Depression Fever

Just about everyone is convinced the U.S. is heading toward hard times. And just about everyone is dismayed at the prospect. But there are a few exceptions. From down-and-outers, who have little more to lose, to rootless young people looking for new experiences, a tiny minority of Americans are at least halfway looking forward to a depression.

Revenge against the rich and comfortable is one theme. Alice Arnold, a social worker in California's San Fernando Valley, is struck by how many poor people seem to be rooting for a depression on the theory that "it would be good for the affluent to know how we feel." A few others, who are now comfortable but once suffered economic hardship, want their children to suffer as they did. On her lecture tours round the country, Psychologist Joyce Brothers has discovered that many parents "feel a depression would be good for their children. They themselves lived through the lean years, and now they see their kids rejecting the value of work. They are very exercised by the fact that a man would choose to be a musician rather than pick a more reliable profession like accountancy."

Even more common is the idea that hard times will be a character-building experience for a soft society. "Our parents lived through it and it made them strong," says Teresa Obendorf, 22, an assistant buyer at Gimbels in Manhattan. "Our generation has had it too easy. This is just what we need to toughen us up." A related notion is that affluence is the villain that has bogged the nation down in mindless consumerism, environmental pollution and foreign adventures like Viet Nam.

Several psychiatric concepts explain why some people embrace the thought of a depression. One is the phenomenon that occurs when the anxiety of waiting for a disaster becomes greater than the actual fear of facing it. In that case, a person may actually wish for the trouble to arrive and thus put an end to anxiety. Another concept is "repetition compulsion." "This applies to people who have a need to master the trauma of the past," explains Dr. Robert Reich, director of psychiatry for New York City's department of social services, who works with the thousands of homeless men who crowd the Bowery year after year. "These people constantly rework their past life; many of them lived through the Depression and never really recovered. They are always watching and waiting for the next." A few Bowery bums actually have money, but "are unable to stand the thought of spending it. If we were to find ourselves in another depression, this would be a vindication of their miserliness and penny-pinching."

A Strange Appeal. Social psychologists have long been aware that disasters can exert a strange appeal. The sharing of a common threat pulls people together and creates a sense of purpose and adventure. "If you're in a rut, locked into your career," says Marvin Geller, director of Princeton's counseling services, "you may hope for some cataclysmic event to shake you out of it." Nostalgia for the '30s, fed by TV shows like The Waltons, can make the harsh realities of depression seem attractive.

Village Voice Columnists Howard Smith and Brian Van der Horst call it "depression fever." They recently polled 150 people and reported that one-fourth "look forward to [a depression] as some kind of perverse attraction." Understandably, those too young to remember the '30s were the most enthusiastic about the possibilities of a depression. Those who lived through the last one, reported the columnists, "thought we were crazy even to ask."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.