LINCOLN'S MELANCHOLY

Whereas “melancholy” in Lincoln’s time was understood to be a multifaceted phenomenon that conferred potential advantages along with grave dangers, today we tend to discount its complexities. Psychiatrists see only a biological brain disease. Psychologists see only errors in thinking. That is, is you don’t like yourself, or you feel hopeless, or you see life as fundamentally dissatisfying, you’ve fallen victim to what researchers call “learned helplessness.” By some blend of bad genes and bad experience, you have come to see the world in dark hues. Therapy and medication can help you to see the world the way healthy optimists do. (134)

What’s striking is that all five of the “mature” defenses [psychiatrist George] Vaillant identifies were present in Lincoln as he managed the country and himself. Humor, as we’ve seen, allow a person to fully engage with reality while enjoying its absurdities. Healthy people also practice suppression, which, quite unlike denial, is the selective, forceful act of pushing away the oppressive stimuli; anticipation, which involves dealing with the moment in part by looking ahead to the good and the bad that lie in the future; altruism, or placing the welfare of others above oneself; and sublimation, which involves channeling passions into art. (182-183)

—Lincoln's Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk

Thank God I am not a "healthy optimist." Thank God I am not in therapy or on medication, yet. Thank God I am fairly good at incorporating most of the five "mature" defenses into my life most of the time. It is taking time, but I become more comfortable with my own darkness, my own depression, my own melancholy, with each passing month. Some are easier than others.

"Healthy optimists" scare me because they oftentimes seem to me to live in escapist fantasies or survey their environment through the lens of an unrealistic worldview. I believe that the current executive branch of the federal government is filled with "healthy optimists" who just happen to have the nuclear button in one hand and a warped reading of Biblical apocalyptic texts in the other. No wonder I have "nuclear dreams."

Joshua Wolf Shenk, on the other hand, gives us a look at one of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, and how his melancholy, his dark outlook on life, helped to shape his presidency and his handling of the Civil War. The book gives great insight into (1) the nineteenth century view of melancholy/depression; (2) its contrast with our "modern" understanding of the same; (3) Lincoln's lifelong struggle with it; and (4) how Lincoln was shaped by it for the better of his person and for the country.

It really was one of those books that spoke deeply to me because it (1) is well-written; (2) is well-researched and noted, with seven years of research and writing undergirding it; (3) is written by someone who struggles with his own melancholy/depression; and (4) speaks to my own struggle. Lincoln's Melancholy was a book that I needed to read at the particular moment it entered into my life, in the same way that The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, by Andrew Solomon, and Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, edited by Nell Casey, did.

Thank God for the friend that recommended it to me. Now, I do the same for you.