Lincoln's Melancholy

[RJNorton]

(10-10-2016 11:58 AM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Lincoln told Johnston "He is three years older than I, and when we were boys we went to school together. He was rather a bright lad, and the son of the rich man of our poor neighborhood. At the age of nineteen he unaccountably became furiously mad, from which condition he gradually settled down into harmless insanity. When, as I told you in my other letter I visited my old home in the fall of 1844, I found him still lingering in this wretched condition. In my poetizing mood I could not forget the impression his case made upon me."

I have always been curious about the case of Matthew Gentry. Louis Warren adds, "since he (Matthew Gentry) was the eldest son of 'the rich man' of a 'very poor neighborhood,' he was held in a particular high regard by his teachers and fellow pupils."

I am not familiar with how one can descend so rapidly with no apparent trigger. I can understand why Abraham was so shocked and bewildered, but what could have caused such an incredibly quick decline? (and still be in this "furiously mad" state 20 years later)

Could Abraham have been exaggerating/embellishing? Or can someone really go insane overnight?

[Rob Wick]

Roger,

I'm obviously not qualified to offer anything other than my own thoughts, but to me it seems possible that Matthew Gentry always had some form of mental illness but it either wasn't noticeable or just ascribed to his personality. As for the trigger, again I'm not claiming any particular expertise, but what would seem reasonable or logical to us might strike someone with a mental illness as completely over the top, triggering an episode.

Bill Nash would be a much better guide for this then I could ever hope to be.

As for Lincoln embellishing things, if you look at poem in its entirety, the first stanza is a bittersweet walk down memory lane while the third talks about the hazards one experienced living in the frontier and the excitement evident in a young boy's mind. Neither the first nor the third appear to me to be "embellished." While I have no expertise to judge the merits of poetry, it seems to me that something more than memories caused the second stanza to flash in Lincoln's mind as strongly as it did.

Best
Rob

[Linda Anderson]

(10-10-2016 11:58 AM)Rob Wick Wrote:  I think people sometimes get too hung up on the pejorative nature of the term "mentally ill." Mental illness is in reality a continuum that can range from mild depression all the way to a psychosis that would require someone to be institutionalized against their will. Many of the various conditions described as mental illness can be successfully treated with medicine and therapy or a combination of the two. To say that one suffers, or suffered, from mental illness isn't to say that person no longer is a valued or productive member of society. Of course, there's also a legal definition of the term insanity which may or may not conform to the clinical definition...

So, to sum up, it does the memory of Lincoln no violence to say he suffered from mental illness or clinical depression. On the continuum I spoke of, I think a strong case can be made for a mild form of clinical depression. And I also agree with Roger's earlier point that during Lincoln's presidency instances of this were rare. Yet think about it--what else could have focused Lincoln's mind so intently then guiding the country through the Civil War?

Best
Rob

I agree, Rob. So many people who have suffered from depression have accomplished wonderful things in their lives in spite of, or as a way of coping with, their depression. The list includes Winston Churchill, William Styron and J.K. Rowling.

Here's an article titled "Does Being Seriously Depressed Make You a Better Leader?" which mentions Lincoln.

"Yes, when times get tough. Even being mentally ill can help. That’s according to Nassir Ghaemi, a Tufts University psychiatry professor, in an article in The Wall Street Journal adapted from his new book, A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness. He says mentally healthy people make fine leaders when times are good and the challenges are easy, but 'in times of crisis and tumult, those who are mentally abnormal, even ill, become the greatest leaders. We might call this the Inverse Law of Sanity.'"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickall...e0acf62625

[ELCore]

(10-10-2016 11:58 AM)Rob Wick Wrote:  So, to sum up, it does the memory of Lincoln no violence to say he suffered from mental illness or clinical depression.

Unless the claims are false. And I believe that's the issue — the accuracy of the diagnosis — not whether violence is done to anybody's memory. That's the issue for me, anyway.

[Rob Wick]

And therein lies the problem. It is impossible to prove conclulsively that Lincoln did not suffer from a mental illness, be it severe or otherwise. Yet there is evidence, however circumstantial, that he did. As a historian, I have to use the evidence as it exists, and there is enough to convince me. If I could read a primary source that showed otherwise, I would be more than willing to change my mind. I have yet to find that primary source.

Best
Rob

[Gene C]

That's what makes this interesting..."it's impossible to prove"

Do we all, at one time or another, act a bit "odd"? Then is it normal to act odd? If it's normal to act odd, then it's not odd to act odd.
If it's normal to act odd, is it odd to act normal? What you might consider odd, may seem normal to me.
If you think this line of reasoning is odd, that would be normal.


All this reminds me of a song. Aren't you the least bit curious what it is?
That's normal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoyAg75PsTA

[Rob Wick]

I said yesterday that there was enough evidence to convince me that Lincoln suffered from some form of mental illness, i.e., likely a mlld form of clinical depression. Let's look over the evidence that supports this belief.

1). Lincoln's loss of his mother at such a young age. I pointed out that my father died when I was five. He was 39 and had a massive heart attack, so his death was unexpected. My mother did all she could to try to raise us and keep food on the table, but she was unaware of the psychological effects that a child losing a parent at such a young age can have. Throughout my life I have done research on those effects, and I can say that from personal experience the early death of a parent has a great impact on a child. Look at this article that I recently found. I was particularly struck by this fact.

Psychiatrists and others have generally been struck by how often major childhood loss seems to result in psychopathology. Studies of adults with various mental disorders, especially depression, frequently reveal childhood bereavement, suggesting that such loss may precipitate or contribute to the development of a variety of psychiatric disorders and that this experience can render a person emotionally vulnerable for life. This special vulnerability of children is attributed to developmental immaturity and insufficiently developed coping capacities.

2)The death of Lincoln's sister. Ten years after the death of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Sarah Grigsby died in childbirth. Although he was 19 by this time, it wouldn't take a great deal of imagination to see the closeness that Abraham and Sarah would have developed after Nancy died and Thomas went back to Kentucky to marry Sarah Bush Johnston. That Sarah died while giving birth to the stillborn nephew of Lincoln surely added to the grief at what should have been a time of joy. According to the National Park Service, one source is quoted as saying "They were close companions and were a great deal alike in temperament."

3)His relationship to his father. A child who experienced the early death of a parent clings to the surviving parent as a buffer against the grief that such a death naturally causes. It is well known that Lincoln's relationship to his father was very strained, to the point that he did not attend his funeral. The feeling of abandonment that Lincoln must have felt when Thomas left for Kentucky and Abraham's feelings that Thomas treated him like a slave certainly contributed to the estrangement. How else can one explain how quickly Abraham disassociated himself from Thomas when he legally could.

4)The New Salem evidence. Regardless of what one believes of the Ann Rutledge story, there is no question that in 1835, Lincoln suffered a major event that caused his neighbors concern. As Joshua Shenk writes "As the original accounts make clear, his breakdown was impossible to miss. Nearly everyone in the community who gave testimony spoke of it, remembering its contours even decades later. Lincoln, after all, had become immensely popular, loved by young ruffians and old families alike. Now, all of a sudden he was openly moping and threatening to kill himself. Why? people asked. What accounted for the great change?"

5)The Suicide Soliloquy. Although it has never been conclusively proven that Lincoln wrote this, most scholars agree it fits Lincoln's style, tone and syntax.

Here, where the lonely hooting owl
Sends forth his midnight moans,
Fierce wolves shall o'er my carcase growl,
Or buzzards pick my bones.

No fellow-man shall learn my fate,
Or where my ashes lie;
Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,
Or by the ravens' cry.

Yes! I've resolved the deed to do,
And this the place to do it:
This heart I'll rush a dagger through
Though I in hell should rue it!

Add to this the poem I alluded to concerning Matthew Gentry, and this suggests a strong, almost pathological, feeling of despair and a deep, abiding interest in psychological issues enhanced by his own mental struggles.

6)"Lincoln went Crazy." It is the years 1840-41 that seem to me the strongest evidence that Lincoln suffered from a mental illness. I quote at length from Shenk:
For Lincoln in this winter many things were awry. Even as he faced the possibility that his political career was sunk, it seemed likely that he was inextricably bound to a woman he didn't love (Mary Todd) and that Joshua Speed was going to either move away to Kentucky or stay in Illinois and marry Matilda Edwards, the young woman whom Lincoln said he really wanted but could not even approach, because of his bond with Todd. Then came a stretch of intensely cold weather, which, Lincoln later wrote, "my experience clearly proves to be verry severe on defective nerves." Once again he began to speak openly about his misery, hopelessness, and thoughts of suicide—alarming his friends. "Lincoln went Crazy," Speed recalled. "—had to remove razors from his room—take away all Knives and other such dangerous things—&—it was terrible."

In January of 1841 Lincoln submitted himself to the care of a medical doctor, spending several hours a day with Dr. Anson Henry, whom he called "necessary to my existence." Although few details of the treatment are extant, he probably went through what a prominent physician of the time called "the desolating tortures of officious medication." When he emerged, on January 20, he was "reduced and emaciated in appearance," wrote a young lawyer in town named James Conkling. On January 23 Lincoln wrote to his law partner in Washington: "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me."

Add to that the Drake letter, which I again remind everyone came from Speed, and it seems self-evident this was more than a case of the "blues."

7)Roland Diller's interview with Ida Tarbell. All this so far points to depressive behavior up to Lincoln's early 30s. Yet, people in Springfield, long after Lincoln's assassination remembered the "melancholic" nature of Lincoln. As I stated the other day, one of the most powerful (in my mind) came from Ida Tarbell's interview with Roland Diller. “He had to do that cause he was melancholic like. He had shadows over him. We used to say when we saw him broodin’ ‘What’s the use Abe? Nothing ain’t your fault. What’s the use?’ but he couldn’t help it.” What I didn't mention before was that Diller offered this information without Tarbell's prompting. It had made such an impression on him that he brought it up on his own accord.

I'm going to stop here, because I have other work that I have to get to, but I urge you to read through these pieces of evidence. None in and of itself is absolutely conclusive, but taken together, they point to a pretty strong case that Lincoln suffered from a mental illness.

Oh, and Gene, I got a headache just from reading your last post. Thanks.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

Excellent points, Rob. I still think Lincoln suffered through periods of extreme sadness and melancholy, but IMO, he was not truly mentally ill or suffering from clinical depression.

On December 23, 1862, Lincoln wrote a letter to the daughter of a friend who had been killed in battle. The girl was suffering with the loss. Part of Lincoln's letter said:

"I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before."

I am a definite layman when it comes to diagnosing mental illness, but in my opinion, Lincoln's words are more likely to have come from a person who suffered through, survived, and recovered from very sad, deep, "hypo" periods in life, not a person who was/had been truly mentally ill or clinically depressed.

[L Verge]

(10-12-2016 07:47 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Excellent points, Rob. I still think Lincoln suffered through periods of extreme sadness and melancholy, but IMO, he was not truly mentally ill or suffering from clinical depression.

On December 23, 1862, Lincoln wrote a letter to the daughter of a friend who had been killed in battle. The girl was suffering with the loss. Part of Lincoln's letter said:

"I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before."

I am a definite layman when it comes to diagnosing mental illness, but in my opinion, Lincoln's words are more likely to have come from a person who suffered through, survived, and recovered from very sad, deep, "hypo" periods in life, not a person who was/had been truly mentally ill or clinically depressed.

Do we have knowledge of how long his "attacks" of melancholy would last? That is often used to distinguish the difference between mentally ill or clinically depressed and the lesser forms of melancholy, I believe. If his spells of depression lasted for months, that would indicate more severe forms to me.

[Rob Wick]

Quote:I still think Lincoln suffered through periods of extreme sadness and melancholy, but IMO, he was not truly mentally ill or suffering from clinical depression.

Roger,

Of course, we are free to disagree and I certainly respect your opinion and your reasoning. I wonder, however, if there is a possibility of depressive episodes being followed by days, weeks, months or even years of relative stability with the underlying illness still present? I know in patients who are bipolar, symptoms are often reduced when a medicinal regimen is followed, although medicines often lose their effectiveness which makes it a difficult illness to treat. As I stated earlier, it cannot be proven conclusively, but there is far too much evidence to ignore, in my view.

Best
Rob

[Eva Elisabeth]

(10-10-2016 01:03 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(10-10-2016 11:58 AM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Lincoln told Johnston "He is three years older than I, and when we were boys we went to school together. He was rather a bright lad, and the son of the rich man of our poor neighborhood. At the age of nineteen he unaccountably became furiously mad, from which condition he gradually settled down into harmless insanity. When, as I told you in my other letter I visited my old home in the fall of 1844, I found him still lingering in this wretched condition. In my poetizing mood I could not forget the impression his case made upon me."

I have always been curious about the case of Matthew Gentry. Louis Warren adds, "since he (Matthew Gentry) was the eldest son of 'the rich man' of a 'very poor neighborhood,' he was held in a particular high regard by his teachers and fellow pupils."

I am not familiar with how one can descend so rapidly with no apparent trigger. I can understand why Abraham was so shocked and bewildered, but what could have caused such an incredibly quick decline? (and still be in this "furiously mad" state 20 years later)

Could Abraham have been exaggerating/embellishing? Or can someone really go insane overnight?

I am no psychologist nor doc but I think there are illnesses (mental and physical) that can cause such. Also there was a lot of poisoning from drug abuse in those days due to lacking background knowledge - see blue mass (poisoning from lead is one theory why the Roman empire went down south...). Maybe symptoms had also shown before Lincoln just didn't notice as not being close enough.

[RJNorton]

This is probably a long shot, but another thing that came to my mind was the possibility of a stroke. I realize strokes are rare in a person that age, but I was wondering about the possibility of bleeding in the brain causing permanent psychiatric illness. If this happened it could have changed Matthew suddenly and permanently if the damage in the brain never could heal and would still cause the same "insane" behavior 20 years later which Abraham observed. Like I said this is probably unlikely, but if it happened in a certain area of the brain, I think there can be psychiatric symptoms in some people.

[Eva Elisabeth]

(10-12-2016 10:53 AM)Rob Wick Wrote:  

Quote:I still think Lincoln suffered through periods of extreme sadness and melancholy, but IMO, he was not truly mentally ill or suffering from clinical depression.

Roger,

Of course, we are free to disagree and I certainly respect your opinion and your reasoning. I wonder, however, if there is a possibility of depressive episodes being followed by days, weeks, months or even years of relative stability with the underlying illness still present? I know in patients who are bipolar, symptoms are often reduced when a medicinal regimen is followed, although medicines often lose their effectiveness which makes it a difficult illness to treat. As I stated earlier, it cannot be proven conclusively, but there is far too much evidence to ignore, in my view.

Best
Rob

I would agree on periods of clinical depression, but is clinical depression mental illness? I am not in favor of that term, and I think better and correct would be mental disorder (i. e. acute condition).

---

(10-12-2016 02:18 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  This is probably a long shot, but another thing that came to my mind was the possibility of a stroke. I realize strokes are rare in a person that age, but I was wondering about the possibility of bleeding in the brain causing permanent psychiatric illness. If this happened it could have changed Matthew suddenly and permanently if the damage in the brain never could heal and would still cause the same "insane" behavior 20 years later which Abraham observed. Like I said this is probably unlikely, but if it happened in a certain area of the brain, I think there can be psychiatric symptoms in some people.

Or a brain tumor.

[RJNorton]

(10-12-2016 02:18 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Or a brain tumor.

Yes.

[ELCore]

(10-12-2016 07:47 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  I am a definite layman when it comes to diagnosing mental illness, but in my opinion, Lincoln's words are more likely to have come from a person who suffered through, survived, and recovered from very sad, deep, "hypo" periods in life, not a person who was/had been truly mentally ill or clinically depressed.

I agree completely.