The Noonday Demon

by Solomon, Andrew

  310 Samuel Johnson on Burton is in Roy Porter’s Mind-Forg’d Manacles, pages 75–77. Johnson on “the black dog” is in Max Byrd’s Visits to Bedlam, page 127.

  310 For Cowper on his depression, including the passages quoted, see Allan Ingram’s The Madhouse of Language, pages 149–50. The lines of poetry are from his “Lines Written During a Period of Insanity,” in The Poetical Works of William Cowper, page 290.

  311 Edward Young’s lines are in his The Complaint, or Night-Thoughts, vol. 1, page 11.

  311 Tobias Smollett’s description of himself as a hospital is in Roy Porter’s Mind-Forg’d Manacles, endnotes, page 345.

  311 The quotation from the Marquise du Deffand comes from Jerome Zerbe and Cyril Connolly, Les Pavillons of the Eighteenth Century, page 21.

  311 Johnson on Scotland is in Max Byrd’s Visits to Bedlam, page 126.

  311 John Brown’s fit disparagement of the British climate, as well as Edmund Burke’s remarks, are in Ibid., 126. One could go on for volumes with eighteenth-century comments on melancholy. Jonathan Swift, a splenetic fellow himself, had little mercy for these many accounts. He was very much of the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality: “A fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo, to retire into a Corner, to lie down and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, and wanted neither Food nor Water; nor did the Servants imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only Remedy they found was to set him to hard Work, after which he would infallibly come to himself.” This passage is from Gulliver’s Travels, page 199.

  311 The passage of Voltaire quoted here is from Candide, page 140.

  311 Horace Walpole’s charming prescription is in Roy Porter’s Mind-Forg’d Manacles, page 241. The question of geography and depression first arose in this period. William Rowley wrote that “England, according to its size and number of inhabitants, produces and contains more insane than any other country in Europe, and suicide is more common. The agitations of passions, the liberty of thinking and acting with less restraint than in other nations, force a great quantity of blood to the head, and produce greater varieties of madness in this country, than is observed in others. Religious and civil toleration are productive of political and religious madness; but where no such toleration exists, no such insanity appears.” William Rowley’s remarks are in Max Byrd’s Visits to Bedlam, page 129.

  312 The line from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is number 36, to be found on page 38 of The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray. The lines from “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” are on pages 9–10 of the same volume.

  312 Coleridge’s remarks are to be found in The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Earl Leslie Griggs, editor, vol. 1, letter 68, page 123.

  312 Kant’s aphorisms are from his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, pages 56 and 63.

  312 On mental health in the American colonies, see Mary Ann Jimenez’s Changing Faces of Madness.

  312 One example of the U.S. trend toward religious explanations of depression is William Thompson, a minister in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, who became so depressed that he had to give up his work and became “the lively portraiture of Death / A walking tomb, a living sepulcher / In which black melancholy did inter.” The devil it was who “vexed his mind with diabolical assaults and horrid, hellish darts.” The poem on William Thompson, written by his “family and friends,” may be found in Ibid., 13.

  313 Cotton Mather on the depression of his wife is in Ibid., 13–15.

  313 The quotations from The Angel of Bethesda are on pages 130–33.

  313 Henry Rose’s remarks are in his An Inaugural Dissertation on the Effects of the Passions upon the Body, page 12. Other prominent Americans publishing treatises on the subject of depression include Nicholas Robinson, William Cullen, and Edward Cutbush. Nicholas Robinson was much read in the colonies, and his mechanical explanations of melancholy dominated thought there throughout the mid–eighteenth century. For more on Nicholas Robinson in the colonies, see Mary Ann Jimenez’s Changing Faces of Madness, pages 18–20. William Cullen, publishing in Philadelphia in 1790, a humanist freed from some of religion’s constraints, found that a “drier and firmer texture in the medullary substance of the brain” from a “certain want of fluid in that substance” causes melancholy. These words may be found in Cullen’s The First Lines of the Practice of Physic, vol. 3, page 217. Edward Cutbush, in the colonies, speaks of melancholy as an “atonic madness” in which “the mind is generally fixed to one subject; many are cogitative, silent, morose, and fixed like statues; others wander from their habitation in search of solitary places, they neglect cleanliness, their bodies are generally cold, with a change of color and dry skin; all the different secretions are much diminished, the pulse slow and languid.” He saw the brain as constantly in motion (much like the heart or lungs) and thought that all madness came from “an excess or defect of motion, in one or more parts of the brain.” He then wondered whether such defects of motion come from the blood and the nervous fluid, as Boerhaave said, from chemical matters, as Willis suggested, or “an electric or electroid fluid” that could cause “the periodical attacks of insanity” in the event of “an accumulation of this electricity in the brain.” Cutbush said that overexcitement of the brain could ruin it: “The first impression causes so great a commotion in the brain, that it will exclude, or draw into a vast vortex, every other motion, and insanity with her humerous train of attendants will usurp her way over sovereign reason.” Edward Cutbush’s views are in his An Inaugural Dissertation on Insanity, pages 18, 24, 32–33.

  313 On “evangelical anorexia nervosa,” see Julius Rubin’s Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America, pages 82–124 and 156–76. The phrase “starving perfectionists” is on page 158.

  314 These words from Kant on the sublime are in The Philosophy of Kant, page 4.

  314 The famous line is from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, part I, scene 6, page 42.

  314 Wordsworth’s lines are from the poem “Resolution and Independence,” in the volume The Prelude: Selected Poems and Sonnets, page 138.

  314 Keats on easeful death is line 52 of “Ode to a Nightingale,” in The Poems, page 202. The quotation from “Ode on Melancholy” is lines 21–25, in the same collection, page 214.

  314 The quotations from Shelley are from his poem “Mutability,” lines 1–4 and 19–21, in The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, page 679.

  315 Giacomo Leopardi’s lines are from “To Himself,” in his Poems, page 115.

  315 “Vanity of vanities” is Ecclesiastes 12:8.

  315 The lines from The Sorrows of Young Werther are to be found on pages 95 and 120.

  315 Baudelaire’s lines are from The Flowers of Evil, pages 92–93.

  316 Bernard of Morlaix, a monk of the order of Cluny, wrote his most well-known poem, De Contemptu Mundi, in the twelfth century. It is one of the most lasting apocalyptic meditations.

  316 The quotation from Hegel comes from his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, as quoted in Wolf Lepenies’s Melancholy and Society, page 75.

  316 Of course everything Kierkegaard wrote seems to be about depression at one level or another, but these passages come, respectively, from a quoted segment in Georg Lukács’s Soul and Form, page 33, and from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death, page 50.

  316 Schopenhauer’s comments on melancholia are primarily in his essays rather than in his longer books. I would call attention particularly to his essays “On the Sufferings of the World,” “On the Vanity of Existence,” and “On Suicide.” The quotations here are both from “On the Sufferings of the World,” within the collection Complete Essays of Schopenhauer, pages 3–4.

  317 Nietzsche’s comments on health and illness are in The Will to Power, page 29.

  317 The passages from Philippe Pinel may be found in his A Treatise on Insanity, pages 107, 132, and 53–54, respectively.
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br />   317 The quotation from Samuel Tuke is from Andrew Scull’s Social Order/Mental Disorder, page 75.

  318 The master of another asylum to whom I allude here is quoted in Ibid., 77.

  318 The statistics on the insane may be found in Marlene Arieno’s Victorian Lunatics, page 11. The history of the Lunatics Acts is in the same book, pages 15–17.

  318 The population of Bedlam in 1850 is in Ibid., 17.

  319 Thomas Beddoes’s rather insightful quotation is in Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression, page 186.

  319 Benjamin Rush’s ideas and words are in his Medical Inquiries and Observations, pages 61–62, 78, and 104–8.

  319 J. E. D. Esquirol was among those who stuck quite closely to Pinel. He championed humane asylums in the very early nineteenth century, adding that patients should be treated with a “dry and temperate climate, a clear sky, a pleasant temperature, an agreeable situation, varied scenery,” as well as exercise, travel, and laxatives. For the causes of melancholy, he gives a mind-boggling list that includes domestic troubles, masturbation, wounded self-love, falls upon the head, hereditary predisposition, and libertinism, among others. For the symptoms, he said that “this is not a complaint that agitates, complains, shouts, weeps; it is one that silences, that has no tears, that is immobile.” Esquirol’s quotations come from his Mental Maladies, page 226, and from Barbara Tolley’s unpublished dissertation “The Languages of Melancholy in Le Philosophe Anglais,” page 11. While some concentrated on the humanity of treatment, others focused on the nature of the illness itself. James Cowles Prichard echoed Nietzsche in defining an illness much closer to sanity, setting up what would become the modern understanding of depression. “It is perhaps impossible,” he wrote, “to determine the line which marks a transition from predisposition to disease; but there is a degree of this affection which certainly constitutes disease of mind, and that disease exists without any illusion impressed upon the understanding of reason. The faculty of reason is not manifestly impaired, but a constant feeling of gloom and sadness clouds all the prospects of life. This tendency to morbid sorrow and melancholy, as it does not destroy the understanding, is often subject to control when it first arises, and probably receives a peculiar character from the previous mental state of the individual.” The passages here, quoted from James Cowles Prichard, are to be found in his Treatise, page 18.

  319 Griesinger’s ideas may be found in a variety of primary and secondary sources. His Mental Pathology and Therapeutics provides an excellent survey of his ideas. Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression contains an enlightening summary of Griesinger’s ideas.

  320 Foucault’s ideas are expounded in his famous Madness and Civilization, a book whose eloquent speciousness did significant damage to the cause of the mentally ill in the late twentieth century.

  321 Most of Charles Dickens’s work cries out for social reform. See, for example, Nicholas Nickleby.

  321 For Victor Hugo on social injustice and alienation, see his Les Misérables.

  321 Oscar Wilde gives voice to the spirit of alienation of his age in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” from Complete Poetry, pages 152–72.

  321 Joris-Karl Huysmans seems to indicate something of the alienated quality of late decadence in his famous À Rebours or Against Nature.

  321 The first quotation from Sartor Resartus is on page 164; the second is taken directly from William James’s essay “Is Life Worth Living?” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, page 42.

  321 The views of William James on melancholia crop up throughout his writing. The passages quoted here come from his essay “Is Life Worth Living?” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, pages 43, 39, and 49, respectively. See also, of course, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

  321 The lines from Matthew Arnold are from “Dover Beach,” in The Poems of Matthew Arnold, pages 239–43.

  322 Maudsley’s quotations are taken from his The Pathology of the Mind, pages 164–68. John Charles Bucknill and Daniel H. Tuke took up Maudsley’s theme in the United States—“a disorder of the intellect not being,” they observed, “an essential part of the disorder.” They went on to speak of the external treatments for melancholy, many of them age-old, as having a direct effect on the brain. “In all organs of the body, except the brain, great advances have been made into the knowledge of their physiological laws. But it is quite otherwise with the noble organ which lords it over the rest of the body. The physiological principle upon which we have to build a system of cerebral pathology is, that mental health is dependent upon the due nutrition, stimulation, and repose of the brain; that is, upon the conditions of the exhaustion and reparation of its nerve-substance being maintained in a healthy and regular state.” And they enthusiastically suggest that opium may be effective in relaxing the brain. The passages from John Charles Bucknill and Daniel H. Tuke may be found in their A Manual of Psychological Medicine, pages 152 and 341–42. Richard von Krafft-Ebing also identified this mild illness. “When the innumerable slight causes that do not reach the hospital for the insane are taken into consideration, the prognosis of melancholia is favorable. Numerous cases of this kind pass on to recovery without the occurrence of delusions or errors of the senses.” Richard von Krafft-Ebing is quoted from his Text-Book of Insanity, page 309.

  322 George H. Savage’s remarks may be found in his Insanity and Allied Neuroses, pages 130 and 151–152.

  323 These remarks from Freud are from the “Extracts from the Fliess Papers,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 1, pages 204–6.

  323 Karl Abraham’s 1911 essay is entitled “Notes on the Psycho-analytical Investigation and Treatment of Manic-Depressive Insanity and Allied Conditions,” in Selected Papers of Karl Abraham. These passages are from this essay, pages 137, 146, and 156, respectively.

  324 The passages quoted from “Mourning and Melancholia” have been taken from A General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud, pages 125–27, 133, and 138–39.

  324 The article alluded to her is “Managing Depression in Medical Outpatients,” New England Journal of Medicine 343, no. 26 (2000).

  325 On Abraham’s response to “Mourning and Melancholia,” see his later essay “Development of the Libido,” in Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, page 456.

  326 For this material from Melanie Klein, see her essay “The Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States,” in The Selected Melanie Klein, page 145. Other psychoanalysts writing on the topic include the great Freudian revisionist Sandor Rado. He put together a profile of the kind of person who is subject to melancholy, who is “most happy when living in an atmosphere permeated with libido” but who also has a tendency to be unreasonably demanding of those he loves. Depression, according to Rado, is “a great despairing cry for love.” Depression therefore evokes once more that early demand for the mother’s breast, the fulfillment of which Rado rather charmingly called “the alimentary orgasm.” The depressed person, from infancy on, wants love of any kind—erotic love or maternal love or self-love are all reasonable fulfillments of his need. “The process of melancholia,” Rado wrote, “represents an attempt at reparation (cure) on a grand scale, carried out with an iron psychological consistency.” The quotations from Sandor Rado are from his essay “The Problem of Melancholia,” in Psychoanalysis of Behavior, pages 49–60.

  326 Hassoun’s writing on depression is in his recently published book The Cruelty of Depression.

  327 Kraepelin makes for some dull reading. The passages quoted here are from Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression, pages 188–95. An excellent discussion of Kraepelin is also included in Myer Mendelson’s Psychoanalytic Concepts of Depression.

  328 The line from Sir William Osler is from his Aequanimitas, as quoted in Peter Adams’s The Soul of Medicine, page 67.

  328 Adolf Meyer is a delight to read. I am indebted to Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression as well as My
er Mendelson’s Psychoanalytic Concepts of Depression, and Jacques Quen and Eric Carlson’s American Psychoanalysis, for much of my discussion of Adolf Meyer. The passages are quoted, in the order they appear in the text, from Myer Mendelson’s Psychoanalytic Concepts of Depression, page 6; Jacques Quen and Eric Carlson’s American Psychoanalysis, page 24; Myer Mendelson’s Psychoanalytic Concepts of Depression, page 6; Adolf Meyer’s Psychobiology, page 172; Adolf Meyer’s The Collected Papers of Adolf Meyer, vol. 2, pages 598 and 599; Theodore Lidz’s “Adolf Meyer and American Psychiatry,” published in the American Journal of Psychiatry 123 (1966): 326; and from Adolf Meyer’s Psychobiology, page 158.