Commonplace 41 George & The Black Dog of Depression
'Midway upon the journey of our life
In the Egoism posts, I touched on the claim George was depressive from childhood - according to his sister Ellen, and later, his son, Alfred.
Writing long after George's death, both put forward a case that he had been suffering from a form of mental illness when he stole at Owens. This might seem difficult to justify as the crimes had been going on throughout most of the academic year, and in all aspects of his life he seemed to be doing well, and showing no signs of mental disturbance. Were these family members doing the natural thing and protecting him by rationalising his actions?
Was George's tendency to quasi-bohemianism and non-conformist behaviour apparent at this time taken as a marker for nascent mental illness by those who didn't really understand the signs? If we consider the reaction amongst his family and wider social circle to his intention to marry Marianne aka Nell, then perhaps they regarded everything he did that was culturally different as the actions of a mentally unwell mind. John George Black and Morley Roberts claim they thought as much when they found out about this marriage plan (though they both are not to be totally trusted for accuracy as they were not objective witnesses to this). And, yet, marrying out of one's class (down, not up, of course) was not a bizarre, unnatural event to the family. The Gissings were not landed gentry; Mrs Gissing seems to have married slightly down when she agreed to bind herself to a shop-keeper as her father had been clerk in a solicitor's office. Shop-keeping in the nineteenth century wasn't the exulted thing it is today - for an account of the shame of being a shop-keeper, read George Meredith's Evan Harrington more than Will Warburton.
The fact remains, his sister (who knew a version of his inner working reasonably well, though never intimately - according to George himself) thought he was a depressive. So, what is clinical depression?
Broadly depression comes in two forms: exogenous (from the outside) also known as reactive depression; and endogenous (from the inside).
Reactive depression is generally triggered by adverse life events, such as grief or adversity, and will eventually ease and lessen even with little or no intervention having been applied.
It is likely to be a life-long reaction to challenges, can be disabling, but responds reasonably well to treatment. Opinion differs on the causes, depending on the school of psychology being used. Some believe it is caused by maladaptive social patterns and is a learned behaviour; others think it is a problem with the translation of information and the setting down of mind-altering habits that programme our developing emotions.
Endogenous depression can have an external stimulus of adversity but the mechanics of it are not wholly dependent on external life events click. It can be seen as a form of self-generating abnormality of mood arising from a fault in the workings of the brain. Incompetencies in neural pathways, lack of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the nervous system (serotonin has a much wider brief than you might think click) are termed 'medical model' schools of thought.
In the 1960s, 'anti-psychiatry' was in vogue, and RD Laing is probably the most renowned figure from the UK to make use of this new approach click. Here is a small piece that encapsulates Laing's point of view:
A sane response to an insane situation. This is Laing's comment about what "going crazy" entailed. Applying Gregory Bateson's click concept of the double bind, in which anything a person does leads to one or another kind of punishing consequence, he observed that some children are faced with the dilemma of having an identity defined for them that is fundamentally different from who they experience themselves to be. Their alternatives are to either give up the parental approval and caretaking they need to survive, in order to be truly themselves, or to give up their own sense of their identity and comply with parental demands. Faced with this dilemma, most people choose to give up their own identities and adopt those that are handed to them by parental figures. In some people faced with this situation, the response is to "go crazy."
Wise words indeed!
From what we know about the lives of his parents, they did not have much in common. It seems George was encouraged by his father (possibly unconsciously) to take sides. Algernon and William would have been more likely to come under the influence of their mother more than their father, as it was mainly George who accompanied Mr Gissing enthusiastically on field trips to study plants. The two younger brothers both tended to have very different goals, and did share George's drive to academic success, though both seem to have worked hard at school and did their best to conform. Algernon was subject to poor self esteem and bouts of depression; William died before it developed.
Endogenous depression is complex, with severe variations, the main two forms being: 1) psychotic depression, characterised by disturbances of perception including delusions and hallucinations in addition to the problems with affect - Edith possibly suffered from this; 2) bi-polar affective disorder aka the classic 'manic depressive' picture. However, a person may be only depressed or only manic (termed uni-polar) or might have 'mood-swings' between the two states, Mania is not the opposite of depression, rather, it is a manifestation of it, presenting as frenzied activity, inability to sleep, compulsive actions and socially inappropriate behaviour leading to exhaustion and social misery with low mood.
There are variants of endogenous depression termed Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) where low mood depends on the amount of light in winter months. And there is post-partum or post-natal depression in mothers following birth.
Depression can be very hard to diagnose and sometimes impossible to treat. Psychosis tends to be a disabling condition in and of itself, so these patients are often the most poorly served as their whole life becomes affected. All variants can precipitate suicide or attempted suicide. In George's day depression was not a clear-cut diagnosis. The term 'melancholia' was used until the middle of the twentieth century to describe any depressive illness in old age and often in women. A particular form often associated with schizoid features is 'catatonia', a complete shutting down of the mind and bodily functions. Patients remain immobile, unresponsive and mute, and it becomes almost impossible for them to take in enough nourishment, sometimes leading to death from malnutrition. Development of useful treatments for these endogenous variants was not really possible until the advent of anti-depressives and the use of electro-convulsive therapy in the 1940s and beyond. In George's day, sedatives such as laudanum and chloral hydrate would be used to mixed effect as both can be mood depressants, like alcohol, which only cheers you up short-term.
Two simple questions used to be rolled out as a pointer to determine which type of depression was at play: does the patient feel better in the morning or the evening, and does she/he sleep as usual? In reactive depression, you feel bad in the evenings and better in the mornings; have trouble falling off to sleep and then in getting up. If you have exogenous depression, you feel worse in the morning and better in the evenings, fall asleep easily but can't stay asleep and may wake at 3am and feel very tired late morning. George, we know, had trouble sleeping and was often awake early. However, latest clinical research click suggests sleep patterns are now not considered a useful diagnostic tool.
An influencing factor in a diagnosis of any type of depression is age of onset. If Ellen was right and George had been suffering depression in childhood (apart from the natural grief at his father's death) that would suggest the more long-term form of depression - possibly bi-polar affective disorder. We know George had tremendous longeurs of inaction and torpor, writer's block, pessimism (with a small p), lack of socialisation; indecision, self-pity, immobility, trouble sleeping, somatic complaints, negative thinking, Thanatos-preoccupation, suicidal ideation (is that enough?) - all symptoms of depression and of anxiety. Certainly he had moments of low mood, but the everyday, bog-standard norm seems to me to be more one of neurosis rather than depression. Take a look at this:
According to CG Boeree click: 'Neurosis may be defined simply as a "poor ability to adapt to one's environment, an inability to change one's life patterns, and the inability to develop a richer, more complex, more satisfying personality".'
Carl Jung said:
I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.
AND
The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith. click
Where does that leave us with George? I preceded this post with two about George and Egoism. I return to that theme with this quoted reminiscence so that you may consider the question: what was the primary force working on his nature?
James 'Jem' Gaussen who for a while boarded with George at 7K gave this account of an experience he had one night:
'Looking back Gissing must have been suffering at that time from melancholia and very nearly did a dreadfully cruel thing. I used to go to bed after our supper, and he used to sit up writing for ages, and as a rule (I) did not wake when he came to bed, - I forget if it was gas or tallow in the bed-room. One night I woke with a start and with horror saw him standing in front of the mirror in the act of cutting his throat with a razor. I called out, 'Mr Gissing! Mr Gissing!' and he closed the razor and handed it over to me, saying: - 'Boy, Boy! Keep it safely'. Next morning I slipped the razor quietly onto his table.'
What sort of man potentially traumatizes a child for life by making him witness the ultimate act of egoism?
 |
| Dante by Sandro Botticelli 1495 |
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost'
From Inferno Canto One by Dante
In the Egoism posts, I touched on the claim George was depressive from childhood - according to his sister Ellen, and later, his son, Alfred.
Writing long after George's death, both put forward a case that he had been suffering from a form of mental illness when he stole at Owens. This might seem difficult to justify as the crimes had been going on throughout most of the academic year, and in all aspects of his life he seemed to be doing well, and showing no signs of mental disturbance. Were these family members doing the natural thing and protecting him by rationalising his actions?
Was George's tendency to quasi-bohemianism and non-conformist behaviour apparent at this time taken as a marker for nascent mental illness by those who didn't really understand the signs? If we consider the reaction amongst his family and wider social circle to his intention to marry Marianne aka Nell, then perhaps they regarded everything he did that was culturally different as the actions of a mentally unwell mind. John George Black and Morley Roberts claim they thought as much when they found out about this marriage plan (though they both are not to be totally trusted for accuracy as they were not objective witnesses to this). And, yet, marrying out of one's class (down, not up, of course) was not a bizarre, unnatural event to the family. The Gissings were not landed gentry; Mrs Gissing seems to have married slightly down when she agreed to bind herself to a shop-keeper as her father had been clerk in a solicitor's office. Shop-keeping in the nineteenth century wasn't the exulted thing it is today - for an account of the shame of being a shop-keeper, read George Meredith's Evan Harrington more than Will Warburton.
.jpg) |
| (Detail) Ophelia by John Everett Millais c 1851 |
Broadly depression comes in two forms: exogenous (from the outside) also known as reactive depression; and endogenous (from the inside).
Reactive depression is generally triggered by adverse life events, such as grief or adversity, and will eventually ease and lessen even with little or no intervention having been applied.
It is likely to be a life-long reaction to challenges, can be disabling, but responds reasonably well to treatment. Opinion differs on the causes, depending on the school of psychology being used. Some believe it is caused by maladaptive social patterns and is a learned behaviour; others think it is a problem with the translation of information and the setting down of mind-altering habits that programme our developing emotions.
Endogenous depression can have an external stimulus of adversity but the mechanics of it are not wholly dependent on external life events click. It can be seen as a form of self-generating abnormality of mood arising from a fault in the workings of the brain. Incompetencies in neural pathways, lack of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the nervous system (serotonin has a much wider brief than you might think click) are termed 'medical model' schools of thought.
In the 1960s, 'anti-psychiatry' was in vogue, and RD Laing is probably the most renowned figure from the UK to make use of this new approach click. Here is a small piece that encapsulates Laing's point of view:
A sane response to an insane situation. This is Laing's comment about what "going crazy" entailed. Applying Gregory Bateson's click concept of the double bind, in which anything a person does leads to one or another kind of punishing consequence, he observed that some children are faced with the dilemma of having an identity defined for them that is fundamentally different from who they experience themselves to be. Their alternatives are to either give up the parental approval and caretaking they need to survive, in order to be truly themselves, or to give up their own sense of their identity and comply with parental demands. Faced with this dilemma, most people choose to give up their own identities and adopt those that are handed to them by parental figures. In some people faced with this situation, the response is to "go crazy."
Wise words indeed!
 |
| The Suicide of Dorothy Hale by Frieda Kahlo 1939 |
The child is able to recognise rifts in parental harmony; if the father tended to criticise the mother (and vice versa), or even not support their opinions, what is a child to do but become as Laing suggests? Perhaps George's contempt for women started from being inculcated into believing his mother's word view was inferior and backward and that tended to be George's mindset for the rest of his days. He once famously reported to Algernon (26th October 1884) that he told Mrs Gaussen he hardly knew anything of his mother's character at all. Henry Hick told a tale of George's mother locking a five year-old in a cupboard for being naughty, but this is still a common punishment when a parent (especially those not wanting to leave any physical marks) wants to punish a child. George told Gabrielle he never remembered his mother hugging him, but that was the usual parenting style in the mid-nineteenth century and he might not (at the time) have felt this was abnormal. Did she cuddle William and Algernon or the girls? The photograph of the boys together with Algernon in the central chair shows three eminently huggable boys, so, if she didn't, she missed out on something special. But, if she had, we might never have had Born in Exile or The Odd Women.
In George's studies of Darwinism, did he ever stop and ask: what is the evolutionary advantage in being depressed? Herbert Spencer coined the term 'survival of the fittest'; this does not mean the physically fittest - it means the one that best fits into its environment. So, there has to be an advantage in depression or Darwinian natural selection would have weeded out the depressives of this world. Does depression carry some advantage? Certainly celebrated people with mood disorders (including Darwin!) are all around us click so maybe there is a link between low mood and creativity - much as Artists tend to claim.
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| Death of Cato of Utica by Guillaume Guillon-Lethière 1795 |
Endogenous depression is complex, with severe variations, the main two forms being: 1) psychotic depression, characterised by disturbances of perception including delusions and hallucinations in addition to the problems with affect - Edith possibly suffered from this; 2) bi-polar affective disorder aka the classic 'manic depressive' picture. However, a person may be only depressed or only manic (termed uni-polar) or might have 'mood-swings' between the two states, Mania is not the opposite of depression, rather, it is a manifestation of it, presenting as frenzied activity, inability to sleep, compulsive actions and socially inappropriate behaviour leading to exhaustion and social misery with low mood.
There are variants of endogenous depression termed Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) where low mood depends on the amount of light in winter months. And there is post-partum or post-natal depression in mothers following birth.
Depression can be very hard to diagnose and sometimes impossible to treat. Psychosis tends to be a disabling condition in and of itself, so these patients are often the most poorly served as their whole life becomes affected. All variants can precipitate suicide or attempted suicide. In George's day depression was not a clear-cut diagnosis. The term 'melancholia' was used until the middle of the twentieth century to describe any depressive illness in old age and often in women. A particular form often associated with schizoid features is 'catatonia', a complete shutting down of the mind and bodily functions. Patients remain immobile, unresponsive and mute, and it becomes almost impossible for them to take in enough nourishment, sometimes leading to death from malnutrition. Development of useful treatments for these endogenous variants was not really possible until the advent of anti-depressives and the use of electro-convulsive therapy in the 1940s and beyond. In George's day, sedatives such as laudanum and chloral hydrate would be used to mixed effect as both can be mood depressants, like alcohol, which only cheers you up short-term.
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| A Lady Contemplating Suicide by Gilbert Stuart Newton c 1828 |
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| Ria Munk on Her Deathbed by Gustav Klimt 1912 (Ria committed suicide). |
According to CG Boeree click: 'Neurosis may be defined simply as a "poor ability to adapt to one's environment, an inability to change one's life patterns, and the inability to develop a richer, more complex, more satisfying personality".'
Carl Jung said:
I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.
AND
The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith. click
%2B%2Band%2Bhis%2Bworkshop%2Blucretia-committing-suicide_jpg!Blog.jpg) |
| Lucretia Committing Suicide by Lucas Cranach and his workshop 1512 |
For a very interesting article on the theory that the immune system causes mental illness click
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