1. Ideas and Identities Melancholy and madness The Ship of Fools, German woodcut, 1549

2. Dictionary definitions (from Shorter OED) melancholy noun 1. Originally a pathological condition thought to result from an excess of choler adust [black bile], one of the four cardinal humours, and distinguished esp. by sullenness, irascibility, and sadness. Pathological depression; melancholia. 2. Irascibility, anger, sadness. 3. Sadness, dejection, depression; esp. pensive or meditative sadness. Also, inclination or tendency to this.

3. Dictionary definitions (from Shorter OED) mad adj. 1. Insane; suffering from a psychotic illness. 2. Foolish, unwise. 3. Carried away by enthusiasm or desire; wildly excited; infatuated. 4. Beside oneself with anger; moved to uncontrollable rage; furious. Annoyed; exasperated. 5. Of an animal: abnormally furious; rabid. 6. Uncontrolled by reason; (wildly) irrational in demeanour or conduct. madness noun 1. Mental illness; insanity. 2. Imprudence or (wild) foolishness resembling insanity. 3. Wild excitement or enthusiasm; ecstasy. 4. Uncontrollable anger, rage, or fury.

4. Some modern notions of mental disorders The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM IV), produced by the American Psychiatric Association, identified ten personality disorders in three clusters: A (Odd or eccentric disorders) Paranoid—irrational suspicion and mistrust of others Schizoid—lack of interest in social relationships Schizotypal—characterized by odd behaviour or thinking B (Dramatic, emotional or erratic disorders) Antisocial—disregard for law and rights of others Borderline—extreme “black and white” thinking, instability in relationships, self-image, identity and behaviour Histrionic—attention seeking, inappropriate sexual behaviour, shallow emotions Narcissistic—need for admiration, sense of personal grandiosity, lack of empathy for others C (Anxious or fearful disorders) Avoidant—social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, sensitivity to criticism, avoidance of social interaction Dependent—psychological dependence on others Obsessive-compulsive—rigid conformity to rules, moral codes and excessive orderliness Appendix B (still widely considered to be disorders, but requiring further study) Depressive—pattern of depressive behaviour Passive-aggressive—negative attitudes, and passive resistance in social relations

5. Modern notions of bipolar disorder First, a distinction was made between ‘bipolar I’, which applied to patients hospitalised for both depressive and manic episodes, and a brand new ‘bipolar II’, which referred to patients hospitalised solely for a depressive episode. In other words, any person hospitalised for depression could now be diagnosed as bipolar. Then the reference to hospitalisation was dropped from the description of bipolar disorder II, which meant it could now include less severe forms of depression and hyperactivity, as well as all sorts of neurotic disorders that Kraepelin [Emil Kraepelin, a pioneering early German psychiatrist] would never have dreamed of calling manic-depressive insanity. One now speaks of a ‘bipolar spectrum’, which includes, along with bipolar disorders I and II, cyclothymia (a mild form of bipolar II) and bipolar disorder ‘not otherwise specified’ (an all-purpose category in which practically any affective instability can be placed). The spectrum also includes bipolar disorders II1⁄2, III, III1⁄2, IV, V, VI, and even a very accommodating ‘subthreshold bipolar disorder’. (from Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, review of Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder by David Healy (2008), in London Review of Books, 32, no. 19, 7 October 2010)

6. Gianlorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of St Teresa of Avila in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, 1647–52 Teresa (1515-82) recounts her mystical and ecstatic experiences in her spiritual autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Avila, first published in 1588.

7. The ascent of the soul… or, how to experience what Teresa is experiencing Mental prayer—contemplation; turning the soul inwards, and observing the passion of Christ—leads to feeling of close sharing and love of God Prayer of quiet—losing the human will in God, through quiet prayer, but leaving memory, reason and imagination in the world—leads to feeling of pleasure Devotion of union—absorption of reason in God, leaving memory and imagination still open to worldly distraction—leads to feelings of bliss Devotion of ecstasy—absorption of sense, memory and imagination in God, loss of awareness of body—leads to feelings of pleasurable pain, intoxication, weightlessness, unconsciousness, followed by relaxation, weakness, followed by trance and finally waking in tears

8. Johann Liss, The Ecstasy of St Paul, 1628–9 (the vision is recorded in 2 Corinthians 12.2-4)

9. Glossolalia (speaking in tongues) Considered in various verses in the New Testament as one of the gifts of the spirit (e.g. St Paul’s references to speaking in tongues in his first letter to the Corinthians 12-14)

10. Cassandra kneeling before the Palladion, gold ring, 5 th century BCE Francisco Collantes, The Vision of Ezekiel, 1630

11. Lyssa, the goddess of mad rage, drives the dogs of Aktaion to tear their master apart. Attendants were known as the Maniae (and Mania was a goddess of the dead who commanded various night spirits). Roman equivalents: Ira, Furor and Rabies. In Euripides’ play Herakles, she is described as ‘the queen of sorrow and sighing… the Gorgon child of Night, with a hundred hissing serpent- heads, Madness of the flashing eyes’.

12. Poetic madness ‘...there is a form of possession or madness, of which the muses are the source. This seizes a tender, virgin soul and stimulates it to rapt passionate expression, especially in lyric poetry, glorifying the countless mighty deeds of ancient times for the instruction of posterity. But if any man come to the gates of poetry without the madness of the muses, persuaded that skill alone will make him a good poet, then shall he and his works… be brought to nought…’ (Plato, Phaedrus, 245a) ‘for the craft of poetry is light and winged and holy, and he is not capable of poetry until he is inspired by the gods and out of his mind and there is no reason in him. Until he gets into this state, any man is powerless to produce poetry and to prophesy… the poets are nothing but the interpreters of the gods, each one under the influence of the divinity...’ (Plato, Ion, 533-4)

13. Woodcut from 1490, depicting Hans Böhm, the Drummer of Niklashausen, seeing a vision of the Virgin and child Woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) showing Hans Böhm, the Drummer of Niklashausen preaching

14. Lady Eleanor Davis, Strange and wonderfull prophesies by the Lady Eleanor Audeley; who is yet alive, and lodgeth in White-Hall (1649), title- page Anna Trapnel, The Cry of a Stone (1654), title-page

15. Folly mounting the pulpit in Desiderius Erasmus’s Encomium moriae (In praise of folly), 1509

16. Martin Luther on demonic/diabolic possession ‘In cases of melancholy and sickness, I conclude it is merely the work of the devil. For God makes us not melancholy, nor affrights nor kills us, for He is God of the living. All heaviness of mind and melancholy come of the devil; especially these thoughts, that God is not gracious unto him.’

17. A true and most Dreadfull discourse of a woman (M.Cooper) possessed with the Deuill (1584), title-page John Darrell, A True Relation of The grievous handling of William Sommers of Nottingham, Being possessed with a Devill (1641), title-page

18. English pamphlet from 1692, depicting the casting out of a devil

19. Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun (1952) The Devils (1971), dir. Ken Russell

20. Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514

21. Lucas Cranach the elder, An Allegory of Melancholy, 1528 Virgil Solis (1514–1562), German printmaker from Nuremberg; engraved representation of Melancholy

22. Portrait of John Dowland (1583-1626)

23. Melancholy ‘Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or in habit. In disposition, is that transitory Melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dulness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoick, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality... This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, a serious ailment, a settled humour, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful) grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed.’ Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

24. Shakespeare on madness Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell could hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, And as the imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns and shapes them and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 5.1)

25. Humoral theory, and the four humours Black bile—melancholic—earth (cold, dry) Phlegm—phlegmatic—water (cold, wet) Yellow bile—choleric—air (hot, wet) Blood—sanguine—fire (hot, dry)

26. Medieval illustration of a physician letting blood from a patient Bloodletting depicted on an ancient Greek vase

27. Hieronymus Bosch, The cure of folly, 1475–80 Extracting the stone of madness (trepanation).

28. Jan Sanders van Hemessen(?), Surgeon, c.1550 Pieter Brueghel the elder, Cutting out the stone of madness, or an operation on the head, c.1550

29. Engraving by Peter Treveris of a trepanation. From Hieronymus von Braunschweig's Handywarke of surgerie (1525) Eighteenth-century French illustration of trepanation

30. Causes, treatments… and modern equivalents? Supernatural Beneficent (divine madness) Maleficent (demonic possession)—prayer, exorcism, priests—talking cures, therapists Natural Humoural imbalance—bloodletting, purgatives, herbs, confinement—Electo-Convulsive Therapy (correcting internal imbalances), drugs, confinement (sectioning) Stone of folly—trepanation—lobotomy Love—‘there ain’t no cure for love’ (Leonard Cohen)

31. Sigmund Freud’s couch, used during psychoanalytic sessions

32. Madness and Civilization Michel Foucault (1926-84), French philosopher, theorist and historian of ideas

33. Sebastian Brant, Stulifera Navis (The Ship of Fools), 1494 Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools, c.1490–1500

34. Bethlem Hospital, from William Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress, 1732-3

35. The restraining device used on James Norris, an American marine who had been a patient in Bethlem Hospital since 1800 (mistakenly labelled on the print William Norris); coloured etching, 1815

36. Robert Fleury, Dr Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière (1795) William Tuke (1732-1822)

37. Thomas Willis (1621-75) ‘the affectations of the mind – are either to be appeased or subdued by others opposite’, e.g. ‘to desperate Love ought to be applied or shewed indignation and hatred; Sadness is to be opposed with the flatteries of Pleasure, Musick – or also pannick terror’ Mad people also needed to be managed by ‘threatening bonds or strokes as well as Physick’; ‘for the curing of mad people, there is nothing more effectual or necessary than the reverence or standing in awe of such as they think their Tormentors.’

38. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), the pioneering American psychiatrist, designed the ‘Tranquillizer’, ‘to obviate these evils of the “strait waistcoat” and at the same time to obtain all the benefit of coercion’.