Psychiatry.

It was an unmitigated failure, the one time I ever visited a psychiatrist.

I'd told the doctor several times that I was contemplating carrying out serious harm to myself, and was not of the opinion that these thoughts were of the fanciful, speculative type.

I was prescribed escitalopram under the brand name of Cipralex, and these had the effect of ensuring that the edge was taken off the depressive feelings. I say feelings and not merely thoughts, because the prevailing characteristic I experienced was a sensation of dread rising upwards from my feet - in the way I assume a gas must propagate - with thoughts separate, but concurrent. The 'gas' has sufficient force to cause me to slump over my desk in the office, or to sink further into my bedclothes.

The Cipralex prevented the worst of these excesses, at the cost of being able to feel anything at all. The usual pleasures of an atmospheric football match, an absorbing book or article, an unexpected meeting with an ambling, purring cat gave no pleasure. For weeks, I was akin to a machine, completing processes in a detached manner. If any sentiment ever shattered this glass, it was inevitably something which confirmed the hopelessness and futility of existence, but not the opposite.

Nevertheless, I had undeniably been stabilised in some way: thoughts of self-harm were less frequent and less strong, and after a period of relative improvement, my GP made an appointment for me to speak with a psychiatrist.

I no longer recall every nuance of my conversation with her but do remember bemoaning the pointlessness of everything, and the certainty that my own life is worth nothing at all. I think I spoke briefly about childhood, and any ambitions I had left. The outcome of this was the conclusion that I must be suffering from stress, with the attendant instruction to attend counselling.

Stress counselling took the form of hour-long classes on six consecutive Thursdays: I was taught how to inflate a paper bag in the event of a panic attack, and given a mass of documentation about how I might cope with novel or difficult situations. From my statement to a GP that I wanted to die, I had thus washed up here, despite never having been close to a panic attack at any point I can recall.

So much for those dim and distant memories. Inspired by a Facebook post from a woman I don't even know, I want to ask what might be learned from it, and whether or not we can derive any general principles which could theoretically be applied.

It seems to me there is a straightforward correspondence which the mental health practitioner hopes to carry out: their first principle is that the past and the present do not commute, and thus the resolution to any psychological issues involves healing the discrepancy between memories and the present. It can be worded in whichever way - mending a break, removing a blockage. So from the perspective of the psychiatrist I had been allocated, there must have been some unpleasant experience in the past which had caused me to suffer from panic attacks. It can be dealt with either by working against the specific, particular incident or incidents, or by equipping me with general principles in order to deal with the past when it flares up in the here and now. We are aware, then, that there are two dimensions: the mind maps onto the world we experience.

There is another dimension which I don't believe psychiatrists have much interest in, and yet it is as valid as the other two mentioned above. There is a real past, and an imagined one - not the collective consciousness postulated by Jung, but a private, internalized fiction, signposted by hope, expectation and disappointment. It is accessible at will, and thus does not form part of any latent system as, say, Freud would hold.

If I ever visited Belgrade, I should be disappointed that there is no zoo on Humska Street and no plaque marking the territory of Veljko the deceased lion. That there is not, and that it nevertheless forms part of my psyche, is as worthy of discussion as the fact that the life of a woman I called Bluefish once overlapped into my own, or that I never felt I belonged in the east midlands.

What didn't happen, and what never could have happened, are fruitful terrain for debate and insight. Academics regularly purge the works of writers or painters for insights into their personalities. Such assessments are able to be made for us all, though, and I wonder if it is worth trying to establish a framework of some description so that it might be pursued further.

Eight.

When I was 14, I didn't want to do any homework because I'd just discovered something far more interesting.

I was able enough at school, but beyond French and Spanish classes found little to stimulate my interest. Only in my third decade did I realise the beauty and complexity of physics. Now, at 32, it is too late to do anything with that fascination other than read the works of popular scientists, and screw up my face in displeasure when the mathematical side of it kicks in. I perhaps give myself too much credit when I state I am aware of beauty and complexity - for me, they are but shadows, without substance, yet I at least know they are there at all.

The same went for history - a list of which king had superceded which king, and details of the power they wielded over the lives of millions of long-dead citizens. Now, I find history exciting, but it has again taken a shift of the mind to bring about this happy accident. In my early teenage years, I repeat, I was distracted by something far more interesting. I want to write about this briefly, and the circles we make in our own minds; returning to the same centre but the circumference is sometimes greater, sometimes smaller.

I didn't want to do any homework because my best friend and I were riotously entertained by the latest football game to hit the market in 1994 or therebouts - Sensible World of Soccer. When we played against each other, sometimes I'd win, and other times I'd lose. When I was on my own, though, and competing against the computer, I excelled. The limited Amiga couldn't cope with the speed of my hands, and I found glitches in the game which meant winning became easier. I estimate I would win eight or nine times out of ten, with maybe two draws or a draw and the odd loss making up the remainder.

There was one exception to my dominance, though, and I confess I didn't much like it. I swept aside Brazil, Italy, Germany, Argentina and England - I could get off to a bad start and still do enough to at least finish level at the end of the two three-minute halves. One country, though, regularly tripped up my proud Romanian team that I'd always select - I had fallen in love with the brilliant Gheorghe Hagi in his sunflower-yellow shirt, and I wanted to emulate him on my little 12-inch television set.

The fly in the ointment was Croatia. I had heard the name of that country mentioned on the news, and I knew there was a long war going on wherever in Europe Croatia happened to be. Srebrenica? Is that Croatia? If it isn't, it must be adjacent, and what's apparently happening there is beyond my comprehension. Back at my computer, the anger I felt at having been dismantled by the little football players in red-and-white was replaced by a grudging interest: who are you? Why do you flit in and out of my consciousness? Why do I feel a connection with you, even though you should mean nothing to me?

Seven.

The decline of the Ottoman Empire was rooted in inevitability, so the simplistic and easy thinking goes.

All empires contain the seed of their own destruction, from Rome to Austria-Hungary - it could never have been otherwise with Constantinople, based on the evidence of everything that had been and gone before it.

If this is true (and I suspect it might not be, but am nevertheless interested in following the premise to its conclusion) then it is a statement not just about Turks, and their separate existence outside the Ottoman bubble, but a statement about psychology, and humanity.

I think of Croatia, and the war that nation underwent in the 1840s with Hungary. The latter's suppression of Croatian culture and tradition was too much of an insult to bear - indeed, the local language was not even used in Croatia's parliament until 1847. Amongst other things, then, the Croats fought for their own identity - or, to borrow the term favoured by Misha Glenny, their national consciousness was at stake.

Glenny feels that, at that point, the Serbian sense of self was more sharply-defined: they had at least written epic poems about the time when their golden age ended, when the battle of Kosovo Polje was lost in the 14th century. Hence, the Croatians had fought for an idea which was not yet fully in bloom - the lightbulb of inspiration had gone off collectively, but the emerging conclusions of what it means to be a Croat had not yet been realised.

To be a nation, then, there must be a reference point, real or imagined, in the past around which the idea of what it is to be a Croat coalesces, and they had very little.

The opposite extreme of this is the Ottoman Empire itself, which has so many connections to a glorious history that we become overwhelmed. The Croatians had no narrative; the Ottomans had too many. Which outstanding achievement should we select to represent ourselves that will have relevance for the vast and disparate lands we call ours? What one characteristic unites one in Sarajevo, one in Bursa, one in the Maghreb, one in Yerevan?

If there is no narrative, then the Croatian state and the Ottoman state are doomed. It is a requirement, then, of a nation that the idea of it is upheld by myth, perpetuated by heroes, else it falls down.

Might we conclude, then, that the fragmenting of the globe into arbitrary, bounded regions we call countries is unnatural, and goes against our instincts, if it needs the ballast of a plotline to maintain it? Instead of clumping five million people in the western Balkans together, and calling their territory Croatia, might there be another way of labelling humans, one that doesn't condemn them from birth? The question will most likely keep me awake tonight.

Figment.

As far as depressive tendencies go, I have reduced them over the years to mere figments of existence.

I accept the bodily requirements of homeostasis - eat regularly, sleep regularly, urinate regularly. Similarly, I am aware of the oscillations of my own mood, and I manage these as best I am able.

This morning, I woke up after a decent sleep feeling as though I had not slept at all. The consequence of this was not just tiredness, but the impression that the whole of existence is a futile improbability which I am unfortunate to experience at all. The miracle of life can sometimes be a weight which we drag along with ourselves, to no definite purpose.

The sense of despair lasted until well into the afternoon, and only by 2pm I was just about re-emerging through my surface. Feeling better now, I can reflect an over-dramatic nature, and ponder the paradox of reason against instinct.

I hurt when I do not get answers to everything, even to questions whose answers are painful or unknowable. The hurt takes the form of disgust and shame at my lack of knowledge, and the reconciliation with a self which is incomplete. I consider that I am a being constructed of facts; and these facts guide and justify whatever decisions I make. Yet this is surely incorrect.

There is no understanding which supports most of what I do, and usually this is a comfortable enough situation. When my demeanour is more stable, I shrug dismissively, because it's just the human condition in all its emptiness. Some days, this vacuum is almost joyful.

Attention and motivation and confidence fluctuate without explanation. These too are mere figments of a self which endures without knowing why. The ship and the water are each unconscious of themselves, and of each other, influencing each other blindly and incessantly, until the former is overwhelmed.

I am at times the ship and at times the water, a bisected self either about to capsize, or asserting the pressure which causes the listing. The listing, I call the world, and the aggregation of expectancy, and assumed expectancy disguised as the mind's own wishes.

In reality, the ship and the water never existed, and just stand as images of what it must mean to live at all.

Fear.

I intended that 2011 would be the year of self-improvement, and I set three specific goals to help me become a better person.

'Better' is subjective, of course, and even the idea that we can, all of us, jettison that which prevents us reaching some ideal state, is rooted in fiction. It sounds like a Victorian imperative, and yet it is something which endures.

I promised myself I would think less of the ex-girlfriend who has been done to death on this blog; I promised I would react better to negative situations; and I began another Open University course, with a start date in February.

A February start meant a March deadline for the first assignment - in fact Friday was the cut-off point. I had everything done well in advance, and even had time to carry out numerous re-writes, fretting and editing and indeed tackling the whole thing from scratch on more than one occasion.

There comes a point when further refinement is futile. It is instead a test of character to publish and be damned, and this I found harder than the work itself. If the desire to learn something new, and to demonstrate it, is the theoretical desire to better oneself, then I can only conclude that my inclination to do so is limited. There were times, indeed, when I was so terrified of letting go of the thing that I stated I would let the deadline pass, fail the course at the first hurdle, and at least be free of the stomach-tightening anguish which heralded every thought of Doctor Faustus.

In the dim and distant past, I recall reading about the concept of homeostasis. The context in which I encountered it was in some psychological literature, but I suspect it can be applied to medicine as well as numerous other disciplines. It is nothing more than the need to return the body to some sort of equilibrium - Le Chatelier's Principle for the self. When we are too hot, we sweat in the hope of reaching a more ambient temperature. Even hunger can be expressed as the requirement to restore stability. If the self is analogous to a machine, then, homeostasis is the response to a red warning light.

For your author, the desire to remain rooted in hopelessness is a marker of identity; there is safety and comfort in the grim repetition of self-destructive habits, and that which threatens the ritual is greeted with suspicion.

Open University work is tough enough. Trying to do it whilst being pulled apart: simultaneously wishing to rise as I am pinned to the ground, requires a mental shift which will entail more than acquiring or not acquiring a qualification - it will, in the end, kill or cure.

Children.

What happens to us when we are children remains with us for the rest of our lives.

It is a rather Freudian perspective, but I nevertheless feel as though it has some merit to it. That isn't a statement about sexual motivation, though the argument can be made that such desires are formed, like most others, in the early years.

No, I am more interested here in how self-perceptions come to be, and the difficulty in overturning them once they have been allowed to settle. It is too simplistic to conclude that the revelation of our own beauty - or its opposite - sets us down one path or the other without fail, towards confidence in the self we project, or not. However, the realisation that we are judged on what we present, and that the outcome of that judgement matters, is the end of childhood innocence.

I mentioned before about the eye-patch that was the motif of my own childhood. When you are five years old, the opinion of other five-year-olds matters, and they are inevitably clinical in their assessment. For years, I cursed the broken, ruined eye and asked how things might have been different had I not had to spend my days 'like a pirate'. At an early age, you are already an outsider, already under adult pressures but without the experience or wit to cope with them.

Of course, nothing would have been different: there would have just been some other imperfection to have been highlighted. That is to say, we all get some, every last one of us. I even imagine it possible that a child could be singled out for being too pretty. We all get some, and we all give it back.

Realisation is knowing that we all get some. I had mine. Realisation is knowing that people die, that relationships end, and that it is your own response which decides whether the memory holds you back forever, or whether you can progress in spite of it. As Nietzsche would have it: whether it flourishes in a weak mind, or a strong one.

I say this now because I have a five-year-old friend, the child of a neighbour. He is just learning that he, too, is different in some way, and the tears follow inevitably. This boy is darker-skinned than his peers, and hence they call him chocolate muffin-head. I wish I could tell him we're all different, and hence this makes him unique, unique in his sameness.

You'd get it if you were lighter-skinned, or were taller, or were shorter, or fatter, or thinner, or more intelligent, or more stupid, or older, or younger, or prettier, or uglier, or more talkative, or too quiet, or if you had an eye-patch. From speaking to you, I know you have a quick wit and a sense of humour. I don't know yet whether your mind is weak or strong, though, and it is this which will let you shrug it off in the end, or not.

One day, you will see things for what they are. By then it might be too late, because the mirror throws back disgusting images that don't recede even when you are told by a woman how beautiful you are, and that you'd be precious and worth having even if that wasn't the case. You need to be able to see before the certainty of your own appalling vision fixes itself irreversibly, else it'll be like a fog over everything - a fog that not even genuine, abiding love can lift, at least not for very long.