Julia Kristeva examines melancholia across art, literature, philosophy, the history of religion and culture, and psychoanalysis. She describes the depressive as one who perceives the sense of self as a crucial pursuit and a nearly unattainable goal and explains how the love of a lost identity of attachment lies at the very core of depression’s dark heart. Kristeva analyzes Holbein’s controversial 1522 painting
The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb
and considers the works of Marguerite Durgaas, Dostoyevsky, and Nerval.
Black Sun
takes the view that depression is a discourse with a language to be learned, rather than strictly a pathology to be treated.