others. Since pleasure is related to the act of pleasing, this readily leads to a situation in which good feelings about the selfthat is, self-esteembecome dependent upon the esteem of those around one. Feelings of emotional well-being, a sense of one's worthfulness as a person, are hostage to the moods, attitudes, and approval of others (or maybe to one critically important other person). One is likable/lovable/significant only to the extent that one is liked/loved/significant to someone else. It follows, then, that in times of interpersonal droughtwhen sources of emotional supply are unusually low, or not there the "normally feminine, normally dependent" woman may experience her inner world as emptied of what is good and meaningful to her. The props of her self-regard, if they've been held in place primarily by feedback from the environment, may simply begin to crumble and fall down. Under the circumstances, a woman may become far too harsh in her assessment of herself and of her worth and usefulness as a human being. She may feel helpless about her life circumstances, and hopelessly ineffectual in terms of her capacity for mastering or changing them. She may, in a word, become depressed. "The depressed woman is someone who has lost. She has lost 'something' upon which she vitally depended. The tone is of something profoundly significant having been taken away, of some crucial life's territory having been surrendered." And what, "with amazing regularity," most frequently triggered a depressive episode in the women interviewed by Scarf, was the loss of a love bond.
2 The independent male tends to react very differently, frequently with disappointment, frustration, or hostility, or if he is depressed, it is not as long enduring.
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