Abstract

This research paper examines the graphic life line drawings of depressed people as a media revealing the features of lived time in depression. In the first part many theories are presented to explain depression, including phenomenological and psychological contributions to the theory of depression, and supporting theories within the context of art and art therapy. An in depth literature review of the disorder is presented, focussing on a summary of all symptomatic and subjective features that pertain to time distortion and its possible equivalents in graphic expression. This first part is including a critical integration of the psychological theories about depression, the phenomenological perspectives of lived time in depression, the developmental and psychopathological aspects of time. In the second part, 11 graphic-life-line drawings, including: three graphics of major depressive persons, five graphics of various depressive persons in remission and three graphics of non psychiatric persons, are described and compared. The paper is concluded with a summary of relevant graphic-life-line features pertaining to the major depressive disorder. These features are the following ones: the overall graphic is oriented towards an ascendant diagonal, lines are jagged and small, the graphic is discordant with the plane, the pressure of the line is weak, the figures are small and oriented to the left, there is no open perspective.