Selected Psychological Models on Depression

I would like to compare and contrast, and raise a few points about, a few different perspectives on depression. Background: Psychoanalytic = anger turned inward. Behavioral = reinforced negative consequences condition against positive attempts. Cognitive = I'm not sure we got the etiology on this, but the main point is that it draws heavily on perception of a situation, which is important in its own right to be sure.

Now for some examples: Learned helplessness - take, for example, a dog who is strapped to a floor and cannot move, and has electric shocks repeated for several minutes. After a certain point, the dog will stop struggling and accept the shocks. This even applies if the dog is placed in a situation where they can then jump over a fence to get to a non-electrified floor; they simply give up and take the shocks.

One of the current theories on learned helplessness involves one's "attributal framework", I believe the term was, and basically involved three dichotomies: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific. Meaning, perceiving failure as a result of an internal force, which is permanent, and applies to all regions of life (I failed the test because I'm a bad person) leads to depressogenic thinking.

Our teacher said that anyone can learn helplessness, which I do not disagree with, but under the cognitive-behavioral theory, one would really have to say that an animal (or human) that has an attributal 'style' of external explanations (which facilitate anger) would not learn helplessness, but rather struggle against the shocks. Arguing against that would imply that we switch between frameworks, which is perfectly plausible, but that is really more psychodynamic and runs against the constancy, which is incredibly simplistic in my eyes, of cognitive-behavioralism on any level.

The question then begins, since you can't have one without the other, where you begin (meaning starting with a Freudian approach and coming to cognitive forks in the road, or vice versa, etc).

A point I raised, however, deals with levels of helplessness. If a dog was to learn this helplessness and keel over and take shocks, they would still resist when I came at them with a chainsaw. This really goes to show that we hold different levels of conservatism; giving up on one level does not mean total abandonment of hope. Perhaps not levels, but realms, say.

The reasoning she gave me was that once that fight-or-flight chemical reaction has been activated, we act on a more primative level, with these levels corresponding to reflex-reactions grounded in evolutionary history (another perspective we must consider). I said, perhaps this is something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, with survival on the basest level on the bottom, with identity construction and mild discomfort controls at the very top.

I mean, it's quite plausible when you put it that way. Illustration: someone could be subject to a noise while watching a film in class, such as a broken speaker that buzzes loudly (to give a real life example), and after a few minutes of squirming, one realizes there is nothing they can do about it and resign to having to put up with that noise (defeated). However, this doesn't challenge one's identity. And then one's identity can be challenged, and assuming they are mentally stable, they will not kill themselves immediately. And then one's shelter/source of food. And then one really is in the struggle for survival.

So it seems it operates at levels, but within each level there are realms. Such as heavy influences on cognitive comfort within the world, and loss of cogntive abilities (schizophrenia, e.g.), loss of a family member, public humiliation turning one into a pariah... These are all realms within that level, and all would be avoided equally. Meaning if someone had been, say, made into a public figure of hate through the digital media, they might after some time resign all hope of being redeemed. However, when one of their family members died, they would go through the cycle of distress all over again - and all are tied by, and I'm not sure I can put it succinctly into words right now, [that of which we, if we were to lose it, would feel extreme distress at no cost to our chance of survival]? Does that work?

Anyway, just my two cents on the matter.