see one’s self as many things such as a worker, a parent, a spouse, an artist, and an athlete, the depressed sees one’s self as only one thing: a failure. Carter (1990) states,

[T]he depressed person half-heartedly engages in a process in which she tries to do what is expected, only to rediscover her failure and inadequacy over and over again. As she becomes caught up in the cycle of failing and trying harder and failing again, she begins to expect to fail. (pp. 228-229)

Thus, the depressed person is blocked from a future, stuck in the irrelevant present, anchored to the negative past where the single interpretation of their existence is to objectify one’s self as a failure.

Discussion

This article suggests that habitual boredom and depression are different based on Bargdill’s (2014) five-theme theory. The habitually bored person shows more external ambivalence, passive avoidance, and shame, as well as a tendency toward passive hope and identity confusion. The depressed person exhibits more internal ambivalence, willful (but futile) determination, and guilt as well as tendency toward hopelessness and identity objectification. This section will discuss some of the similarities between the two syndromes, will suggest some developmental considerations, and will comment on the defense structure that initially defends the bored from becoming depressed.

The purpose of this article is to demarcate differences between the two phenomena, yet the two experiences share a good deal of symptomatic overlap. Both Bargdill (1999) and Carter (1990) attributed to habitual boredom and depression, respectively, the following emotional experiences: loneliness, helplessness, emptiness, futility, lack of interest in previously liked activities, and feeling overwhelmed. Further complicating matters, Turner (1984) suggests that the bored client sometimes claims to be depressed and that boredom is also a common complaint of the depressed patient; despite this, she states that the differences between boredom and depression are “superficial” (p. 81).

Turner (1984) concludes that boredom is not a rare syndrome—it is normally distributed—and it is, in fact, a more temporally stable experience than depression, which shows considerable fluctuations over short periods of time. As for overlap, she writes that her study “found support for an overlap between the two, mostly in the area of time management” (p. 81). Time management areas include experiencing a lack of direction for future, feeling harassed by one’s lack of control of time, and procrastinating. She continues, “In addition, they are thought to produce similar complaints of fatigue and lack of interest. But chronic boredom does not include the feelings of guilt and failure that are so definitive of depression” (p. 81). She concludes that for the chronically bored, “there is little or no internal investment in that action. Whatever motivation is there for doing it comes from the outside” (p. 77). This is not the case in depression in which the depressed is both defendant and judge.

Developmentally, there seems to be some other distinctions between habitual boredom and depression. In habitual boredom, prebored people as a group do not mention any parental love issues (Bargdill, 1999). Their lives seem to be progressing relatively smoothly and, in fact, their bored troubles only appear after they fail at a major project in their lives. Here, we are reminded of Erikson’s (1963) and Marcia’s (1966) work on Identity and Identity Status in which a person needs to go through a crisis and make a commitment in order to achieve an identity. Prebored people seem almost on the verge of Identity Achievement. Certainly, they have picked a goal and they are working toward it. The individual’s goal is thwarted and then there is a slide that eventually takes the individual back to Identity Confusion/Diffusion.

Because passivity and shame plays such a role in the experience of boredom, it seems possible that developmentally there could be problem in Erikson’s (1963) second psychosocial stage “Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt.” Here, children are not encouraged to be independent or to explore their world and newfound bodily abilities. Rather, children are taught to stay close to home and obey the parent since the world is dangerous. The child, then, does not properly develop the virtue of willfulness and cannot make a stand when he or she needs to fight for something one wants. In habitual boredom, we see all three aspects: a person who fails to fight for their original project, a person who avoids others out of shame, and a person who comes to doubt their own past strengths.

Depressed people seem to recognize early feelings of love-neglect from one of their parents and love needs (Maslow, 1962) seem to dominate their life projects. Thus, it seems likely that problems arose at the beginning of Erikson’s psychosocial stages, probably in the first stage of Trust Versus Mistrust. We have already noted that the virtue of this stage is hope and that Carter (1990) mentions that the appearance of hopelessness is the moment of emergence from predepression to depression. Erikson (1963) writes of this first stage, “It is against this powerful combination of a sense of having been deprived, of having been divided, and of having been abandoned—that basic trust must maintain itself throughout life”(p. 250). In depression, there is the sense of deprivation with parental withholding of love, the sense of internal ambivalence, and the sense of being abandoned in one’s last chance relationship. This seems to confirm that the difficulties lie in this early stage.

The conclusions for Marcia’s identity status for depression are much more perplexing. From Carter’s account, it is clear that the predepressed have made a commitment toward approval-seeking behavior. They have been willful and determined toward this project that is ultimately beyond their control and lacking authenticity. Despite this, depressed people reassert that they want this project; they have gone through a crisis and they have made the commitment to identities that will lead to the objectification of themselves as failures. It is hard not to see the depressed as Identity Achieved since it is impossible to see the depressed as any of the other three possibilities (Moratorium, Foreclosed, and Diffused). Yet this strikes us as odd since we want to believe, maybe in an optimistically humanistic way, that any Identity Achievement must be a positive experience. In addition, seeing one’s self as a failure does not mesh with Erikson’s idea of identity as seeing one’s self as a unique person with a meaningful role. The term “Identity Objectification” seems more fitting since the depressed individual seems to have eliminated all other interpretations of one’s being.

It has been suggested by many that habitual boredom serves as an initial defensive structure against feeling of depression (Bargdill, 2000b; Greenson, 1953; Turner, 1984; Wangh, 1975). Turner (1984) writes,

[T]his type of client may be using the ostensible blandness of chronic boredom as a defensive veneer. Beneath the unresponsive surface may lie very strong, perhaps very frightening emotions. This client may prove to be quite reluctant to shed the protection of defensive chronic boredom in order to face the underlying conflict. (p. 81)

Bargdill (2014) suggests that those feelings are self-blame and self-responsibility for failing to achieve their original goals or at least failing to go all out for them. Since these feeling are never directly brought into reflect awareness the feelings never turn into guilt, but they also do not go away. These feelings erode what the person’s sense of self-esteem and identity; an identity that may not have been as well formed appears on the surface (Esman, 1979; Schubert, 1978). Certainly, the consideration that they might fail or be strongly challenged never seems to cross the prebored person’s mind (Bargdill, 2014). Turner (1984) adds, “If one has a firm conception of one’s life direction and of the means necessary to reach one’s goals, this may lead to difficulties in adjusting when circumstances do not turn out exactly as expected” (p. 80).

The impossible project of the depressed child seems more understandable to the psychologist. The parent who fails to show affection, who ignores, or who expresses overt hostility toward a child (Carter, 1990) plants a fundamental concern in that child’s mind. However, the predepressed child does not respond with hostility toward that parent. Freud (1963) reminds us that it is difficult for a young child to feel hate toward a parent and most hostile feelings are repressed. The child instead will now work toward atoning for a sin that he or she probably did not commit. In the Trust Versus Mistrust, Erikson (1963) speaks about the relationship with religion that we see in the depressed child’s project. Erikson (1963) writes,

Primitive religions, the most primitive layer in all religions, and the religious layer in each individual, abound with efforts at atonement which try to make up for vague deeds against a maternal matrix and try to restore faith in the goodness of one’s strivings and in the kindness of the powers of the universe. (p. 251)

Depressed people fail to achieve atonement because they have placed their redemption in hands of another human being who they cannot control; the more they try to impress, the less they do so. In contrast, bored people will blame others for consequences that are at least partly their fault. They avoid taking responsibility for their actions and then avoid taking any action or aiming for any new goals. This passive boredom can be maintained for some time, until one’s defense against the lack of personal responsibility can no longer be maintained and then one’s shame is converted into guilt. When this happens, habitual boredom can become a very different road to depression.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Richard W. Bargdill received his PhD in clinical psychology from the Existential Psychology program at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His dissertation was on people’s experiences of habitual boredom. He currently teaches at the Virginia Commonwealth University after spending a decade at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania. He is the author of An Artist’s Thought Book: Intriguing Thoughts About the Artistic Process. He is also editor and coeditor of Living the Good Life: A Psychological History and Humanistic Contributions to Psychology 101-Growth, Choice and Responsibility. In addition, he has served as secretary, membership chair, and member-at-large for “The Society for Humanistic Psychology” which is a Division 32 of the American Psychological Association. As an artist, he has won awards for his very short poems and for some of his visual artwork. His sculpture called “I’m a tree chopped down everyday” was awarded first place at the official State Art show in Pennsylvania. Recently, he had both paintings and poems appear in Stay Awhile: Poetic Narratives on Multiculturalism and Diversity and in Capturing Shadows: Poetic Encounters Along the Path of Grief and Loss.

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