As usual, I have several books open at once.

I’m just now into this excellent memoir: Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi.

This sent me back to also reread the original Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov.

And I’ve been rereading Peter Kramer’s Against Depression.

Do you know the story of Lolita? It’s a work of fiction, told by the narrator, who calls himself Humbert Humbert. Humbert kidnaps Dolores Haze, a twelve-year-old  girl, and keeps her as his sexual hostage for two years.

In Reading Lolita in Tehran, a group of young college women and their professor form a club in which they read and discuss forbidden books. Lolita is their first selection.

Several of these women’s observations connected for me with those of Peter Kramer, as he writes about the sometimes dangerous “charm” of depression.

Lolita is an especially disturbing story of sexual child abuse. Dolores Haze  is not depressed; she is a prisoner, having sex with her captor against her will. This is an important distinction.

Yet, as I move through Reading Lolita in Tehran, I believe I see some common dynamics, including helplessness, and vulnerability to being emotionally imposed upon.

Nafisi observes that Dolores “becomes a figment in someone else’s dream.” Her students pick out this passage from the original Lolita in which Humbert says:

What I had madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another fanciful Lolita – perhaps more real than Lolita…having no will, no consciousness — indeed no real life of her own. (Reading Lolita in Tehran, p. 36)

Now look at Peter Kramer’s concerns, as described in Against Depression:

I have referred to a roundness that can seem to be absent in the depressed. Elements of a self are missing. As onlookers, we may be tempted to fill them in, using our imagination to supply intentions, wishes, or beliefs, in order to provide a coherence that is lacking. (p. 26)

He worries that depression may expose the sufferer to abuse from lovers. The emotional absence, the sense of emptiness, may tempt lovers to fill in this perceived space with re-enactments of their own dramas and fantasies:

Men can rescue her from one depression and, when she feels at ease, throw her into another. They can dominate her, mistreat her. (p.69)

Kramer also worries about the distorting emotional effects on the non-depressed lover:

I worried that Harry was projecting virtues onto Mariana, that he was blind to her illness. (p 89)

Depression, and as I have argued, certain personality disorders, may create psychological distances which may then be filled in with unhealthy amounts of fantasy.

Why “Lolita”?

What are your reactions to Humbert’s nickname for Dolores Haze?

Azar Nafisi’s group had their ideas, and I also have some.

We’ll talk about this next!

photo of  fresh hope in the first signs of spring

Good Music for a Good Cause: Check out UFO’s album, Unity Creates Strength, to benefit Chile and Haiti.

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From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (March 26, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
A Lesson from the Movie, “Precious”: WRITE! | Always Learning (March 27, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
“Lolita” as Metaphor for Depression? | Always Learning (March 28, 2010)

    Last reviewed: 26 Mar 2010