France, a Down-in-the-Dumps Nation

choi

Pascal Bruckner, France, a down-in-the-dumps nation; The French have become afraid of everything: the world, poverty, globalization, Islam, capitalism, global warming, natural catastrophes -- and even, to borrow an American phrase, fear itself. Los Angeles Times, Feb 23, 2014 (op-ed).
www.latimes.com/opinion/commenta ... m-and-doom-20140223,0,5771679.story

Note:
(a)
(i) Pascal (given name)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(given_name)
(ii) Regarding the surname Bruckner
(A) It could be south German: "for someone living by a bridge or an occupational name for a bridge toll collector; a variant of Bruck with the addition of the suffix -ner."
(B) It could be Jewish (Ashkenazic): "occupational name for a paver, from Yiddish bruk ‘pavement’ + the agent suffix -ner."
Both are from Dictionaries of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press.

(b) down in the dumps. The Phrase Finder, undated.
www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/down-in-the-dumps.html
("'The dumps' wasn't a place but a commonplace mediaeval expression meaning dejection; melancholy; depression")

The adjectival "mediaeval" is something I have not seen before; the usual spelling is "medieval." I checked an American dictionary (www.m-w.com) and English one (Oxford), both of which say the spellings are acceptable. Thus it is not an British spelling, or something. The www.m-w.com indicates its etymology as "New Latin medium aevum Middle Ages; First Known Use: 1827."

Latin English dictionary:
aevum (noun neuter; singular):
"1. time, eternity
2. lifetime, age, generation"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aevum

(c) "they're one of the world's most depressed populations, a huge consumer of psychotropic drugs and tranquilizers"
(i) psychotropic (adj and n; First Known Use 1948): "acting on the mind <psychotropic drugs>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/psychotropic

* etymology of -trope (English suffix): from Latin noun tropus, from Greek noun tropos turn, from Greek verb trepein to turn
(ii) For psychotropic , see psychoactive drug
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_drug
(A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system; section 2 Uses)

(d) "To understand the French stance toward money, one should return to the well-known Balzac phrase: 'Behind every great fortune there is a great crime' — as if the thirst for material success sprang from a desire to deprive others or prostitute their dreams. French leaders left and right have denounced filthy lucre.

Honoré de Balzac
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honoré_de_Balzac
(1799-1850; a French novelist)
(e) "One discordant note to France's current defeatism is the nation's fertility rate, among the highest in the Old World. We fight against our sense of gloom about the future, it seems, by repopulating our cradles."

total fertility rate
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
(world map, whose legend says, "A world map showing countries by total fertility rate (TFR), according to the CIA World Factbook's 2013 data")