Posted on 10/07/2019 10:07:24 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Lincoln "told Me that he felt like Committing Suicide often," remembered Mentor Graham, a schoolteacher...
Abraham Lincoln fought clinical depression all his life, and if he were alive today, his condition would be treated as a "character issue"—that is, as a political liability.
His condition was indeed a character issue: it gave him the tools to save the nation.
With Lincoln we have a man whose depression spurred him, painfully, to examine the core of his soul; whose hard work to stay alive helped him develop crucial skills and capacities, even as his depression lingered hauntingly; and whose inimitable character took great strength from the piercing insights of depression, the creative responses to it, and a spirit of humble determination forged over decades of deep suffering and earnest longing.
"Man is born broken," the playwright Eugene O'Neill wrote. "He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue!" ...Lincoln, too, connected his mental well-being to divine forces.
As a young man he saw how religion could ameliorate life's blows, even as he found the consolation of faith elusive. An infidel—a dissenter from orthodox Christianity—he resisted popular dogma. But many of history's greatest believers have also been its fiercest doubters. Lincoln charted his own theological course to a living vision of how frail, imperfect mortals could turn their suffering selves to the service of something greater and find solace—not in any personal satisfaction or glory but in dutiful mission.
The griefs of his presidency furthered this humble sense. He lost friends and colleagues to the war, and in February of 1862 he lost his eleven-year-old son, Willie...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
This made me think about the really sad segment in Ken Burns’s “Civil War” about how deeply his son Willie’s death impacted Lincoln for the rest of his life.
i don’t think years of popping mercury pills helped his condition.
He should have outlawed the Crap party when the CW ended. Here we are 2019 still dealing with their bullsht.
Rust never sleeps.
They would have simply reconstituted themselves under a different banner.
I thought it was Mary Todd Lincoln who had depression.
That is what I thought, although Abraham Lincoln never looked super healthy around the eyes.
Lincoln had lots of problems in his life.
His wife was a big spender.
The Civil War was awful.
Most of his generals were incompetent.
He couldn’t free the slaves fast enough.
If that doesn't craze you I don't know what will. I lost one and it changes your psyche and your brain forever.
What a thoughtful and thorough article. Thank you so much for posting it. I knew nothing of his life long struggle with depression. Without intention, it was this heaviness that became part of his character. I built his strength and his thoughts. There’s a part in the article that talks about those with depression are more realistic than those who are joyful. Thanks again.
The last paragraph
“Many popular philosophies propose that suffering can be beaten simply, quickly, and clearly. Popular biographies often express the same view. Many writers, faced with the unhappiness of a heroic figure, make sure to find some crucible in which that bad feeling is melted into something new. “Biographies tend conventionally to be structured as crisis-and-recovery narratives,” the critic Louis Menand writes, “in which the subject undergoes a period of disillusionment or adversity, and then has a ‘breakthrough’ or arrives at a ‘turning point’ before going on to achieve whatever sort of greatness obtains.” Lincoln’s melancholy doesn’t lend itself to such a narrative. No point exists after which the melancholy dissolved—not in January of 1841; not during his middle age; and not at his political resurgence, beginning in 1854. Whatever greatness Lincoln achieved cannot be explained as a triumph over personal suffering. Rather, it must be accounted an outgrowth of the same system that produced that suffering. This is a story not of transformation but of integration. Lincoln didn’t do great work because he solved the problem of his melancholy; the problem of his melancholy was all the more fuel for the fire of his great work.”
But the article states he suffered long before he was married. It seems to begin around the time of the death of Ann Rutledge.
Nor cocaine or opiates.
Yes. Saw the same in both parents when my sibling died unexpectedly at 30
When Ann Rutledge died a friend of Lincoln’s home and removed all the knives from the premises out of fear that Lincoln would self-harm.
from the link below...
“.” 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.””
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/lincolns-great-depression/304247/
Yes I read that. It was a well written article.
So did Winston Churchill. He called it his "black dog".
It truly rips a whole lot of life, and interest in life, clean out of you.
i can only imagine... g-d bless you.
That is true.
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