Depression with Dorothy Rowe - Preamble (I)

I just found Dorothy Rowe's book - Depression, the way out of our prison - in Oxfam :).
From the preface, Rowe seems to build on the hypothesis that depression is more of a cognitive malfunction than an illness in some people (or both), which appears as a reaction to one realising a big discrepancy between the life that one leads and the life one thought was supposed to be living.
This statement has interesting implications for both Behavioural Cognitive Therapy and AI, which hopefully I will have the pleasure to write about in a future post.
In anticipation of having the time to read the book, here are some of my thoughts on the matter:
I think depression has a lot to do with what one can anticipate in one's own future. I've seen people going through huge amounts of pain and still remaining optimistic as long as there was something they could do about their life, to steer it in the right direction. But depression is just hopelessness, the anticipation of perpetual punishment or discord (I wrote dissaccord but will have to search the English term for that) between what life throws at you and what you are. And I doubt anybody can live easily through perpetual hopelessness.
Which puts light on an interesting effect of our cognitive abilities to anticipate our future constantly, to wonder about the meaning of our lives, to try and gain unity between our goals and what we think we are and our external manifestations.
The mechanism that we use to imagine the rights and wrongs that can happen in our life if we do one thing or another is a state-of-the-art cognitive tool. It helps us try to plan a life path or solutions paths in an uncertain world. But the same mechanism might be the downfall of us when all we can anticipate is pain.
With classical piano as a craft that needed lots of practice time, I haven't supported in my teenage years a hedonistic view of the world. But then again, hedonism is slippery, it is whatever gives us pleasure, and one can find pleasure in an ascetic or warrior-like lifestyle. One can definitely find pleasure in creating and accomplishing things, despite the effort that takes.
The truth is that we need rewards in our present and future (and perhaps in our past, as proofs that good things can happen to us). We cannot function without motivation, no matter how internalised this motivation is. And the pleasure of self-expression, of doing things of interest for one's self and being at least partially the self (or living the life ) that you imagined you will/should be are very internalised types of reward.
One could speculate that there is not much in terms of external reward that can equate to these internal ones.
The nature of reward is rather controversial in my opinion, as one can only achieve pleasure in one's brain. Thus it feels that one subjectively (but not necessarily consciously) decides if to enjoy or feel pleasure from something or not. That gives us some sort of upper hand on our own pleasure, but points at something more significant too. We cannot fool our own brain into having pleasure if we don't stick by our values, ideals, desires, etc.
This is why I think drug use for pleasure purposes can only provide fleeting and elusive glimpses of pleasure to its pursuers, and not the fully fledged satisfaction that one wants to achieve. In terms of informational functionality, pleasure seems to mark something worth seeking. If one is not happy in one's majority of deciding functions about one's actions and life, pleasure - which is put there as an internal reward for doing the right things - seems to elude the seeker.