Welcome to From Insults to Respect.

Regular readers know that from time to time I will discuss some famous person’s experience with depression. The experiences of Joni Mitchell (see HERE), U.S. Grant (see HERE), and Leo Tolstoy (see HERE) are the most recent examples. All of them, despite their mighty struggles with depression, still managed to earn the respect of millions.

To continue this series on the experiences of famous persons who dealt with depression, I just finished reading a wonderful book titled, Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, by Joshua Wolf Shenk.

I actually began discussing the book in my last post, which has the title, “I’m Sorry For The Tears.” There we discussed some reasons why so many of us are embarrassed when we cry and find ourselves, if we release tears in front of others, apologizing. I gave, as one example of this, Lincoln trying to hide his tears when he heard from some neighbors that his sister had died. As we will now see, there is far more to be learned about Lincoln’s experience with sadness, anguish, and tears.

Lincoln’s First Clear Evidence of Depression

Lincoln, up till his mid-twenties, was not viewed as being a melancholy kind of guy. Friends and neighbors saw him as sunny and persisting tirelessly. For example, during the Black Hawk War, a fellow soldier said of him, “I never saw Mr Lincoln angry or desponding, but always cheerful… the whole company, even amid trouble and suffering, received strength and fortitude, by his buoyancy and elasticity.” Also typical of comments made of him, a neighbor said, “He was the best natured man I ever got acquainted with.”

Oh, there is evidence of cracks in his sunny disposition during his early years, but they occurred during times of great disappointments, which is pretty typical of most people. For example, after he and a partner opened a store and it soon failed, as we might expect, some described him as moping around, and one person reported hearing him say he might “let the whole thing go.”

Although these observations might have been signs of an emerging tendency to experience deeper forms of depression, it wasn’t until he reached the age of 26 in the summer of 1835 when this tendency became obvious to all that knew him. As Mr. Shenk describes this period,

The first sign of trouble came with his intense study of law. He “read hard — Day and night — terribly hard,” remembered Isaac Condal, a stone mason. At times, Lincoln seemed oblivious to his friends and surroundings. “He became emaciated,” said Henry McHenry, a farmer in the area, “and his best friends were afraid that he would craze himself — make himself deranged.”

When a female friend of his, Miss Ann Rutledge, died during a plague, Abe fell into an even deeper state of despair. As Mr. McHenry described it,

…after that event he seemed quite changed, he seemed retired, and loved solitude, he seemed wrapped in profound thought, indifferent, to transpiring events, had little to say, but would take his gun and wander off in the woods by himself, away from associations of even those most esteemed, this gloom seemed to deepen for some time, so as to give anxiety to friends in regard to his mind.

Another person reported that Lincoln “told me that he felt like committing suicide often.” Friends felt compelled to watch and ward over him, and for a time he was locked up to prevent derangement or suicide. “That was the time the community said he was crazy,” remembered Elizabeth Abell.

Even after he began to appear outwardly improved, he continued to grapple with desperate thoughts. Robert L. Wilson, who joined Lincoln as a candidate for the state legislature in 1836, reported that Lincoln once confided in him “that although he appeared to enjoy life rapturously, still he was the victim of terrible melancholy… and he was so overcome with mental depression, that he never dare carry a knife in his pocket.”

The Second Intense Wave

The next period in which people who knew Abe clearly saw he was very depressed began at the beginning of January of 1841. Letters reveal how concerned people became. “We have been very much distressed on Lincoln’s account,” wrote one person. “Lincoln you know was desponding & melancholy when you left,” wrote another. “He has grown much worse and is now confined to his bed sick in body & mind,” wrote another.

Again, it is hard to say for certain if there was some event or series of events that led to what Abe was experiencing at the time. The possible factors that Mr. Shenk mentions are,

All at once, he faced the prospect that his political career was sunk; that he might be inextricably bound to a woman he didn’t love; that his best friend was going to either move to Kentucky or stay in Illinois and marry the woman Lincoln really wanted.

What ever the actual reason, Abe decided to submit to the care of a doctor, who provided a number of brutal treatments. He bled Abe, gave him substances that made him puke and have diarrhea, as well as opium and morphine. The doctor concluded that his aggressive treatments failed to help; it added to his problem.

The doctor’s treatment for depression was not an odd exception to how these types of conditions are dealt with by the medical profession.

Dr. Benjamin Rush

The preeminent physician of that time was Dr. Benjamin Rush, who wrote Medical Inquires and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind. Dr. Rush advocated the types of drastic approaches that Abe’s doctor used in an effort to stimulate and reinvigorate the patient’s constitution. Later medical approaches include lobotomies, which gouged out the front part of a person’s brain, and today, electroconvulsive shock treatments and drugs well known to cause serious side effects are employed.

A close look at events shows that Abe was far from healed by what the doctor put him through. As Mr. Shenk described them;

Before, he was depressed, agitated, and  “crazy.” After his treatment he looked beaten down, weak, almost inhuman. “Poor L.” wrote James Conkling, a young lawyer in town, on January 24, “How are the mighty fallen! He was confined about a week, but though he now appears again he is reduced and emaciated in appearance and seems scarcely to possess strength enough to speak above a whisper. His case at present is truly deplorable but what prospect there may be for ultimate relief I cannot pretend to say.” 

At one point, Abe wrote to a correspondent,

For not giving you a general summary of news, you must pardon me, it is not in my power to do so. 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.

Lincoln’s Case of Depression Was Never “Cured”

Some people experience depression, and then they have a “breakthrough” or “turning point,” and it goes away. This is what happened to Leo Tolstoy.

Abe’s depression experience provides us an example of someone who never really got over depression, but rather, he learned to deal with it in a productive manner. He spent an increasing amount of time alone, which can be profoundly important as people come to terms with loss, and sort out their ideas. Crucially important for him is that he found a cause that provided him a reason to live.

Perhaps because of his awful experience with medical treatment, Abe came to put no stock in conventional medical therapy. One of the attractions to the medical model is that it avoids blaming the patient for the depression experience by viewing it as a no-fault disease. Abe managed to avoid blaming people and himself  for such experiences by viewing them as “misfortunes.” Depression to him was not a non-fault disease, a crime, or even a disgrace. To him, misfortunes are unhappy circumstances that has happened to a blameless good person.

Abe used a great deal of humor to try to cheer himself up, and he became famous for his delightful stories. In fact this characteristic of Abe’s led to a story in a newspaper that told of two ladies talking about the Civil War. One said, “I think Jefferson Davis will succeed because he is a praying man.” The other replied, “But so is Lincoln.” The first responded, “Yes, but when Abraham prays, the Lord will think he’s joking.” Abe loved that story and told it often.

Although spending significant time alone, finding something meaningful to strive for, not blaming himself for his misfortune, and humor were the major helpful approaches he used to deal with his melancholy, nothing ever ended his experience of depression for long. As Mr. Shenk aptly described Abe’s lifelong depression,

He yoked his feelings to a style…of melancholy that was, more than anything, philosophical. He saw the world as a sad, difficult place from which he expected considerable suffering. “There was a strong tinge of sadness in Mr Lincoln composition,” said his friend Joseph Gillespie. “He felt very strongly that there was more of discomfort than real happiness in human existence under the most favorable circumstances and the general current of his reflections was in that channel.”

Could it be that this philosophical approach played an essential role of Abe’s great work? In the early days of psychology, people who were depressed were viewed as drawing conclusions about themselves and their experiences that were unrealistically distorted toward the negative, and therefore pathological. A more recent body of psychological research suggests that those who are depressed are often judging themselves and the world more accurately than non-depressed people. This provides opportunities to be sadder but wiser.

For those who are depressed, it is more encouraging to view their experience as potentially helpful, rather than an illness caused by having defective genes. Thus, perhaps Abe’s philosophy is more hopeful.

As Mr. Shenk’s fine book draws to an end, he writes,

The hope is not that suffering will go away, for with Lincoln it did not ever go away. The hope is that suffering, plainly acknowledged and endured, can fit us for the surprising challenges that awaits.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

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