Depression and Harry in OotP -- PTSD

[naamagatus]

No: HPFGUIDX 110913

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at a...> 
wrote:
>>Harry is a 
> > fictional character - his symptoms cannot indicate anything other 
> > than the author's intent. Now, we know that in PoA JKR 
>>specifically 
> > intended the Dementors as a metaphor of depression. She said so 
>>in interviews, and it's also clear from the description: they take 
away the ability to feel or even remember happiness.
> > In OoP Harry is not descreibed as experiencing any such thing. He 
>>is angry, upset, sad, frustrated - but nothing like the effect 
>>Dementors  have. Therefore, JKR did not intend to portray Harry as 
>>suffering from depression.
> 
> The only major problem I can see with this argument is that it 
> assumes that J.K. Rowling regards depression as something with only 
> one single set of symptoms - and that is something we cannot know.
<snip> 

You make a good point. However, here are a couple of quotes from JKR 
interviews:

------
(From: The Times 30 June 2000 J.K. Rowling, the interview By Ann 
Treneman)

I do not think that these [Dementors] are just characters. I think 
they are a description of depression. "Yes. That is exactly what they 
are," she says. "It was entirely conscious. And entirely from my own 
experience. Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever 
experienced." 
What does she mean? 
"It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be 
cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, 
which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a 
healthy feeling. It's a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very 
different." 

From: Canadian Broadcasting Co. July 2000 J.K. ROWLING INTERVIEW Evan 
Solomon

JK: Um, I was depressed, um, I'd say - would it be 1994 - I did 
suffer a spell of what I was told was clinical depression. [...] But 
the Dementors, uh, it's so hard to trace the origin of something. I 
saw these things and I knew what I wanted them to do, but they 
became, as I really thought about what they did, I realized that's 
what I was doing. That's normally the way it happens with me. I don't 
consciously think 'And now, I will create the personification of 
depression' but as I'm creating them I realize what I'm doing. You 
know, what unconsciously is going on. So they create an absence of 
feeling, which is my experience of depression. It is an absence... 
E: That is your definition of it. 
JK: (Nods) Mmm. 
-----------

It appears, then, that depression is a single thing for her ("That is 
your definition of it"). After all, she didn't write the HP books as 
companions to the DSM. Whatever the books are, they are not an 
exploration or illustrations of various mental disorders in their 
different guises. 

To repeat my (hopefully adequately defended) main argument: JKR 
describes depression in PoA via the Dementors. What Harry goes 
through in OoP is very different from the effect Dementor have. And 
since JKR views depression as a single thing, she therefore didn't 
intend for Harry to be depressed in OoP. 



Naama, on the verge of using 'ergo'...