By Rooks Russel

Have you ever wondered what depression, neurotic symptoms, and funny shapes might have in common? No, it isn’t the coloring sheet that they’ll hand you after getting tossed in the psych ward. The common thread actually points toward a metaphorical understanding of the mind, a complex information processing system, as a fractal. The term psychological “disorders” implies chaotic and unstructured thinking, but in reality, the depressed mind is highly self-regulated and operating on its own system of logic. Aaron Beck was the foremost scholar on depression for many years, and even now his name is arguably the most well known. Through his work with depressed patients, Beck laid out a system of the mind that offers insight into the formation of core beliefs and the grand interpretations of reality that contribute to depression. 

Beck believes that depression is substantively an overabundance of negative thoughts about the self, the world, and the future. In his work Cognitive Therapy of Depression, Beck narrows his attention to study how cognitions contribute to the depressed state. Cognitions are individual units of thoughts that a person might have: “I should stop at the red light,” “Cheese is good.” Everyone has cognitions, and they have them about all manner of things. The difference between the depressed mind and the ordinary mind is, according to Beck, that the depressed mind has an overabundance of characteristically negative cognitions: “My boss thinks I do a lousy job,” “I am a useless person.” We might be inclined to say that negative thoughts are the products or cause of depression (hence the popular advice to “think positive”) but Beck claims that the depressed state is characterized—not created—by these negative cognitions. Cognitions are the constructed “meaning of events” or the conclusions made based upon an interpretation of reality, and this implies that the root cause of depression is not in the thoughts themselves but in the interpretations that create the thoughts (Beck, 1979, 146).  

…but Beck claims that the depressed state is characterized—not created—by these negative opinions.

In the system of thought that Beck lays out, cognitions are the product of a pre-conscious process called a schema. Cognitions and schemas are directly associated, but they should not be conflated. Cognitions are the thoughts themselves. Schemas are the pre-conscious filters that recall the effect, meaning, or importance of certain stimuli and allow the mind to respond without conscious thought. Beck clearly defines the difference between the two when he says, “[the depressive’s] cognitions are (verbal or attitudes or pictorial “events” in his stream of consciousness) based on attitudes or assumptions (schemas), developed from previous experiences” (Beck, 1979, 3). The mind takes these already accepted conclusions and uses them to make sense of a given situation before any active reflection takes place. If a friend cancels dinner, a schema might take this factual occurrence and arrange its meaning in terms of a rubric: “People don’t keep appointments with people they don’t enjoy.” The raw evidence, passed through this schema, might then issue in the cognition: “If my friend’s don’t enjoy me, I am unenjoyable.” It is a generally accepted truth that unenjoyable people are typically unbearable. If a friend then cancels dinner, this line of thinking quickly leads the depressed individual to the endpoint of “I am unbearable.” The already accepted premises were the schemas, and the conclusion is the cognition. Beck further explains the role of the schema, calling it a “bias” that “mold[s] into cognitions.” “Thus a schema,” he says, “constitutes the basis for screening out, differentiating, and coding the stimuli that confront the individual” (Beck, 1979, 12-13). 

Beck’s cognitive system is rigid and formulaic. The ledger of cognitions arising from schematic processing acts as a registry that constructs an individual’s core beliefs of reality. In order to interpret stimuli, the schemas derive their structure from these core beliefs, which operate as already accepted premises of how the world works. This is the interpretive, self-feeding system of thought that Beck outlines in his Cognitive Theory of Depression. It is a whole unit, but these logical functions of Beck’s cognitive apparatus are not easily converted to discussions of the narratives and beliefs that are often associated with depression. Such a translation is necessary if we wish to understand how stories lead to or facilitate the decision of suicide as brought about by Wertherfeiber and the TV show 13 Reasons Why.

Based upon this understanding of the mind’s interpretive system, the depressed invididual’s mind can be understood as a fractal: “a geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole.” This metaphor translates the structure of Beck’s system into the language of shapes and space to show how the depressed individual filters, interprets, and constructs experience to adhere to a singular expectation of reality. Such an understanding allows for a seamless folding together of Beck’s cognitive theory of depression and the theory of narrative therapy as a means of disrupting the characteristic of this system. Conceiving the mind as a fractal helps: See Figure 1 (Anonymous, 2013). 

This metaphor translates the structure of Beck’s system into the language of shapes and space to show how the depressed individual filters, interprets, and constructs experience to adhere to a singular expectation of reality.

The cognitions are the individual units that build into the greater shape of the fractal. As these pieces interlock in the systematic fashion, they form the larger shape of the core beliefs. The schemas direct the formation of these individual cognitions by the interpretation of individual events. In order to interpret these thoughts, the schemas lay out an instructional code or a transformational function on how to treat newly encountered experiences in order to fold them into this larger understanding of reality. The depressed mind, as Beck asserts, is built off cognitions that can be conceived as singular line segments in this larger structure. Individuals gain a complex understanding of the world by compiling together these singular cognitions into larger networks. The quality of the core belief will be informed by the cognitions that help construct it, thereby giving a certain weight to individual beliefs or interpretations of events because they influence how we view the world. It is the same way that any iteration of the fractal is characteristically similar to the shape around it. Because people act in accordance with their understanding of the world, any behavior can be traced back to a belief found within their larger understanding of reality, even if that belief is a subconscious understanding. This is how miscommunication occurs. When two people have different interpretations of the meaning of a single event, they act according to their own understanding, which is characteristically different then the other’s.

If all of this is true, that means there is a particular set of beliefs that push the suicidal individual towards suicide. This makes the job of the therapist very simple: find these problematic thoughts and replace them with a healthier way of thinking. This is where narrative therapy becomes incredibly helpful. By treating depression as a system like that of a fractal, and individual cognitions the units which help create the shape, it becomes clear these beliefs about reality must be subverted by a new shape in order to move away from the current, harmful system. This is the work of the narrative therapist.

Schemas are how we arrive at an interpretation of reality. They analyze strings of events and seek to assign correlation and causation to each one by imposing significance. This attribution of action to a series of events that seem otherwise unconnected is, by definition, a narrative. Understood in this light, schemas are narrative crafting devices that draw on a person’s past to situate the person in the world. In his book Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, White explains that a “person’s past experience is problematic to him because he is being situated in stories that others have about him and his relationships” (White, 1990, 14). Schemas as narratives founded on core beliefs claim some expectation based upon past experience: “This thing happened before. This is how the world works. It is happening again and that is what should be expected.” Thus, core beliefs can be viewed as a kind of grand overarching narrative: oversimplified but grand in scope, an explanation of reality and an account of events. Schemas are simply a synopsis of this understanding that conforms reality to the grand narrative. This understanding of core beliefs as narratives and of schemas as continual narrative crafting devices allows for a direct comparison between Beck’s theory of depression and story. Beck’s view of the mind reminds me of John Milton’s Satan and his claim that “the mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven” (Milton, 2008, 1.254-5). The question now arises, how do internal narratives in the form of schemas, cognitions, and core beliefs interact with external narratives like those of found in books, movies, music, and art—especially narratives that are potentially harmful such as 13 Reasons Why and the Sorrows of Young Werther?

Beck’s view of the mind reminds me of John Milton’s Satan and his claim that “the mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

Rooks Russel is a junior studying Psychology, English, and Theatre.