In ancient Greece, depression was identified with the god Saturn. If a young person got depressed, he was called a child of Saturn, and he was believed to have suffered an aging of his soul. Otherwise, every adult eventually would reach a natural Saturn-the melancholy of the loss of youth. The vitality and sensuality of everyday life with its colorful existence would fade away, and the older person would carry a dignified halo of sacred melancholy around him, not unlike the rings of the planet Saturn.
Those who do not come to terms with their age may get away with it for a few years. Eventually, however, disappointments, rejection, and even ridicule will mercilessly tear down the fantasy of eternal youth, making holes in one's assumptions and illusions, and generating fears bordering on panic and fragmentation.
My father once told me an amusing but painful story about Jean-Paul Sartre's encounter with his own aging. Sartre was known as a flirt and a womanizer. Throughout his youth he lived as a ladies' man. His activities, including his numerous writings, all were subordinated to his interest in women. He would accept or refuse speaking arrangements not on the basis of whether the audience would be intellectually challenging, or whether the fee was high enough, but on the basis of whether it would be largely a female audience, and more so, whether the talk, was organized in such a way that he would be able to intermingle with them socially before or after the talk, and, hopefully, seduce one or two. Even though physically he was not an attractive man, most women responded to his seductions, and he had many affairs. He never stopped chasing women. Unless he was loved by the last woman he wanted, he felt unlovable. Thus, he was in a chronic state of pursuing women, always anxious in anticipation and depressed afterward, regardless of the outcome. As he was aging, his preoccupation with desirability intensified. One day in Paris, as he entered a crowded bus, he saw a young woman sitting in the front. He elbowed himself toward her. For a moment as he got the young woman's glance, he felt encouraged and struggled with other passengers on his way to her. Finally, when he was next to her, the young woman stood up and gave her seat to him.
