Booth's Mental health

[Jenny]

(05-16-2015 06:55 PM)Thomas Thorne Wrote:  JWB was neither a genius,insane or suffered from any significant mental illness.

I resist the modern tendency to declare horrible deeds I strongly deplore to be acts of madness. The careless throwing out of accusations of mental illness without rigorous examination of the facts reinforces our natural inclination to be smug about the correctness of our own beliefs.

I think most of us agree that no one here is throwing out careless accusations of madness. AGAIN, no one is trying to say that Booth was a complete nut job who thought as he did and carried out the actions he did all because he might have had one form or another of a mental disorder. That would be ridiculous. I think it's well established that he was NOT simply driven by a mental imbalance.

Clearly I can't agree that it was utterly impossible that he didn't have some form of mental illness though. Not after all I've read about the man and his family , especially descriptions from his contemporaries, and obviously I am not alone in my suspicions or this thread would not have been started. It's pretty arrogant to imply as a fact that Booth did not suffer from any significant mental illness when it is honestly possible he *might* have.

Obviously I am wasting my breath to a lot of folks here, but that's okay with me.

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(05-16-2015 08:09 PM)Juan Marrero Wrote:  Jenny, I think your are absolutely on the right page. It is difficult to unknot the question of mental health and motive. What prompted my original post was the picture that emerged of JWB from reading "Fortune's Fool." Clearly, his feelings about Lincoln, slavery and the South were shared by 100,000s of people. Yet, it was Booth who effected the murderous act. It seemed from the book that he was a brilliant, charming, sometimes cruel, sometimes empathetic, adrenalin-driven individual who was all things some of the times.

What kind of man abstains from military service so as not to hurt his mother then commits an act that would logically lead to his being hanged or killed before capture--not to mention bringing Mary Ann the ignominy of being the "assassin's mother". Even if he thought he would be lionized in the South, he still needed to reckon with the fact that his family lived in New York at the time of the murder.

He had a grandiose vision of himself that when meshed with his politics made him the most interesting (and successful) of presidential murderers. Oswald had this grandiose vision too, but there was nothing grand about him. Oswald did not walk away from theatrical acclaim and fortune to kill a president.

I wonder what Ayn Rand thought of JWB, if she did at all.. She lionized figures who acted grandly because they were so above the average run of mankind. The normal rules did not apply to such types. I think JWB saw himself that way. But is that a diagnosable mental health issue or a run-away ego supercharged with poisonous politics?

I don't know the answer to that last question, but this is a wonderful post, Juan.