Although his theme is depression rather than abjection, Michael Ignatieff brilliantly summarizes the essential link between the depths of our personal agony and our conviction that it is precisely in those depths that we can locate an otherwise inaccessible truth:

"Of all the painful features of a depression, the worst may be its truth. As long as some portion of our mind believes that our reactions and emotions are exaggerated, we can shield ourselves from the full force of melancholia. But if we convince ourselves that depression lays bare the reality of our existence, we experience our own despair as the scourge of truth....Our despair seems to cast the sinister light of truth on all our former experience. In this phase, depression appears as the bearer of bad but indisputable tidings."*

Because we sense that our unhappiness has brought us in touch with a core of meaning more authentic than the assumptions on which quotidian existence bases its habitual justifications, we are at once indebted to anyone who agrees with our estimation of its meaning and outraged at anyone who would question its revelatory authority. As Ignatieff notes, "Nothing is more likely to arouse rage than the tinny eudaemonism of the variety 'Look on the bright side,' 'Don't let things get out of proportion.' The insult here is an insult to the truth of lived experience.