15: Depression and Therapy in Hermann Hesse’s Works
László V. Szabó
Depression is a serious psychopathological phenomenon with immeasurable effects on the human condition across the globe. According to the World Health Organization, approx. 280 million people suffer from depression worldwide today, many of whom do not receive proper treatment.
1“Depression,” World Health Organization, September 13, 2021, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression. The coronavirus pandemic has raised this number in the last years.
2See “COVID-19 Q&A: Dr. Elizabeth Reichert on Depression, Anxiety, Risk for Suicide,” Stanford University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, https://med.stanford.edu/psychiatry/about/covid19/anx.html (accessed October 30, 2022). It is also known that depression can lead to suicide, with more than seven hundred thousand people choosing this fatal “solution” every year.
3“Suicide: facts and figures globally,” World Health Organization, file: https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/360460/WHO-MSD-UCN-MHE-22.03-eng.pdf?sequence=1 Can art in general and literature in particular help us cope with this global problem? Can a novel or short story by Hermann Hesse, one of the most popular German writers worldwide, with works translated into fifty-three languages, contribute to understanding or even effectively treating depression?
4See “Rangliste der international bekanntesten deutschsprachigen Autor*innen,” Preply, May 2, 2022, https://preply.com/de/blog/bekanntesten- deutschsprachigen-autoren/. There is probably no way to offer psychological help or therapy (and not only on a chemical basis) to all who are suffering from depression or having psychological problems. To have a family psychologist or psychiatrist just like a family doctor seems to be a utopia for many people—whereas to have a book by Hesse on the shelf (or an e-book on the laptop) may be much more practicable. A contemporary psychological-therapeutic method called “Integrative poetic and bibliotherapy,” which was founded and is practiced by Hilarion Petzold, based in part on findings from literary studies, has achieved significant results in treating depression and other psychopathological phenomena.
5See Hilarion G. Petzold and Ilse Orth, eds., Poesie und Therapie: Über die Heilkraft der Sprache; Poesietherapie, Bibliotherapie, Literarische Werkstätten (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2015). These results encourage the reading of literary texts, especially those that deal with depression, or where their authors went through some sort of crisis themselves. Hermann Hesse is clearly one author who wrote such texts and went through such crises.
In this chapter, I will examine how, in today’s global health context, Hesse’s works can give their readers more than aesthetic entertainment. It is, of course, difficult to measure what impact a literary work can have on the human subconscious, or how many people have been saved from committing suicide by simply reading a book. However, the worldwide popularity of Hesse’s works and the huge number of translations and copies sold worldwide speak a clear language. They are equally recommendable to psychologists, therapists, and patients. Reading specialist psychological literature, for instance, by Sigmund Freud or Carl Gustav Jung, may be the privilege of specialists, whereas Hesse’s works, for instance his novels Demian or Steppenwolf, offer transparent, intelligible, and, at the same time, richly metaphoric language, which can reach and touch many readers, including those suffering from mental or psychological problems, as Hesse himself did. Apart from the fact that reading Hesse’s accounts on his own life may also be useful for such readers, it is mainly the identification with figures like Emil Sinclair or Harry Haller that carry a high therapeutic potential.
The following sections will first focus on the relation between literature and psychology in general, and Hermann Hesse’s own relation to psychology and psychoanalysis in particular. In a next step, works like Demian and Siddhartha will be examined as possible texts for bibliotherapy; these texts (called in German Bildungsromane or Bildungsgeschichten) will be interpreted as expressions of individual psychological development. Additionally, the A Guest at the Spa will be analyzed as an example of Hesse’s humor and irony, both being significant literary (aesthetic) means of psychosomatic therapy. Last but not least, the novel Steppenwolf will be considered as a story of recovery from deep depression and the verge of suicide. All these works have a psychological content which makes them fit for effective bibliotherapeutic readings.