The Anatomy of Melancholy

“Even a simple telling often soothes the mind”: merely relating our troubles often eases our distressed mind, even amid the greatest hardships. Many have thus found relief by unburdening themselves to a faithful friend. He sees what passion and discontent prevent us from seeing; he calms our minds, eases our pain, and soothes our anger. “What pleasure comes from this, what freedom from care!” Chrysostom adds: what pleasure, what security it brings! Nothing is so effective or so refreshes the human soul.

Cicero, as I remember, deeply laments the lack of such a friend in a letter to his dear Atticus. “I live here,” he says, “in a great city, where I have a multitude of acquaintances, but among them all not one man with whom I dare breathe freely in confidence or joke without restraint. Therefore I await you, long for you, send for you. Many things trouble and distress me; if only you were here, I could quickly unburden myself of them in a conversation as we walked.” This man or that might perhaps say the same, with the old man in the comedy:

Among my friends today there is no one To whom I dare disclose my secrets.

And this man or that may meanwhile suffer much distress from it. Let him, then—whoever suffers from this illness—by every means find a trustworthy friend, “always having some Pylades to care for Orestes”: a Pylades to whom he may open himself freely and safely.

For it is the same here as in every other circumstance. “If someone had ascended to heaven,” and so forth, as the speaker in Cicero says: if a man had gone to heaven, seen the beauty of the skies, the wandering and fixed stars, and so on, “his wonder will be without delight.” It will give him no pleasure unless he has someone with whom to share what he has seen.

It is the best thing in the world, as Seneca therefore advises in such a case, to find a trustworthy friend to whom we may freely and sincerely pour out our secrets. Nothing so delights and eases the mind as having a receptive heart into which our secrets may descend, someone whose integrity we trust as our own, whose speech may ease our helpless condition, whose counsel may relieve us, whose cheerfulness may dispel our mourning, and whose very presence may please us.

This was the counsel that the politically shrewd Commynes gave to all princes and others distressed in mind, prompted by Charles, Duke of Burgundy, who was deeply troubled: first pray to God and lay oneself open to him, then to some particular friend whom we hold most dear, telling him all our troubles. Nothing is so powerful in strengthening, refreshing, and healing the wounded soul of a miserable man.