Ernest Becker on depression

The ego, after all strives to create a continuity of integrated experience. As [Erik] Erickson's work shows so eloquently, the identity is a painstakingly fashioned work of art. It is symbolically constructed, continually refashioned, never complete. The individual can be compared to a movie director who is saddled with a lifetime job of staging a plot, the outcome of which he never knows. Indeed, he never knows what will happen in the very next scene, but he must strive to give the whole thing credibility and self-consistency. This he can only accomplish by reworking the previous material as new events joggle his creation. When one gets down to the last twenty years of a life drama, it becomes more and more difficult to justify abrupt changes in continuity: there is too much preceding plot for it to be re-manipulated with ease. Whole portions cannot be re-interpreted with credibility, much less re-staged. Hence, if the continuity is radically undermined, the individual grasps at whatever straws his ingenuity can muster. No movie director would accept such an assignment, yet each individual is burdened with this ultimately and perilously creative task. The remark that an individual cannot know if his life has been satisfactory until the moment before he expires then becomes understandable. Life is symbolically re-appraisable until its very last second. The proverbial drowning man who passes his life in review is merely exercising the last impulsion of the reclaiming artist. Ernest Becker - "Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Depression"