In Stardust Memories I used the term ‘Ozymandias Melancholia’. That’s a symptom I’ve invented that describes that phenomenon specifically, the realization that your works of art will not save you and will mean nothing down the line. Eventually, there won’t be any universe, so even all the works of Shakespeare and all the works of Beethoven will be gone.
Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation with Stig Bjorkman. "Interiors"
I treated him. He was a complicated patient. He saw reality too clearly. Faulty denial mechanism, failed to block out the horrible truths of existence. In the end, his inability to push away the awful facts of "being-in-the-world" rendered his life meaningless, or as one great Hollywood producer said: "Too much reality is not what the people want". Sandy Bates suffered a depression common to many artists in middle age. In my latest paper for the Psychoanalytic Journal, I have named it, "Ozymandias Melancholia".