[Goethe's struggle with depression].

Abstract

Goethe was subjected during his whole life to extraordinary psychic threats and polar tensions often to the limits of destruction. For long periods of life he travelled in the mist of depression. By steady patience, constant endurance, disciplined diligence, self-control and self-denial as well as restless activity inward and outward he resisted serious depressive threats and did not get paralyzed. He rather faced his spiritual sorrow creatively and forced it into curative poetry. While being completely uncommon, his wise but old-fashioned recipes on ways to master one's depression are a psychotherapeutic bequest and remain valuable up to our days as complement to our modern concepts.