69 “His great-uncle once told a court of law”: Ibid., 12–13.
70 Regarding the course of his illness: Ibid., passim.
70 Dr. Anson Henry: Ibid., 57.
70 “The Doctors say he is within an inch of being a perfect lunatic”: Ibid., 58.
71 prescribed mercury tablets . . . also bled Lincoln: Ibid., 59.
71 “I am now the most miserable man living”: Ibid., 62.
71 “fun and hilarity without restraint”: Ibid., 23.
71 “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal’”: Sean Wilentz, ed., The Best American History Essays on Lincoln (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 139.
73 “I would like to have God on my side”: Ibid., 219.
73 “you and we are different”: Ibid., 76.
74 “Here comes my friend Douglass”: Ibid., 80.
74 Some historians think the war changed Lincoln: Ibid., 79.
75 “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery”: Ibid., 81.
75 “Both read the same Bible”: Lincoln’s second inaugural address, transcript of original manuscript, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=38&page=transcript (accessed February 26, 2011).
76 General James Longstreet: William L. Richter, “James Longstreet: From Rebel to Scalawag,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 11 (1970): 215–230.
CHAPTER 6. MIRROR NEURON ON THE WALL
80 the English translation . . . captures this usage: E. B. Titchener, Lectures on Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes (New York: Macmillan, 1909).
80 Karl Jaspers made empathy central to psychiatry: Karl Jaspers, General Psychopathology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
80 Thomas Insel and associates at the National Institute of Mental Health: T. R. Insel and L. E. Shapiro, “Oxytocin Receptor Distribution Reflects Social Organization in Monogamous and Polygamous Voles,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 89 (1992): 5981–5985.
81 The next hint about empathy came from studying macaques: Reviewed in V. Gallese and A. Goldman, “Mirror Neurons and the Simulation Theory of Mind-Reading,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2 (1998): 493–501.
82 Similar research has since shown: One British study, also using PET scanning, involved two conditions: either the research subject received a painful stimulation through an electrode on the back of her hand, or the same painful electrical stimulation was given to the subject’s partner, seated next to her. The brain regions that became more active with the subject’s own experience of pain were the somatosensory cortex (neurons directly connected to pain receptors in the hand), as well as the mirror neurons of the insula, and the cingulate gyrus. When observing her partner’s painful stimulation, the subject’s brain activity increased in the same mirror neuron regions (insula and cingulate gyrus), but not the somatosensory cortex. T. Singer et al., “Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective but Not the Sensory Components of Pain,” Science 303 (2004): 1157–1162.
82 Psychologists divide empathy into different parts: S. G. Shamay-Tsoory, “Empathic Processing: Its Cognitive and Affective Dimensions and Neuroanatomical Basis,” 216–232, and C. D. Batson, “These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related but Distinct Phenomena,” 3–16, both in Jean Decety and Willam Ickes, eds., The Social Neuroscience of Empathy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).
83 It is generally estimated that at least one-half of human communication is nonverbal: Albert Mehrabian and Susan R. Ferris, “Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Com-Albert Mehrabian and Susan R. Ferris, “Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels,” Journal of Consulting Psychology 31 (1967): 248–252.
83 severely depressed patients had much higher scores: L. E. O’Connor et al., “Guilt, Fear, Submission, and Empathy in Depression,” Journal of Affective Disorders 71 (2002): 19–27.
84 patients with various psychiatric illnesses: E. Knott and L. M. Range, “Does Suicidal History Enhance Acceptance of Other Suicidal Individuals?” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 31 (2001): 397–404.
85 patients’ ratings of their psychotherapists’ empathy: D. D. Burns and S. Nolen-Hoeksema, “Therapeutic Empathy and Recovery from Depression in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: A Structural Equation Model,” Journal of Consulting Clinical Psychology 60 (1992): 441–449.
CHAPTER 7. THE WOES OF MAHATMAS: GANDHI
87 identification with his mother: Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: Norton, 1969), 153–158. While Erikson’s analysis is more extensive than presented here, it never engages with Gandhi’s depression.
88 “I watched day after day”: Karen E. James, “From Mohandas to Mahatma: The Spiritual Metamorphosis of Gandhi,” Essays in History 28 (1984): 5–20, http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/gandhi.html.
88 “was literally praying that God should gather him”: Ibid.
88 “He was very shy and withdrawn”: Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, 99.
89 “Our want of independence began to smart”: Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (New York: Dover, 1983 [1948]), 22–23.
89 “I decided at last to write out the confession”: Ibid., 23.
90 only about 2 percent of children try to kill themselves: Ronald C. Kessler, Guilherme Borges, and Ellen E. Walters, “Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Lifetime Suicide Attempts in the National Comorbidity Survey,” Archives of General Psychiatry 56 (1999): 617–626. David M. Fergusson and Michael T. Lynskey, “Childhood Circumstances, Adolescent Adjustment, and Suicide Attempts in a New Zealand Birth Cohort,” Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 34 (1995): 612–622.
90 Indeed, 90 percent of children who attempt suicide: David Shaffer, Madelyn S. Gould, Prudence Fisher, Paul Trautman, Donna Moreau, Marjorie Kleinman, and Michael Flory, “Psychiatric Diagnosis in Child and Adolescent Suicide,” Archives of General Psychiatry 53 (1996): 339–348. Fergusson et al., “Childhood Circumstances.”
90 (or possibly, given some hypersexuality, cyclothymia): Based on incomplete and debated evidence, it is also possible that Gandhi’s baseline temperament consisted of cyclothymia. Some observers report that Gandhi sometimes had a high amount of energy, as exemplified by his habit of taking long, vigorous walks (Fischer, Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World, 1954). There is also some evidence of possible hypersexuality: for instance, in his Autobiography, Gandhi describes very high libido when he first got married; he describes marked guilt because he was engaged in sexual intercourse with his wife at the very moment his father died. He felt he could not control his urges even enough to stay by his father’s deathbed. Freud once remarked that a major prohibition usually reflects a profound instinctual urge. In this sense, Gandhi’s later emphasis on celibacy may reflect a strong sexual instinct. In his later life, there was also a controversy around the fact that Gandhi slept with his young niece. Some close aides even left the Mahatma over that scandal. Gandhi claimed he was only testing his vow of celibacy, and that he was literally sleeping, not having sex. If these controversies and claims are correct, then these behaviors are not consistent with pure dysthymia but may reflect periods of high energy and hypersexuality, which would make a cyclothymic temperament more likely. I did not make that diagnosis in the text because the veracity of these claims is not entirely clear to me. At least Gandhi had dysthymic temperament, I would conclude, but he possibly had cyclothymic temperament instead. Bal Ram Nanda, Gandhi and His Critics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 14–17. Jad Adams, Gandhi: Naked Ambition (London: Quercus Publishing, 2011).
90 “I was a coward”: Gandhi, Autobiography, 17.
90 “I always felt tongue-tied”: Ibid., 55.
91 “I felt the illness was bound to be prolonged”: Ibid., 407–408.
92 the unfortunate life of Gandhi’s eldest son: Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal, Harilal Gandhi: A Life (Chennai, India: Orient Longman, 2007).
; 93 “My attitude towards the English”: Louis Fischer, The Essential Gandhi (New York: Vintage, 1983), 192–193.
93 “We can do nothing without Hindu-Moslem unity”: Ibid., 253.
94 “Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world”: Ibid., 255–256.
95 “Europe has sold her soul”: Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows,” Commentary, March 1983, 59–72.
95 “Let them take possession of your beautiful island”: Ibid.
95 They repeat the conventional wisdom: This viewpoint was later repeated by Erik Erikson in conversations with Huey P. Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and a critic of King’s nonviolence. Erik H. Erikson and Huey P. Newton, In Search of Common Ground (New York: Norton, 1973).
96 Gandhi tried to persuade Nehru and other Hindu leaders: Documents online at http://www.oocities.org/sadna_gupta/Extra6A_1940to43offersofJinnahPMship.html (accessed February 26, 2011).
96 to give Pakistan £44 million: Bal Ram Nanda, Gandhi and His Critics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 109.
97 “There was a time when people listened to me”: Fischer, The Essential Gandhi, 355–356.
97 “He said, there was a time when India listened to him”: Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar, and Other Essays (New York Collier, 1961), 267.
97 “what he had mistaken for Satyagraha”: Ibid., 266.
97 “Where do congratulations come in?”: Fischer, The Essential Gandhi, 362.
98 “The woes of Mahatmas”: Gandhi, Autobiography, 215.
98 “a dark and deadly future”: Fischer, The Essential Gandhi, 368.
CHAPTER 8. PSYCHIATRY FOR THE AMERICAN SOUL: KING
99 “For several minutes, Gandhi and his guests discussed Christianity”: Lerone Bennett, What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1964), 3–4.
100 American black leaders had become deeply interested in satyagraha: Vijay Prashad, “PropaGandhi Ahimsa in Black America,” Little India, 2002, http://www.littleindia.com/march2002/PropaGandhi%20Ahimsa%20in%20Black%20America.htm (accessed January 17, 2011).
100 “The black workers led by young, educated ministers”: William Edward Burghardt DuBois, W. E. B. DuBois: A Reader (New York: Macmillan, 1995), 92.
100 “The American Negro is not yet free”: Ibid.
101 An edited collection of his papers, published after his death: Clayborne Carson, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. (New York: Warner Books, 1991).
101 Time magazine reported in its 1963 “Man of the Year” article: Available at http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/personoftheyear/archive/stories/1963.html (accessed September 3, 2010).
101 “The first incident occurred”: Bennett, What Manner of Man, 18.
102 Jesse Jackson recalls: Jesse Jackson, online oral interview, http://www.thehistorymakers.com/programs/dvl/files/Jackson_Jessef.html (accessed January 17, 2011).
102 This MLK was too radical for many: Vincent Harding, Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996).
103 “By 1968, King was working at a frenzied pace”: Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 440.
103 “‘Bayard,’ King said [to Rustin]”: Ibid., 444–445.
104 “After the Meredith march, there were fewer marches”: Author interview with Alvin Pouissant, Boston, January 29, 2010.
104 “What I have been doing is giving, giving, giving”: David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 125.
105 Dr. Poussaint . . . gave me a firsthand assessment: Author interview with Alvin Pouissant, January 29, 2010.
107 some of King’s aides urged their leader to get psychiatric help: Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound, 440.
107 “Psychologists would say that a guilt complex”: The King Papers Project, Stanford University, http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/27-Oct-1957_InterviewByAgronsky.pdf (accessed September 3, 2010).
107 “put our outrage into perspective”: Andrew Young, A Way Out of No Way (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 63.
107–108 Bevel’s insight was hard earned: Les Carpenter, “A Father’s Shadow: A Civil Rights Hero and the Daughter He Abused,” Washington Post Magazine, May 27, 2008, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/05/22/DI2008052202148.html (accessed February 27, 2011).
108 “By nonviolence, we were trying to cure”: Author interview with Alvin Poussaint.
108 “a sort of aesthetic or romantic love”: Martin Luther King, Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1977), 52.
109 “What do nonviolent fighters do”: Bennett, What Manner of Man, 210–211.
109 The answer, as King would later tell Poussaint: Author interview with Alvin Poussaint.
110 “war without violence”: Krishnalal Shridharani, War Without Violence: A Study of Gandhi’s Method and Its Accomplishments (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1938).
110 “My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force”: http://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm (accessed September 3, 2010).
110 “The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil”: http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/non_aggression_procedures_to_interracial_harmony/ (accessed September 3, 2010).
110 King did not reject violence per se: From his 1957 interview with Martin Agronsky:
[Agronsky:] Gandhi, Dr. King, dramatized and defined the technique of nonviolence. And yet, he also said that the only alternative to fear is violence. And that if that were the alternative, he would have to choose violence. Do you subscribe to that judgment of Gandhi, or would you disavow violence under any condition?
[King:] Well, I think I would have to somewhat interpret Gandhi at this point. I don’t think he was setting forth violence as the—as an alternative. I think he was emphasizing, or rather, trying to refute, an all-too-prevalent fallacy. And that is, that the persons who use the method of nonviolence are actually the weak persons, persons who don’t have the weapons of violence, persons who are afraid. And I think that is what Gandhi was attempting to refute. Now in that instance, I would agree with Gandhi. That if the only alternative to violence—to fear is violence, and vice versa, then I would say fight. But it isn’t the only alternative.
The King Papers Project, Stanford University, http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/27-Oct-1957_InterviewByAgronsky.pdf
(accessed September 3, 2010). 110 in a 1967 New York Times Magazine article: Alvin Poussaint, “A Negro Psychiatrist
Explains the Negro Psyche,” New York Times Magazine, August 20, 1967.
111 Another black political leader: Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1965).
111 He called it “constructive assertiveness”: Poussaint, “A Negro Psychiatrist Explains the Negro Psyche.”
111 Shortly afterward, when King visited Boston: Author interview with Alvin Poussaint, January 29, 2010.
111 the coming together of... Frantz Fanon and Martin Luther King: Years later, Erik Erikson, who had published a careful study of Gandhi, made this connection as he tried to understand the ideas of the leader of the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton. Erikson wrote, “There is a relationship between violence and nonviolence which is rarely considered by those who have not studied the question. . . . [Gandhi’s] point . . . was that nonviolence doesn’t just mean abstention from a violence which one would not have the means to carry through anyway, but the renunciation of armed tactics one would well know how to use. In this sense, the meaningful opposition is not that of arbitrary violence versus fragmented nonviolence, but that of disciplined violence versus disciplined nonviolence.” Erik H. Erikson and Huey P. Newton, In Search of Common Ground (New York: Norton, 1973), 49–50.
112 “Martin always felt that anger was a ver
y important commodity”: Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound, 274.
112 “Many people fear nothing more terribly”: King, Strength to Love, 21.
113 “you have to be a little crazy”: Available on iTunes: http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/new.duke.edu.1293697282.01293697292.1874801640?i=1201849001 (accessed July 15, 2010).
CHAPTER 9. STRONGER
118 “good outcomes in spite of serious threats”: Ann Masten, “Ordinary Magic: Resilience Processes in Development,” American Psychologist 56 (2001): 227–238.
118 a “steeling” effect: Michael Rutter, “Implications of Resilience Concepts for Scientific Understanding,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1094 (2006): 1–12.
120 Harry Stack Sullivan: Helen Swick Perry, Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Harry Stack Sullivan (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1982). M. S. Allen, “Sullivan’s Closet: A Reappraisal of Harry Stack Sullivan’s Life and His Pioneering Role in American Psychiatry,” Journal of Homosexuality 29 (1995): 1–18.
120 “low-grade morons,” “psychopaths”: Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 199.
120 By 1943, 112,500 enlisted men had been discharged: Ibid., 201.
120 “To the specialists”: Ibid., 202.
121 This is the case with all hysteria: Paul McHugh, The Mind Has Mountains (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
121 In a classic example from medical history: Edward Shorter, From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era (New York: Free Press, 1992).
122 most people who experience trauma do not develop PTSD: Ronald C. Kessler, Amanda Sonnega, Evelyn Bromet, Michael Hughes, et al., “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the National Comorbidity Survey,” Archives of General Psychiatry 52 (1995): 1048–1060.
The above study is the largest and most definitive U.S. community psychiatric diagnostic study. It documented a lifetime PTSD rate of 7.8 percent, twice as high in women (10 percent) as in men (5 percent). If one includes other traumas besides physical and sexual abuse (such as crime, war, major auto accidents), about half of the American population experienced a major traumatic event (60.7 percent of men and 51.2 percent of women). Thus only about 10 percent of individuals who experience a major trauma later develop PTSD.
A First-Rate Madness Page 29