I must get hold of my melancholy. Up to now it has been deeply submerged and my enormous intellectual activity has helped to keep it there.

[…]

For many years my melancholy has prevented me from being on terms of real intimacy with myself. In between my melancholy and myself lay a whole world of the imagination. That is, in part, what I rid myself of in the pseudonyms.

Kierkegaard, Journals