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ARISTOTLE ON MELANCHOLY marlies ter borg

1. Introduction

‘Through what cause do all those who have become


eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts
turn out to be melancholics ?’

The first line of Aristotle’s On Melancholy is often cited, to prove a point


about genius and madness, or creativity and depression, thus giving one’s
hunch about this complex matter a status borrowed from a great
philosopher. Often this fascinating phrase is quoted without the underlying
essay having been read. That is not surprising, because this famous essay is
very difficult to find.
There are several expert translations, usually side by side with the
original Geek, tucked away between outdated and irrelevant Aristotelian
treatises on blood, sweat and tears, on alcohol and semen, and a myriad of
other Problemata Aristotle dealt with. It is given a number, Problems XXX.1
and a title: Problems connected with prudence, intelligence, and wisdom. Quite
impossible to find for anyone interested in melancholy.
The essay is reprinted in a thick book by Klibansky at al. called Saturn and
Melancholy, only available second hand at a high price. It is also included,
together with texts of many other authors, ancient and modern, in a reader
by Jennifer Radden called The Nature of Melancholy. The only standalone
translation, under the recognizable title Aristotle, On Melancholy, is in Dutch.
Reason enough for an affordable, easily detectable, easily readable
English book devoted entirely to Aristotle’s essay.
The reader can dive straight into that famous essay in the next chapter.
The translation is based on the one by E.Forster from 1927 and
modernized with the help of other translations produced since then. Some
of the passages are outdated, others are still highly relevant. I have used the
layout to distinguish between the two.
In chapter 3 I explain the scope of the little essay. It was not only
poetry but a whole range of activities, from science and technology to
politics and military strategy, to which melancholy could make a difference.
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Melancholy is today seen as more or less synonymous with depression.
In Aristotle’s work that is decidedly not the case. That he has a ‘bipolar’
concept of melancholy is argued in chapter 4. In chapter 5 I discuss the
characteristics Aristotle discerns in this bipolar melancholy, putting the
symptoms of highs and lows he describes side by side. The mythological
heroes Aristotle calls melancholy were well known to his readers. For the
modern reader, less well versed in Greek mythology, I explain the fates of
Ajax and Bellerophontes, in chapter 6, and of Heracles in chapter 7.
Chapter 8 then discusses the central issue, that of the link between
melancholy and outstanding achievement. I also draw on other Aristotelian
writings to elaborate the link between (bipolar) melancholy and genius.
Aristotle stresses as condition for excellence that the melaina cholè be well
tempered, so that destructive extremes are avoided. Chapter 9 elaborates
on the role medication and lifestyle can play in reaching the balance
between hot and cold, between high and low. It shows how relevant it is
for the melancholic to search for the Aristotelian mean. In chapter 10
Aristotle’s Poetics is interpreted in terms of tragic melancholic heroes, with
Heracles as example. The tragic heroine Cassandra is not mentioned by
Aristotle but he does refer to ecstatically inspired prophetic gifts of
women. Her tragic fate, described in chapter 11, is that of a gifted
melancholic whose warnings are unheeded.
Chapter 12 is devoted to Aristotle’s inheritance, as far as his theory of
melancholy is concerned. I give a short revue of the surprising number of
learned men and women who throughout the ages, referred to, and
elaborated on his concept of bipolar melancholy. Of course names and
terms change. Melancholy as a serious bipolar mood disorder is now called
manic depressive disorder or simply bipolar disorder. The term melancholy
now refers to a romantic, nostalgic, mildly sad state that feeds the poetic
vein. In Aristotle’s day, and for many centuries after, melancholy was the
name given to of a serious bipolar mood disorder, sometimes resulting in
destruction and suicide, and sometimes enhancing creativity in a broad
range of fields. .
Besides On Melancholy, I draw on several other works, which provide
hints as to the meaning Aristotle attached to the term. Besides
philosophical writings, such as Metaphysics, he also left works on the field of
psychology, such as On Memory and Recollection and On Sleep and Dreams. On
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the practical business of living or ethics two important works have
survived, the Nicomachean Ethics and the very similar Eudemian Ethics. In
Poetica he dealt with the therapeutic effect of tragic theatre.
Aristotle, the (probable1 ) author of the essay On Melancholy was born in
384 B.C. as the son of Nichomachus, a doctor and the personal physician
to the king of Macedonia. His father died when he was still a boy, and he
was brought up by a guardian, who sent him to Athens, where he entered
Plato’s Academy around 367 B.C. He was a member of Plato’s Academy
for twenty years and was considered the brightest boy of the school. When
after Plato’s death, he was bypassed for the succession in favour of Plato’s
cousin, he left Athens. In 342 B.C. he was sent for by king Philip of
Macedonia as teacher to his thirteen-year old son Alexander, later to
become the legendary general and emperor.
Somewhere around 323 B.C. Aristotle returned to Athens where he
founded his own school, with a large library and a natural history museum.
He was supported in this by his former pupil Alexander, who ordered
hunters and fishermen in the Eastern part of his empire to gather
interesting flora and fauna for the philosopher. Out of respect for his tutor
he spared Athens when, during a new Greek rising, he levelled Thebes.
There the sudden death of Alexander led once again to rebellion. To
escape becoming a scapegoat, Aristotle left Athens, leaving Theophrastus
in charge of the school, and inheritor of his writings. He died in Chalcis in
322 B.C.

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2 THE FULL TEXT OF ON MELANCHOLY
Problemata xxx.i

Through what 2 is it that all those who have become


eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts turn
out to be melancholics (μελαγχολικοι)? 953a10

Some of them even show morbid symptoms caused by black bile


(melaina cholè). This was said to be the case with the hero
Heracles. For he appears to have been of this nature.
The ancients called epileptic afflictions the ‘sacred disease’ after him.3
That his temperament was melancholic is shown by the
fury4 which he displayed towards his children and the
eruption of sores which took place before his disappearance on
Mount Oeta; for this often occurs as the result of black bile.
The Spartan Lysander5 also suffered from similar sores before
his death. There are also the stories of Ajax6 and 953a 20

Bellerophontes,7 of whom the former became insane, while


the latter sought refuge in deserted places. As Homer
writes,

“Hated by all the gods, he wandered alone over the


Aleian plain, eating his own heart out, and avoiding the
pathway of mortals.”8 953a25

Many other heroes seem to have been similarly afflicted,


and among men of recent times Empedocles,9 Plato,10 and
Socrates,11 and numerous other well-known men, and also
most of the poets. Many such persons have bodily afflictions as
the result of this of kind of temperament, (mixture of bodily fluids)

4
while some of them obviously possessed a natural inclination to 935a30
affections of this kind. In a word, they are all, as stated,
naturally melancholic.
The cause of this may be understood if we first take as
example the effect of wine, which if taken in large
quantities appears to produce such qualities as we attribute
to the melancholic. 935a35

As it is with drink, it induces many different


characteristics, making men for instance irritable,
benevolent, compassionate, or reckless. No such results are
produced by honey or milk or water or anything similar. One can
easily see that wine has a variety of effects by observing
how it gradually changes those who drink it. If they are
chilled and taciturn as the result of abstinence, 953b

a small quantity makes them more talkative, while a larger


quantity makes them eloquent and bold. If they continue
and they proceed to action, they become reckless, wild
even. A still larger quantity makes them insolent and
afterwards overexcited, frenzied. Even more wine makes
them feeble and stupid like those who have been 953b5

epileptic (imbecile?) from childhood, and very similar to those


who are exceedingly melancholic.
As, therefore, an individual as he drinks wine in different
quantities changes his character, so there are men who
embody each character. The temporary condition of one
man when he is drunk is the permanent character of
another. One man is loquacious, another emotional,
another easily moved to tears; 953b10

for wine has this effect also on some people, as Homer


writes,
5
“He says that I swim in tears, like a man that is heavy
with drinking.” 12
Others become compassionate, or savage or taciturn; some
maintain a complete silence, especially those melancholics
who are out of their minds. 953b15

Wine also makes men erotic; as is shown by the fact that


a man under influence of wine is induced to kiss those
whom, owing to their appearance or age, no sober person
would kiss.
Wine then gives a man extraordinary characteristics, but
for a short time only, while nature gives them permanently
for the period of a lifetime. Some men are bold, others
taciturn, others compassionate, and others cowardly by
nature. 953b20

It is therefore clear that nature and wine produce such


characteristics by the same means. For the whole body functions
under the influence of heat. Now both the (alcoholic, ed.) juice and
the melancholic temperament (mixture of fluids) are full of air. That
is why the physicians say that flatulence and disorders of the stomach
953b25
(hypochondria) are due to black bile, (melaina cholè).
Wine also contains air, so wine and the melancholic temperament are
similar in nature. The froth which forms on wine shows that it
contains air; for oil does not produce froth, although it is hot, but
wine produces it in large quantities and dark wine more than white
953b30
because it contains more heat and substance.
That is why wine excites sexual desire, and Dionysus13 and
Aphrodite14 belong together. Melancholic persons too are
generally lustful. For sexual desire is due to the presence of air.
This is shown by the fact that the virile organ quickly increases from
a small to a large size by inflation. Also boys before they are capable
of emitting semen find a certain pleasure in rubbing their sexual

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organs through lust when they are approaching the age of puberty.
The swelling of the organ becomes manifest because air passes
through the passages through which the semen passes later on. 954a
Also the effusion and impetus of the semen in sexual intercourse is
clearly due to propulsion by air. So those foods and liquids which fill
the region of the sexual organs with air are rightly regarded as
954a5
aphrodisiac. Thus dark wine more than anything else
produces the condition also found in melancholic persons. This
condition is obvious in some individuals; for most melancholic
persons are thin and their veins stand out, the reason being the
954a10
abundance not of blood but of air.
The reason why all melancholic persons are not thin or dark, but
only those who contain particularly unhealthy humors, is stated
elsewhere.
But to return to our first question, this bodily fluid, or
humor, namely melaina cholè, is always, by nature, present
in the body. It is characterized as a mixture of heat and
cold, two aspects of nature. That is why black bile, (melaina
cholè), can become both very hot and very cold. 954a15

For one and the same thing naturally admits both heat and
cold, like water, which, though cold, yet when it is
sufficiently heated (for example, when it boils) is hotter
than the actual flame which heats it. Similarly a stone or a
piece of iron when thoroughly heated becomes hotter than
charcoal, though they are naturally cold. 954a20

Now black bile is naturally cold and not only on the


surface. In that condition, if it abounds in the body, it
produces apoplexy, torpor, despondency and fear.
However when it is overheated, it produces cheerfulness
accompanied by song, and ecstasy, and the breaking forth of
sores, and the like. Most people undergo no influence on their

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character from the small amount of black bile they receive
from their daily food, only showing perhaps now and again
some minor ailment. However those who naturally possess
a melancholic temperament immediately develop diverse
characters in accordance with their various temperaments
(temperatures). 954a30

On the one hand, those who are originally full of cold


black bile (melaina cholè) become dull and stupid, whereas
those who possess a large quantity of hot black bile become
clever or erotic, ecstatic or easily moved to anger and
desire, while some become more loquacious, loose lipped
or chatty. 954a35

Many too, if this heat approaches the region of the


intellect, become filled with enthusiasm, ecstatic. This is
visible in Sibyls and soothsayers and all inspired persons,
who are affected not by disease but by natural
temperament. Maracus, the Syracusan, was actually a better
poet when he was out of his mind.
However those in whom excessive heat is tempered are
melancholic, but cleverer and less eccentric and in many
respects superior to others either in mental
accomplishments or in the arts or in public life.
As for facing dangers, a melancholic state causes great
variation in reactions. Melancholics vary from one time to
another according to the temperature of the black bile in
their bodies. The melancholic temperament itself is thus
inconsistent, and produces inconsistency in the mood and
behavior of melancholics; for, like water, it is sometimes
cold and sometimes hot. 954b10

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So the announcement of something alarming can make a
melancholic cowardly, if it occurs when his temperament is
somewhat cold. For the black bile has already prepared a
way for the entrance of fear, and fear has a chilling effect,
as is shown by the fact that those who are greatly alarmed
tremble. If and when the temperament is hot, fear reduces
its temperature, making a man calm and insensible to
danger. 954b15

So too with the despondency which occurs in everyday


life. We often feel grief or sadness without being able to
ascribe any cause for it, while at other times we feel
cheerful without knowing why. Everyone has such
changing moods to some extent, for there is a bit of black
bile in everyone. However those who are thoroughly
penetrated by melaina cholè acquire these moods as a
permanent part of their nature. Men differ in appearance not
because they possess faces as such, but because they have different
faces, some handsome, others ugly, or plain. In the same way those
with a slightly melancholic temperament are ordinary, but
those who have a great deal of black bile 954b25

differ from the majority of people. If they are not careful,


they can become extremely melancholic.
However if their melaina cholè is tempered, they are men
of genius.
If they neglect their health, they have a tendency towards
melancholic diseases, with all kinds of differing effects in different
people. These can be epileptic attack or loss consciousness, 954b30
in others violent despondency or terrors, in others over-
confidence, as happened to Archelaus15, King of Macedonia.
The force which gives rise to such a condition is the

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bodily fluid and its temperature, the mixture of hot and
cold. If it be cold beyond due measure, it produces
groundless despondency. 954b35

That is why suicide by hanging occurs most frequently


among the young, but sometimes also among older
persons. Many men put an end to their lives after
drunkenness. Some melancholic persons continue in a state
of despondency after drinking. For the heat of wine
quenches their natural heat. 955a

Heat in the seat of thought and hope makes us cheerful.


For this reason all men are eager to drink until they become
intoxicated, for abundance of wine makes all men hopeful,
just as their youth makes children sanguine. For old age is
despairing but youth is full of hope.
There are a few who are seized by despondency while
they are drinking, for the same reason others become
depressed after drinking. Those who become despondent
when the heat in them dies down suddenly have the urge to
kill themselves. Hence both the young and the old are more
likely to hang themselves. For old age itself makes the heat
die down. 955a10

In the young the natural melaina cholè can lead to the


same. When the heat of the black bile is extinguished
suddenly, people can kill themselves, to the general
astonishment of all, since they have given no previous sign
of any such intention.
When the black bile is colder, it gives rise, as has been
already remarked, to despondency of various kinds, 955a15
but when it is hotter to cheerfulness. Hence the young are

10
more cheerful, the old more despondent, the former being
hot and the latter cold; for old age is a process of cooling.
Cooling down can also take place suddenly due to external
causes, just as objects which have been heated in the fire
are cooled by unnatural processes, 955a20

for example when water is poured over hot coals. Hence men
sometimes commit suicide after drunkenness. For the heat of the
wine is introduced from outside, and when the internal fire of
the black bile is extinguished the condition which leads to
suicide is created.
Also (by the sudden cooling down of temperament) most people
tend to be despondent after sexual intercourse. Those, however, who
emit a considerable amount of liquid with the semen, become more
cheerful, for they are relieved of an excess of liquid and air. 955a25

However most people who indulge in sexual intercourse are often


despondent, for their temperament is cooled by the act, they lose
something which is valuable, without getting rid of much liquid.

To sum the matter up:

Owing to the fact that the effect of black bile (melaina


cholè) is variable, melancholic persons also show variation.
For the black bile can become very hot and very cold. 955a35
That affects the character, or heat and cold have such an effect
to a greater extent than anything else in us. In that respect black bile
is like wine. Mingling in a stronger or weaker dose in the
body, it gives us our own special characters. Now both wine
and black bile are full of air.
It is possible for an abnormal mixture of bodily fluids to
be well tempered and in a favorable condition, that is,
warmer or cooler as the situation demands. This is why
outstanding persons are all melancholics16 not owing to

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some (externally induced) illness, but due to their natural
constitution.

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COMMENTS

BY MARLIES TER BORG

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3 THE SCOPE OF MELANCHOLY GENIUS

Aristotle lived in a time of outstanding achievement in a multitude of


fields. Sculptors and architects, poets, philosophers, political
reformers and innovative generals; in almost every area extraordinary
people left their mark. His tutor Plato and his pupil Alexander have
been mentioned. Aristotle knew the tragedies of heroes such as Ajax
and Heracles written a century earlier by the great tragedians
Sophocles and Euripides. About the peculiarities of talented people,
not known to him personally, he may have received second hand
information. Did it perhaps amaze him that the Greeks of genius
around him deviated so frequently in mood and behaviour from what
was considered the norm? Did he hear complaints from, did he give
advice to contemporaries suffering from melancholy? Either way, he
counted his own tutor Plato and his predecessor Socrates among
these extraordinary melancholics, as well as ‘most of the poets.’ 953a 20
This tiny phrase has led to the misconception that Aristotle was
mainly referring to ‘poet’s melancholy’, a wistfulness or light nostalgic
feeling often accompanying the writing of verse. The original text of
the Problemata XXX-i melancholics can excel in a far wider range of
fields than poetry. Aristotle refers to
953a10
‘filosofian è politikèn è poièsin è tèchnas’

The term ‘filosofia’ refers not only to philosophy but also to the
fields that have since set themselves apart from philosophy: sciences
such as physics, astronomy and biology, sociology and psychology.
The term ‘politikè’ referred to everything that had a bearing on the
organisation of the city-state or ‘polis’: politics and administration,
legislation and jurisdiction, and what would now be called
‘management’. For the preservation of the polis the expertise of the
military commander or ‘strategos’ was particularly important. In this
connection Aristotle mentions the great general Lysander.
The word ‘poèsis’ is not just poetry, but simply means ‘creating’,

14
making something new. Aristotle might be alluding primarily to the
great tragedy writers of his days. But the word can also be translated
broadly as ‘creator’ of immaterial goods such as poetry or music, and
of material goods such as buildings, ships, or sculptures.
‘Tèchnè’ means ‘craftsmanship’ and can allude to any applied
knowledge, to areas of expertise such as law, ethics, and medicine,
and to what would now be called ‘business’; ‘oikonomia’: (oikos =
house, nomos = habits). Not mentioned in this sentence, but evident
from the text is the role Aristotle sees for ecstasy in religion and
prophecy. In this connection he refers to the Sybilles xxx.1.954 a 33,
a word that was used, in a wide sense, for female soothsayers.
Where the positive effects of melancholy are concerned Aristotle
does not draw a sharp line between religious, artistic, and more
practical or ‘rational’ activities. In almost any field of human activity
he perceives aberrations in behaviour and mood among those who
perform exceptionally well.
Perhaps Aristotle sympathised with his extraordinary
contemporaries because he too suffered from mood swings. Did he
tacitly count himself among the brilliant melancholics he described?
There is no evidence of any extremity in his mood. If Aristotle
suffered from melancholy, it was a very mild form of the disorder.

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4 ARISTOTLE ON ‘BIPOLAR’ MELANCHOLY

In order to understand the link Aristotle sees between melancholy


and outstanding performance in this variety of fields, we must
examine how Aristotle understood the term ‘melancholy’.
Today this term is understood in a restricted sense, as a sadness or
dejection closely resembling depression. Often it is from the
perspective of this unipolar mood state that the Aristotle’s On
Melancholy is interpreted. For instance David Solomon17 states that in
Aristotle ‘melancholy’ is a synonym for ‘light depression.’ Jennifer
Radden does not

‘accept the identification between centuries-old descriptions of


melancholy, on the one hand, and twentieth century accounts of
depression?’18

She is right in so far as Aristotle’s concept of melancholy cannot be


equated with any modern psychiatric term, including as it does a
variety of symptoms such as skin diseases, and epileptic afflictions
which today are not associated primarily with mood disorder.
However as far as Aristotle’s ‘melancholy’ does resemble a modern
mood disorder, the question is which one?
In her interpretation Radden concentrates on one side of
melancholy, namely

‘fear and sadness without cause as…most central to melancholic


states’19

Radden underlines this one-sided view, paying little attention to the


bright side of melancholy, explicitly described by so many of the
authors included in her anthology The Nature of Melancholy. In
introducing Aristotle’s On Melancholy, she holds on to her restricted
interpretation of melancholy as a state of prolonged and ungrounded
fear and sadness20. In the text she quotes however Aristotle speaks of
variable melancholy with moods alternately sad and cheerful21.
16
Departing as Radden and Solomon do from a unipolar concept
the link between melancholy and outstanding achievement is hard to
explain. The misanthropic genius, the depressed but creative artist is
a cliché that rests on mystification. Anyone who is familiar with the
sluggishness of depression might wonder how such a listless,
downcast, pessimistic human being can bring himself to do anything
at all, let alone create. Where does he find the energy, where the guts
to produce anything new? In this view melancholy becomes a black
box in which, in a way invisible to observation, much is fermenting22.
Inspiration comes out of nowhere, or, to be more precise, out of the
dark vapours of....... melancholy.
This notion does injustice to Aristotle. He was an empiricist, the
son of a physician who was determined to base his conclusions on
observation. He saw how outstanding people could become deeply
dejected, but at other times were full of beans, talkative and gay, or
even manic. Aristotle saw the extreme joy and extreme sorrow as two
sides of the same coin. For him mania was part of the disorder of
melancholy, which he saw operating in a bipolar way.
Where Plato and the tragedy poets sought the source of inspired
madness in divine intervention, Aristotle looked for a natural cause.
He accounted for mood swing by pointing to a bodily fluid, black bile
or melaina cholè. While this fluid is normally present in small doses
in every human body, in the case of melancholics the dose is higher
than normal. The outstanding property of black bile is that it can
affect the mind, like wine, and unlike, say, milk, or honey. As with
alcohol, the effects of a surplus of melaina cholè can differ. One
person becomes sadder, another extremely cheerful. What happens to
most people when they drink wine or fall in love happens much more
regularly to melancholics, and without any significant external
stimulus. They carry their internal stimuli in their bodies from birth.
How is it possible for black bile to have these opposite effects?
That is because the temperature of melaina cholè can change rapidly.
it can quickly become very cold or very hot. This accounts for the
extreme moods of melancholics.

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‘Owing to the fact that the effect of black bile (melaina cholè) is
variable, melancholic persons also show variation. For the black
bile can become very hot and very cold. 955a35

Melancholy in cold condition

‘if it abounds in the body, it produces apoplexy, torpor,


despondency and fear.’ 954a20

Melancholy in heated condition does the opposite:

‘However when it is overheated, it produces cheerfulness


accompanied by song, and ecstasy,’ 954a20

So melancholy, according to Aristotle, finds expression not only in


despondency and sadness but also in frantic joy. In his view ‘mania’ is
not a separate affliction, but only a different expression of that same
anomaly: a surplus of black bile. Aristotle’s concept of melancholy, in
other words, is bipolar.
Having in one’s body too much melaina cholè is an aberration that
is comparatively rare. Of course, everybody experiences light mood
swings.

‘So too with the despondency which occurs in everyday life. We


often feel grief or sadness without being able to ascribe any cause
for it, while at other times we feel cheerful without knowing why.
Everyone has such changing moods to some extent, for there is a
bit of black bile in everyone. 954b15

In melancholics the moods are more extreme. For them the mood
changes are structural, part of their nature.

‘However those who are thoroughly penetrated by melaina cholè


acquire these moods as a permanent part of their nature.’

They are vulnerable to extreme mood swing.

‘In the same way those with a slightly melancholic temperament


18
are ordinary, but those who have a great deal of black bile differ
from the majority of people. If they are not careful, they can
become extremely melancholic. 954b25

Again Aristotle stresses the variations, the different poles to which


this exceptional natural constitution can give rise.

On the one hand, those who are originally full of cold black bile
‘(melaina cholè) become dull and stupid, whereas those who
possess a large quantity of hot black bile become clever or erotic,
ecstatic or easily moved to anger and desire, while some become
more loquacious, loose lipped or chatty. 954a35

Melancholics are unstable by nature. The character of one and the


same melancholic person can suddenly change, his mood can quickly
pass from one pole to its opposite. Sober, taciturn people can all at
once become talkative. People who are particularly chatty can
abruptly fall silent. The manner in which a melancholic reacts to a
situation differs, depending on the temperature his black bile has at
that particular moment. Sometimes he is frightened and cowardly, at
other times he faces up manfully to great danger. Aristotle takes pains
to press his point about the bipolar character of melancholy, by
repeating it.

‘Owing to the fact that the effect of black bile (melaina cholè) is
variable, melancholic persons also show variation. For the black
bile can become very hot and very cold. 955a35

Within a single mood, differences in degree can be noted. Somebody


who is sad for no reason can suddenly become so desperate that he
commits suicide. A self-confident person can become overconfident,
then impertinent and rude, then aggressive, finally falling into a
violent rage. Such a manic condition can culminate in tragedy if the
deranged person, without realizing, becomes violent towards family
or friends. After such a fit the ‘manikos’ sometimes becomes dazed
or falls into a ‘coma’, a deep sleep from which he can barely be

19
woken. Such tragic incidents are the exception rather than the rule,
but they do indicate to what extremes black bile can drive those
afflicted by a surplus thereof.
It is evident from this brief summary that Aristotle’s notion of
melancholy is bipolar.
I am not alone in this conclusion. Klibansky23, Panofski, and Saxl
argue in ‘Saturn and Melancholy’ that it is such two-poled melancholy in
particular that Aristotle associates with exceptional achievements.
Professor of Greek medicine, Philip van der Eijk24, perceives
remarkable similarities with the ‘manic-depressive syndrome’.
Psychologist and professor of psychiatry Kay Redfield Jamison25
points to the relation between the Aristotelian notion of melancholy
and the manic-depressive disorder. The philosopher Heidi
Northwood26 also sees a link between Aristotle’s notion of
melancholy and the concept of bipolar disorder.
By reading Aristotle’s text explicitly in relation to manic-
depression this ancient little work gains significantly in relevance. The
Greek thinker’s description of characteristics of melancholy turns out
to be surprisingly close to modern-day enumeration of the symptoms
of bipolar disorder.

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5 CHARACTERISTICS OF MELANCHOLY

For the sake of a clear representation of the traits of melancholy as


they are to be found scattered in the works of Aristotle, I have made
two simple tables. The first represents the cold state. The second
represents the heated state of melaina cholè. The Greek terms used
by Aristotle are added in brackets insofar as they resound in
contemporary psychiatric terminology or everyday language. Within
each table differences in degree have been indicated by the wordings
used. For instance, cold bile can lead to sluggishness: if the condition
worsens paralysis can set in. The most extreme conditions are placed
at the bottom of the two tables. Even there, differences in degree can
occur: for instance, the thought of suicide, quite common to
despondent melancholics, is, obviously, not as disastrous as the act
itself.
Aristotle believed that black bile is cold by nature but can heat up
rapidly. This implies that the despondent side of melancholy occurs
more often and/or for longer periods of time than the manic side.
Therefore I begin this overview with the traits of cold melancholy,
(left) followed by those of hot black bile (right).

21
Cold black bile leads to despondent moods and a lack of inspiration.
Then the melancholic is easily moved to tears, subject to sadness
without cause. He feels despised, hated, even, or especially, by the
gods. He is pessimistic, anxious, cowardly, and sometimes desperate.
He is slow in movement and understanding, and not very talkative.
He avoids human contact. In extreme cases he will hang or otherwise
destroy himself.

When the black bile warms up, the opposite phenomena occur.
Now the melancholic is elated, exalted, even ecstatic, beside himself
with joy. He is very enthusiastic (literally én-thuos or en-thusiasmos:
inspired, entered by a god.) He is oversensitive both in the good and
the bad sense, that is to say, easily animated, and easily irritated. His
thinking is quick, he has many associations and emerging ideas. He is
optimistic and glows with self-confidence. It makes him courageous,
sometimes reckless. He is good-looking, agile and supple in his
movements. When his black bile is hot, the melancholic doesn’t need
much sleep, but when he does sleep he might have prophetic dreams.
He is eloquent, even loquacious, and he loves to sing. He is
philanthropic, adores people, and falls easily in love. But he can also
become querulous, even furious, and, particularly when he goes
insane (manic), aggressive. After such a fit he can fall into a coma.

I have arranged these variable characteristics side by side, under the


heading cold and hot black bile:
‘melaina cholè psychra’ and ‘melaina cholè hyperthermantheisa’
In this way we can gain a clear view of the opposites involved in the
swing between cold melancholy (left) and hot melancholy (right).

22
Cold black bile characteristics associated with Hot black bile
Uninspired, vexed, out of tune, Enthusiastic, inspired (manikos)
(athumia)-Eats his own feeling,
hart (thumon katedon)

Tearful, despondent, sad without Good humoured, (euthymia) cheerful,


cause (dysthymia alogos), exalted

Feeling hated (by the gods) Ecstatic (ekstatikos), divinely inspired


( en- thousiasmos)

Pessimistic, despairing, desperate Optimistic, hopeful,

Slow, paralyzed (apopleksia) Energetic, intense, not easily


disrupted by others, obstinate

Slow speaker, lacking words, silent Good speaker (rhetorikos), talkative


(lalos, lalisteros), inclined to sing.

Sluggish, sleepy Lively, energetic, can do without


afternoon sleep, Agile, (eukinetos)
graceful, slender, beautiful

Sluggish feeling Sensitive, emotional, passionate,


irritable
Sluggish thought, stupid, forgetful, Full of ideas (fantasmata), talented,
confused (moroos) brilliant, decisive

Searches out lonely places Sociable, merciful, (filantropos),


(heremias), avoids the path of men quickly touched, sensual, quick to fall
(paton anthroopoon aleieinoon) in love, to kiss.(erotikos)

Cowardly, anxious (fobos) (Over)confident, brave (prothumos)


not impressed by danger (apathos),

Inclined to hang himself, Easily angered, furious, aggressive


to destroy himself. (sometimes) violent, mad (manikos).
Possibly followed by total confusion
and paralysis, (moroos, koma)

23
6 MELANCHOLY HEROES
BELLEPHERONTES AND AJAX

A melancholy condition does not necessarily result in extremes of


violence or suicide. But Aristotle is well aware of the tragedies to
which an overabundance of black bile can lead. He illustrates the
danger imminent in both poles, aggressive mania and deep suicidal
depression, by three ‘cases’: those of the mythological heroes; Ajax,
Bellerophon(tes) 953a 20 and Heracles953a15 (Latin: Hercules). Their
tragic life histories were common knowledge in Aristotle’s time.
Their fates had been described by the great poets Homer, Sophocles,
and Euripides. For that reason Aristotle only briefly mentions their
names. I give the minimal background information required for
modern readers to appreciate his remarks on these three outstanding
melancholics.
Homer describes Bellerophontes as the grandson of Sisyphus, who
was doomed to eternally push a stone up a mountain in the
underworld. It was a dreadful task. Homer tells us how Odyssea, x.i

‘he pushed the immense stone up with both hands. Using al the
energy that was in him, he succeeded in rolling the stone to the
top of the hill, but he did not manage to push it over the top,
because it suddenly came crashing down. And the poor Sisyphos
had to start that heavy task again, right from the beginning, with
the sweat pouring from his body and dust covering his face.’

His grandson, Bellerophontes, was a ladies-man. The wife of king


Proitos tried to seduce him, and when he rejected her, she planned
revenge. She slandered him with her husband, accusing him of
seducing her. Bellerophontes was thereupon given an impossible
assignment by the king: to catch the Chimera, a female fire-breathing
monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. To help
him Athena, goddess of wisdom, made him a gift of the winged horse
Pegasus. Bellerophontes mounted the horse and flew over the

24
Chimera, so that he could easily pelt the monster with arrows from a
tactically superior position. He pushed a lump of lead down her
throat, which was melted by her own fiery breath, and it gushed
down and scorched her lungs and heart. These feats show impressive
strategic thinking.
After this success Bellerophontes became reckless. On his
flying horse he set out to reach the Olympus, the residence of the
gods. But Zeus, irritated by this arrogant human, sent a horsefly
which stung Pegasus under its tail. The flying horse panicked and
threw Bellerophontes off. Freed from its burden, Pegasus flew to the
Olympus, where Zeus used her henceforth as carrier animal for his
thunderbolts. But Bellerophontes fell back into the depths. As
Aristotle quotes Homer:953a2

“Hated by all the gods, he wandered alone over the Aleian plain,
eating his own heart out, and avoiding the pathway of mortals.”27

The fate of Ajax was even more tragic. As Homer relates in the Iliad,
this hero fought on the Greek side against Troy. His pitiful end is
depicted in Aias, a tragedy by Sophocles. The Roman poet Ovid
refers to his tragic fate in Metamorphoses.
Ajax, the story goes, gushed with confidence. He saved the Greeks
from ruin on the beach of Troy. Only he dared take on the Trojan
hero Hector who had challenged the Greeks. This courageous man
was willing to commit himself totally: but he díd expect appreciation.
Unfortunately, as these things go, he did not receive the honour he
had counted on. When the arms of the fallen Achilles were awarded,
not to him, but to that fawner Odysseus, he became furious. He
wanted to smash the Greeks for the insult. But the goddess Athena
struck him with madness, so that he mistook a herd of sheep for his
former allies. He hacked away at the animals, convinced that they
were the Greek commanders. Coming to his senses he was so
overtaken by shame that, notwithstanding the pleas of his slave-
girlfriend, and the pain it would give his parents, he committed
suicide.

25
Ovid says of him

‘The man who could conquer Hector single-handed and so often


confronted fire, steel, even Jupiter himself, was now by anger
vanquished, the unvanquished now fell victim his own sorrow! He
pulled his sword and cried:
“This is still mine, or does Odysseus demand this too? This steel,
so often bathed in Phrygian (Trojan ed.) blood, is now towards
myself directed, and will lethally wound its master.
No-one will ever conquer Ajax except Ajax himself.”’28

The myth has it that the hero’s madness was inspired by a god.
Aristotle has a secular explanation for the hero’s misfortune. Not
divine intervention but black bile caused his disastrous mood swings.
The threat of suicide hanging over the melancholic is exemplified
by the fateful death of Ajax. The brave hero was first brought to
madness by a relatively minor incident. To be deferred in honour is
insulting, but usually not lethal. The melancholic Ajax was more
sensitive to such impulses because his black bile reacted so rapidly
and intensely. In a rage he hacked away at the sheep, in a delusion
that they were his former allies, the Greeks. Returning to his senses,
the hero realized what he had done. Feelings of shame accompanied
a fast cooling down of the ‘melaina cholè’. According to Aristotle
that could lead to suicide.

‘When the heat of the black bile is extinguished suddenly, people


can kill themselves, to the general astonishment of all, since they
have given no previous sign of any such intention. 955a10

The tragedy of Bellerophontes can be explained in a similarly


empirical way. This handsome hero suffered from light mania, his
mood remaining below (hypo) the level of outright madness. He
enjoyed the many advantages of this condition. He was charming,
erotic, able to win a fine lady. He was courageous, a bit reckless even.
And he had a mission: to destroy the Chimera. Bellerophontes could
defeat the monster because he was exceptionally clever in finding

26
original solutions for difficult strategic problems. He managed to
operate from a superior position. He had the sense to fight his
opponent by means of its own strength, the fiery breath. Symbolically
if not literally he experienced the exhilaration of the flight on the
winged horse associated with light or (hypo)mania.
Or was the Chimera29 a hallucination? As the black bile became
hotter the hero’s courage grew into recklessness. His ambition grew.
In this interpretation, hypomania quickly developed into outright
mania, with hallucinations of a fire-spitting goat. Goaded by victory
he set himself impossible targets. He wanted to sit with the Olympian
gods. The summit of manic hubris!
Then, suddenly, his mood fell; not through a trick of Zeus, but
because the black bile suddenly cooled down. Pegasus gone, that
euphoric sense of flying, gone, superior insight, hope, courage, self-
confidence and charisma, allgone. Bellerophontes fell into deep
despair. The once popular young man sought loneliness, avoided
human contact. The melancholy hero is no longer the favourite of
the gods. He now feels that the gods hate him. The myth of
Bellerophontes can be read as the story of an exceptional
melancholic, whose black bile was comfortably warm at first, then
very hot, to subsequently cool down to an icy temperature.
According to Aristotle melancholy is a natural disorder. The fate of
Bellerophontes’ grandfather Sisyphus whose soul was doomed to go
up and down eternally, provides a clue to his grandson’s affliction.

27
7 THE MANIC HERACLES

In his tragedy The raging Heracles (Heraklès Mainomenos) Euripides


lets the choir introduce the hero by singing in praise of the twelve
tremendous tasks accomplished by this son of Zeus.
When the play commences the hero has not yet returned from his
last assignment of dragging the three-headed hellhound Cerberus into
daylight. Bystanders believed that this gruesome task would prove
fatal to the champion. His family prepares to mourn his death. They
themselves lived at the mercy of the whims of the local tyrant, who
threatened to kill them. No help or support was forthcoming from
any of hero’s many admirers. How soon was the liberator of Greece
forgotten!
Miraculously Heracles returns from the underworld, the realm of
Hades. He seems raised from the dead, reborn. Despair turns into
hope. Now justice will be done!
Suddenly a demon called ‘Insanity’ appears on stage. She is the
daughter of the primeval gods ‘Heaven’ and ‘Night’. Sent by jealous
Hera, Zeus’ wife, she is to strike the hero with madness.

Insanity:
‘The sun is my witness, that I am acting against my will. If Fate
demands that I help Hera...then I will go to him...Furious sea with
groaning waves, nor earthquake nor thunder nor fear will show
such a fury as I...
I will destroy his house, his palace after having murdered his
children. He will not know they are his children, until he comes
round.’ Euripides, 850 etc

In a temporary fit of insanity, the hero murders his own wife and
sons, mistaking them for enemies. After this manic fury he falls into a
deep sleep. When he awakes the atrocity of the deed dawns on him.
He collapses, barely able to walk, and is on the verge of committing
suicide, when Theseus, his ‘therapeus’ or brother in arms, stops him.

28
Theseus had accompanied Hercules through the underworld, and
now takes the broken hero to Athens, where he finds peace and
forgiveness. Heracles recuperates, and continues his adventurous life.
In a second play, The Children of Heracles, Euripides describes how
at the end of his life Heracles becomes insane once more. He climbs
onto a funerary pyre which he lights himself. From there the hero
ascends to mount Olympus where he is welcomed into the circle of
the gods.
From Aristotle’s secular perspective Heracles’ descent into hell
could be a metaphor for deep melancholic lethargy. He was ‘as if
dead’, his paralysed body corpse-like, his soul supposedly in Hades.
His victory over the black hellhound could be taken to mean that he
overcame his deep despondency. As so many people awakening from
deep depression, he seemed reborn, raised from the dead.
He returned home and found his family threatened by the local
tyrant and deserted by his former supporters. This injury strongly
affected the oversensitive melancholic. His mood shifted to the other
extreme. Coming out of deep despondency, his black bile rose in
temperature, giving him the courage and strength to strike down the
tyrant. Then his melaina cholè became so hot, that he persevered in
senseless violence. He was so manic that he no longer recognized his
own family. He slaughtered his wife and children. This episode of
outrageous violence was followed by deep sleep, by a coma.
When he woke up he was horrified by what he had done. He fell
into the other extreme of deep despair and wanted to kill himself. His
therapeus, who had accompanied him on his journey through hellish
lethargy took him away to a place where he could rest and come to
terms with his guilt.
Heracles recovered and lived an exceptional life for many years,
accomplishing a whole series of impressive feats. Neither his hellish
lethargy nor his extreme mania had swept away his remarkable
talents.
Was his death tragic? On the one hand, yes: he finally committed
suicide. On the other hand: he ascended to join the gods. By

29
worshipping him as a god the Greeks stressed that Heracles was not
guilty of his manic deeds. These horrors in no way diminished their
admiration for his exceptional achievements. Up until the first
century AD Heracles was honoured as a liberator and a god.
The fate of such tragic heroes was the backdrop Aristotle’s
statement in the first chapter of his main philosophical work,
Metaphysics,

‘If there is truth in what the poets say, that the gods are by nature
jealous, then all outstanding people are fated to be unhappy.’ 982b

But the philosopher presents this widespread popular belief in order


to refute it. As said, Aristotle does not look to divine intervention to
explain the tragic fate of outstanding men such as Heracles, Ajax, and
Bellerophontes. He looks to the constitution, the nature of the
person involved, to a surplus of that temperature-sensitive bodily
fluid, ‘melaina cholè’. That is why their achievements could be so
extraordinary; that is why they carried within themselves their own
doom.

30
8. THE MELANCHOLY GENIUS

‘However if their melaina cholè is tempered, they are men of


genius.’954b25

The names of Heracles, Ajax and Bellerophontes serve as illustrations


of Aristotle’s main thesis, that of the conditional link between
melancholy and outstanding achievement. Men of extraordinary
talent usually suffer from mood disorder. This can lead to extremes
of destruction, caused by mania or deep depression.

‘However, those in whom excessive heat is tempered are


melancholic, but cleverer and less eccentric and in many respects
superior to others either in mental accomplishments or in the arts
or in public life.’ 954b

Destructive extremes are a continuing threat to outstanding


melancholics. The avoidance of excess is especially important for
those who have special talents. For excess destroys. Manic possession
might conceivably bring forth results in prophecy or poetry. But in
most fields only the milder states of melancholy give rise to
exceptional achievements.
It is mainly the mood of light mania, caused by black bile warming
up, that Aristotle associated with extraordinary accomplishments.
The term ‘manikos’ can refer both to someone who is inspired and to
a madman. For the latter the term ‘mainomenos’ was also used. The
Greek word ‘mania’ did not only have the negative connotation of
destructive fury, it also meant ‘enthusiasm’ or ‘divine inspiration’. It is
in this second sense that Plato uses it:

‘Our greatest blessings we owe to mania, at least, when we receive


it as a gift from the gods’ Plato, Phaidros, 244A.

Aristotle also looks for excellence in mania, but finds it especially in the
lighter manic episodes, in what is now called ‘hypomania’. In his view it

31
is not so much illogical sadness or cold melancholy, which lies at the
bottom of creativity. Excellence is to be expected when the black bile
has been slightly heated. In another essay, On Sleep and Dreams Aristotle
explains how melancholics are very sensitive to outside impulses. Their
minds open up to all kind of impressions. Their ability to make links
between these impressions increases.
‘Due to the susceptibility and liveliness of their minds, they have a
myriad of associations and ideas.’ 464 a 34

The large amount of impressions which seep into the mind of the
melancholic is of great significance. In Aristotle’s empirically inclined
view, all knowledge is ultimately derived from observation. Whoever
is more sensitive, more perceptive than others will also be more
capable. At first the melancholic stores the impressions he absorbs,
all the ‘fantasmata’ or images of the outside world, deep down in his
memory. He is unable to recall them at will, which leaves an
impression of forgetfulness. But when the black bile warms up again,
his memory is broken open and the bubbling up of the stored
‘fantasmata’ can no longer be stopped. 463b17 The melancholic will
suddenly see all sorts of novel connections between the impressions
he received over time.
Such an unpredictable, uncontrollable soul is creative, but he
cannot and will not create on demand. He is obstinate. In On Memory
and Recollection Aristotle pursues this point. Once the associative
thinking stimulated by warm melancholy has taken off, there is no
way of stopping it. It flies like a well-aimed arrow from the bow. It
goes straight to its target. This hitting of the bull’s eye is the essence
of excellence.

‘Through their intensity, melancholics can hit a target from a great


distance.’453.a18

In contemporary language: it is the swing from hypomanic sensibility,


through depressive passiveness and forgetfulness, back to the rapid
associations between a multitude of ideas, that forms the breeding

32
ground for exceptional creativity. It is the mild mood swing as such
that carries the possibility of excellence.
Melancholy becomes a problem if the temperature of the black
bile becomes very extreme, either too cold or too hot. No
exceptional achievements can be expected from a raging Heracles, a
mad Ajax, or a despondent Bellerophontes. But during their milder
highs they were brave and very effective. Thus Aristotle concludes
that it is well tempered melancholy which can lead talent to greatness.

‘It is possible for an abnormal mixture of bodily fluids to be well


tempered and in a favorable condition, that is, warmer or cooler as
the situation demands. This is why outstanding persons are all
melancholics not owing to some (externally induced) illness, but
due to their natural constitution.’

Curiously, there is disagreement on the translation of the essential


phrase:
s

It is usually translated as
‘all melancholic persons are abnormal’ - Hett
‘all melancholic people are extraordinary’ Mahew
‘all atrabilious persons have remarkable gifts’ Forster

It is unlikely that Aristotle, living in an aristocratic society, would be


interested in ‘all melancholics’. Het was not talking about hoi polloi,
the many, as modern psychiatrists supposedly do. He was interested
in the few persons who, in any society, are outstanding, who are in
the Greek term, ‘hoi aristoi’, the best.
If peritti is taken as Hett does, to mean ‘abnormal’, then it is so
obvious that it becomes futile. Of course melancholics are different
from most people. If peritti is interpreted as outstanding,
extraordinary in terms of achievements, as Mahew and Forster do, it
seems highly unlikely. Many melancholics simply lack the talents and
are often not capable of any special achievement.
Moreover these renderings of the conclusion does not answer the
question posed at the beginning of the essay:

33
‘Through what is it that all those who have become eminent in
philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts turn out to be
melancholics’ ?
Neither does it fit with other statements in the essay such as

‘However, those in whom excessive heat is tempered are


melancholic, but cleverer and less eccentric and in many respects
superior to others either in mental accomplishments or in the
arts or in public life.’ 954b

My translation of the concluding phrase keeps the Greek sequence30,


is consistent with other statements and offers an answer to the initial
question.

s

‘outstanding persons are all melancholics.



In my view mine this is the correct translation. If their black bile is
allowed to reach extremes, there will be no exceptional achievement.
So not all melancholics are geniuses. Too many people only suffer
from melancholy. They’re too scared, too dull, or too excitable and
unfocused. Even talented people can be hindered by extreme mood.
The most gifted among them suffer from uncreative periods, or
extreme moods which actually destroy their talents, if not their very
lives. A surplus of black bile makes people different: unstable,
exceptional in mood and behaviour, yes. But not creative by
definition.
On the other hand, Aristotle does argue that all outstanding men
are melancholic. Those with exceptional achievements are unstable
compared to the normal, the average, the many (hoi polloi). Their
behaviour is non-conformist, unusual, they have strong feelings, but
without being overtaken or paralysed by them. A heightened
sensibility and intensity belong to great souls.
Does Aristotle exclude great women from his argument, as might

34
be expected in a male dominated society? Not entirely. He explicitly
points to the extraordinary gifts of the Sybille’s, in Greek a name for
women who perceived and expressed truths overlooked by other
people.
According to Aristotle, the nature of creative melancholics does
not allow them to become entirely normal, completely stable.
Abnormality is their strength. But also their weakness. They can fall
prey to tragic excesses. They can descend into the hell of extreme
grief and lethargy and even commit suicide. Or they can rise to the
heights of destructive mania. The fates of Bellerophontes, Ajax and
Heracles serve as so many warnings to outstanding melancholics.
But with care, talented melancholics can avoid the fate inherent to
them. Stabilizing the temperature of black bile is of eminent
importance, to free their creative talents. Such tempering of their
melancholy temperature is therefore essential, not only for
melancholics and their direct environment, but for society as a whole.
Seen from this wider cultural perspective some of the philosopher’s
remarks on medication and lifestyle or ‘ethics’ take on an extra
dimension.

35
9 ARISTOTLE ON MEDICATION AND LIFESTYLE

If the cause of the suffering of outstanding persons lies, not in their


fate, or in the hands of the gods, but in their own bodily fluids, then
medical care is very relevant. It is not surprising that Aristotle,
himself the son of a doctor, pays attention to medication and therapy
for melancholics. He does so in his Nicomachean Ethics, a work on the
moderation of feelings and behaviour:

‘..but melancholics are in perpetual need of medicine, because


their mixture of bodily fluids keeps their bodies in a constant state
of irritation and their passions are continually active. Depending
on coincidence, they can become the victim of either an extreme
exuberance or deep sorrow. And through medical therapy these
Nichomachean Ethics, VII.xiv.6
extremes become less pronounced.’

Which treatments does Aristotle have in mind? First of all, the


philosopher mentions medication. In a list including wine and honey
he specifically refers to hellebore, that is Helleborus Niger, a plant,
known to us as ‘Christmas rose’. N.E.V.ix.15 According to Burton
hellebore was famous in antiquity as an expeller of melancholy,
especially its manic extremes. The working of the plant was
supposedly discovered by a shepherd boy who saw his furious goats
cured after eating it. The boy applied the formula to the insane
daughters of the king of Arcadia, and with success; the ladies were
calmed by drinking his goat’s milk.
The word ‘helleborus’ means ‘food and death’, which indicates
that the plant was both curative and poisonous. It was to be taken in
doses carefully weighed by specialists, the ‘pharmakoi’ or poison
mixers.
The Greek seaside town of Anticyra, where hellebore grew
abundantly, became a popular centre for the treatment of melancholy
and madness. So famous was this resort that centuries after it had
fallen to ruin, people would still say to somebody who misbehaved:

36
‘Go get thee to Anticyra!’

Apart from medicine, curative baths were recommended. Soranus, a


Roman army doctor from the 2nd Century AD, advised melancholics
to take water from medicinal springs. The Italian Dante Alighieri
wrote, at the turn of the 13th century, of a healing stream, the Eunoë
or ‘Good Spirit’. He felt reborn by drinking from it. According to the
American psychiatrist Fieve some wells and waters around the
Mediterranean probably contained lithium, a natural medicine to
counter manic depression, which was rediscovered halfway through
the twentieth century.
Did the Greeks rely entirely on medicinal herbs and springs, or did
they also use verbal therapies? The Greek verb ‘therapeuo’ had a
broad meaning. Apart from ‘to nurse’ and ‘to take care of’ it also
meant ‘to educate or train’. One of the original meanings of
‘therapeus’ is ‘brother in arms’, a friend who accompanies you
through life’s battles, what we today might call a ‘coach’. The
therapeus was always ready to give practical advice, rousing and
inspiring you or warning you for impending danger as circumstances
demanded. An example is Theseus, the comrade who accompanied
Heracles to the ( depressive) underworld and took him to recuperate
in Athens after his manic crime. According to some sources,
hellebore was part of Heracles’ therapy.
In the view of some psychotherapists, one of the roots of modern
psychotherapy lies in Greek Antiquity. It involved pedagogical
dialogues aimed at the conscious adjustment of emotion, attitude and
behaviour, in order to attain happiness (eudaimonia) in earthly life.
Was such conversational therapy also used to bring melancholics to
balance? In the light of this question Aristotle’s theory of emotions
and behaviour , as explicated in the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics,
assumes a new meaning. The central thesis is that every virtue is
counterpoised by two opposed vices, one representing ‘too much’
and the other ‘too little’.

37
‘Virtue is then....the observance of the mean state between two
vices, one of excess and one of defect.’II.vi.15-16

Aristotle’s ethics are composed of paired notions indicating opposite


extremes of emotion and behavior, with the proper balance in
between.

‘And similarly there can be excess, deficiency, and the due mean
in actions; and feelings and actions in excess and deficiency are
errors, while the mean is praised and constitutes success.’ II. vi.12

The trio’s of one virtue and two vices Aristotle discusses is rendered
in the following table. 31

38
Aristotle’s concept of virtue as the mean between
too little and too much

Vice Virtue Vice


deficit - too little the mean excess - too much

Lack of appetite Temperate Self-indulgent


Scared, cowardly Confident, Reckless, Rash
Courageous,
Without passion, Good tempered, Irascible, hot
somber Amiable tempered
Stingy Liberal, munificent Prodigal
Unduly humble, Shy Respectful, Unduly Proud,
– too much respect Honorable, modest disrespectful
Boring, critical Witty Vulgar, buffoon
contributes nothing Tactful Tactless, indecent
to conversation,

In practice it is difficult to determine precisely where the right


balance lies. As with a circle, an expert can tell you exactly where the
middle is to be found, that is, in theory: but in practice one is reduced
to guessing.

‘This is why it is a hard task to be good, for it is difficult to find


the middle point in anything.’II.ix.2

Aristotle is not asking people to endlessly debate these issues. Ethics


is a practical matter. As a rule of thumb he advises his readers to
move away from the closest extreme. In order to approach the right
balance one is to concentrate on avoiding the extreme towards which
one has a natural proclivity, or the mood that has the upper hand at

39
a particular moment. This can be achieved simply by moving towards
its opposite.

‘then we must drag ourselves away in the opposite direction for by


keeping away from the immediate extreme, we will land
somewhere in the middle.’ II.ix.5

As we saw, in Aristotle’s view the melancholic often has a dual


nature. He oscillates between one extreme and the other. The double
set of recommendations Aristotle gives in his ethics seems especially
tailored to the needs of a melancholic. Aristotle urges him to show
what in the context of contemporary cognitive therapy is known as
‘counter-behavior . When one’s black bile is cold and one falls prey to
despondency, becomes anxious and stingy, one should try to be
cheerful, brave and generous. When one’s black bile is hot, and
recklessness and prodigality take the upper hand, one should, on the
contrary, aim at caution and thrift. The specific ‘vices’ or extremes
Aristotle distinguishes are remarkably similar to the deviations in
emotion and behavior for which melancholics have a natural
proclivity. They can profit from Aristotle’s ethical maxims to temper
their melaina cholè, and the accompanying extreme emotions and
behavior.

40
10 TRAGEDY AS THERAPY

For Aristotle tragedy was a special form of therapy. Not only


melancholics but all people of good will who are confronted with
their own shortcomings could find solace here. Plato reproached the
tragedians for depriving the youth of hope and optimism. Aristotle
on the other hand argued that watching the vicissitudes of tragic
heroes could console people and reconcile them with their own
shortcomings.
In his treatise On Poetry he formulated the rules to which tragedy
must adhere in order to have a therapeutic effect. It must involve
characters of noble disposition and descent, so that the audience
would respect them, (phobos). But they should, on the other hand,
not be perfect, not super-human, otherwise the audience would be
unable to identify with them. The terrible events overcoming them
would have to be framed in a limited time and space to keep the
audience’s emotional reactions manageable. The plot must develop in
one place and within a time-frame of twenty-four hours. Whatever
happened earlier or elsewhere would be reported on stage by one of
the characters or by the choir. Thus any really shocking cruelty or
bloodshed was kept off-stage.
The plot should be simple and ideally involve a point of reversal,
at which the main character ruins himself and his loved ones. The
moment in which the hero comes to his senses and recognizes his
responsibility for the tragedy, was crucial. It was this tragic scene that
was to bring about a ‘catharsis’, an emotional cleansing in the
audience. By emotional identification with the all too human, all too
fallible hero, his tragic fate is consoling. Who has never hurt his loved
ones, in anger or through ignorance? Who is free of guilt? If one
sees, on stage, how such things and worse befall the very best, one’s
own feelings of guilt are washed away. Tragedy can reconcile people
to their imperfections, and enable them to cope with the
consequences of their own misjudgments. 32 It is then by

41
identification with a respected hero who is also the victim of his own
deeds, of fate itself, that the audience can accept their own fallibility,
thus cleansing itself from its own feelings of guilt and remorse.
As a stage character, a melancholic such as Heracles is an ideal
therapeutic personality, who satisfies Aristotle’s criteria perfectly.
High-principled, courageous and successful, he deeply impressed the
audience. This makes the murder of his family, committed in a state
of mania, all the more painful. Heart-rending is the scene in which he
becomes aware of his crime.

‘Heracles:
“Oh, children I who gave you life and breath have taken them
from you again. No advantage did my noble deeds bring you,
performed for your sakes, meant to build for you a life of repute, a
noble inheritance from a father.
And you, poor wife, so patiently did you always care for home and
hearth, how did I reward your loving goodness? – I killed you!
Oh I weep for my wife and my children, for myself!”’
Euripides, Heracles, 1368

The onlookers, bathed in sweat, let their tears stream. All they want
is to forgive Heracles. Compared to that, their own faults, their own
vicissitudes, are nothing. Through intense empathy with the tragic
hero the audience is cleansed of its guilt, reconciled to its own fate.
Reconciliation is particularly important to melancholics who, perhaps
more often than others, are overtaken by moods, and act in ways they
later regret. Particularly for them the tragedies of exceptional and
famous melancholics act both as a consolation and indeed a warning,
not to succumb to the extreme fate of the tragic characters.

42
11 THE TALENTED CASSANDRA

Another function of tragedies is to warn the public. Public opinion


often ignores the warnings of ‘crazy’ prophets, thus plunging entire
families and nations into misery. They become the victim of their
own narrow-minded prejudice.
Aeschylus and Euripides portrayed the problem of
stigmatization of the unstable genius in the person of Cassandra. She
was the raving daughter of the Trojan king Priamos and Queen
Hecuba. According to myth, she had, due to a mental disorder, the
ability to see and speak the truth, often in blatant contradiction to
public opinion. She ‘predicts’ that by abducting the beautiful Helena,
her brother Paris will bring the city of Troy to ruin. Incredibly
obvious in retrospect! Of course the rape of a Greek princess by a
Trojan prince could only provoke the Greeks to lay siege to the city.
Something it seems, that only a ‘distorted’ brain could see.
When the Greeks and their partners ‘leave’ after ten years of
fruitless war they fabricate a large wooden horse as a sacrifice to the
gods. Once again, it is Cassandra who warns her fellow citizens, not
to bring the horse into the city. It’s a trick! Nobody listens. Once it
has been towed into the city, the horse turns out to be full of armed
Greeks, who plunder the city and put it on fire. What else, in
retrospect, could have been expected? The melancholic prophetess
Cassandra was right again. The Trojan men are massacred, their
wives divided amongst the Greek conquerors.
Cassandra is picked by the Greek commander Agamemnon and
taken to his home in Mycenae. There she once again reads the
situation aright and predicts that he will be murdered by his wife.
Clytemnestra includes Cassandra in her vengeance, because
Agamemnon has fallen in love with his mysterious Trojan slave girl.
Two tragedy poets elaborated on this curious connection between
madness and the ability to see and the courage to speak the ‘truth’.

43
Aeschylus investigated Cassandra’s problem in his play Agamemnon.
Euripides, the ‘feminist’ among the tragedy poets, depicts the
troubled soothsayer in Trojan Women. Both poets treat her with
respect. They do not doubt her abilities. Her strange, sometimes
frightening behavior is put into perspective by the slaughter
committed by ‘normal’ people going on behind stage: massacres and
disasters that could have been prevented if only Cassandra’s warning
had been heeded!
Not being understood is often the tragic fate of dissidents,
especially if they are seen to be ‘ek-static’, or out of their minds. The
deep suffering of Cassandra is bound up with her disorder. Someone
who can foresee the ruin of her people at the pinnacle of their feast is
not fated for everyday happiness. Her suffering is worsened by her
inability to convey her message.
The perception of Cassandra depends on who’s talking. Her rival
Clytemnestra despises her for her insanity and supposedly limited
intelligence. The girl is uninhibited, she raves and rages, and can only
be restrained after she has dropped down foaming33. The Greek who
is charged with arranging the division of Trojan women among the
victors fears the mad girl. She raves like a follower of the wine god
Bacchus, and might at any moment turn to senseless violence, as
followers of that cult are wont to do. These are the voices of
prejudice.
The choir expresses the ambivalence of enlightened public
opinion. They recognize her exceptional talents, but can’t make sense
of her ravings. Her mother Hekabe, whom fate has indeed burdened
heavily, remains worried to the last about her gifted but vulnerable
daughter. Or does she share in the prejudice? Is she ashamed of her
disturbed child? It depends upon which translation one reads.
According to one translation, Hekabe says the following:

‘Keep Cassandra inside the camp. She is possessed, she is mad.


I am ashamed towards the Greeks.
More trouble on top of all my troubles.’ Johan Boonen, p.15

44
Hekabe, we must remember has lost her husband and almost all her
sons, has seen her city go up in flames, and will now be separated
from her daughters and, in her old age, become a slave. Is it likely
that the former Trojan queen worries about the impression her
disturbed child will make on the enemy? Such mothers exist. But the
Hekabe is of a different breed. Her motherly concern for her fragile
daughter never ends. According to another translation, which stays
closer to the original Greek, Hekabe says:

‘Don’t drag away from me my inspired child, Cassandra.


Spare me this fresh sorrow, of seeing how she falls victim
To the shameless lust of her Greek master.’ Corteaux and Claes, p.30

In a single word Euripides conveys the ambivalences of the motherly


care for a child that is gifted with such an ambivalent disorder.
Hekabe calls her daughter  This word derives from the
adverb that can mean both ‘miserable, catastrophic, in
constant pain’ and ‘persistent, enduring, unwavering in suffering’.
Yes, Cassandra is headstrong, the worst misery will not silence her.
She’s agonized because of her exceptional ability, but she persists in
her warning, nevertheless. The adverb derives from a verb
which has the following meanings: ‘to endure, to tolerate, to
suffer, to carry a duty as a burden, to hazard, to take heart, to have
the courage, to have the sad courage to…..’
All elements seem to be there in the Trojan prophetess. In Hekabe,
Cassandra has an understanding and compassionate mother. To her
Cassandra remains:
‘my beloved child, you who share the secrets of the gods.’

But what, as a modern therapist might ask, what, Cassandra, are your
own feelings? She herself suffers immensely from her affliction.

‘Alas, alas, the sorrow of my tragic fate!


Aischylos, 1136 etc
Ultimately, it is my own disorder that makes me cry.’

But she does feel divine inspiration. As Euripides has her say

45
‘I am inspired, (‘entheos’) by a god. But I’m not one of the
Bacchante34, It is Apollo, the elevated god of sciences and arts,
who fills me with inspiration. My enthusiasm is due to the god
of insight, of the clarity of sunlight.’ Trojan Women, l. 366

According to the myth she received her exceptional gift of prophecy


from the amorous sun-god Apollo, when she swore fidelity to him.
When however she broke her promise he was unable to nullify this
talent. But he gave her a curse to go with it. She was doomed to see
and tell the truth, without ever being understood. She would become
a priestess of Apollo, adviser to her people. But she would never
have any success with her well-timed warnings. The disasters she had
predicted would occur before her very eyes. The people to whom she
addressed herself would find her strange, scaring, insane. Her wise
words would be riddles to their ears.
Like the tragedy poets, Aristotle also recognized the uncommon
gifts of unstable prophets. But he does not search for a divine cause.
Again he looks to a surplus of black bile as the source, both of
mental instability and the ability to predict the future.

‘Many too, if this heat approaches the region of the intellect,


become filled with enthusiasm, ecstatic. This is visible in Sibyls
and soothsayers and all inspired persons, who are affected not by
disease but by natural temperament.’ 954a35

Aristotle reaches a comparable conclusion in his analysis of predictive


dreams. The very fact that simple people (such as women!) have such
dreams proves that no gods are involved. They would have picked
persons of more stature and renown.

‘That is not a matter of a god who sends these, but it is a


loquacious and melancholic nature, which leads in those people to
On sleep and dreams, 463 b 17
all kinds of visions.’

46
He explains the myth that prophecies are due to divine inspiration by
pointing to the fact that the visions melancholics receive take on a
life of their own. Something similar happens to the warrior, who
loses control over his spear as soon as he lets it go. Visions and
spears come from a person, but then follow their own course.
But if it is not a question of divine inspiration, how can it be
explained that a simple prophetess often speak the truth? It’s simply
because there are so many images going through her head, there’s
always a chance she might pick the right one. A heated melancholica
has an exceptional ability to string all the impressions she receives
together, in combinations others would never have thought of. Thus
she often sees the obvious, which evades common understanding.
Obstinately she hangs on to those unusual associations, and no
external influence can turn her away from her goal.

‘Due to their intensity, melancholics hit the target, and through


their great flexibility and sensibility their minds produce a myriad
of images. On top of that, their intensity makes them lock onto
target, not to be diverted by any another movement from their
goal.’ ‘On memory and recollections,464 b

A warning, so it seems, must be taken at its merits even though it


comes from a disturbed soul.

47
12. ARISTOTLE’S INHERITANCE

‘We can believe with Aristotle never did a great talent exist
which was not also slightly mad’
Seneca

The relation between mood swing, abnormal behavior and brilliance


has continued to fascinate great minds throughout the ages.
The Roman philosopher Seneca, (4 B.C.-65 A.D.), who had tried to
educate the insane emperor Nero as a boy, studied a number of
themes associated with melancholy, such as rage, and suicide. He
wrote two tragedies on Hercules, about his madness and about his
suicide and deification. Seneca was a stoic. He desired spiritual peace,
‘or what the Greeks called euthymia’. Verhoeven remarks on this
unlikely combination of stoicism and explosive temperament. These
hot-blooded Mediterranean men stressed harmony and peace of
mind precisely because for them it was hardly attainable.35 Seneca
might have struggled against heated emotion, but he certainly
appreciated emotional oscillations in exceptional people. The quote
above is from the end of his treatise On Peace of Mind. Let’s look at
that one liner within the text in which Seneca explains his meaning.36

‘We can believe...with Aristotle... never did a great talent exist


which was not also slightly mad. Only an agitated soul can speak
in an exalted way and on a level that rises far above others.
If and when it has freed itself from what is insignificant and
ordinary, can it uncover that which is too great for the mouth of a
mortal.
The soul cannot possibly reach that which is hidden away in a
high place unless she breaks loose; she must tear herself from the
trodden paths, take over the reins and drag her driver up to the
heights to which he himself would never have dared climb.’

48
Seneca, On Peace of Mind IX.10-11

Without mentioning the word ‘melancholy’ Seneca is referring here


to Aristotle’s concept of warm melancholy. His talented person is
slightly mad, not raving. His mood remains under full blown mania.
Aretaeus of Cappadocia, (150-200A.D.), renowned for being the
first to give a description of what is today called bipolar disorder or
manic depression37, does not make explicit mention of Aristotle. In
his work On the causes and symptoms of chronic disease, he uses the word
‘melancholy’ in a more restricted sense than Aristotle does, closer to
what would today be called ‘depression.’

...for the patients are dull or stern, dejected or unreasonably


torpid, without any manifest cause: such is the commencement of
melancholy. And they also become peevish, dispirited, sleepless,
and start up from a disturbed sleep. Unreasonable fear also seizes
them,’ ch.V. On melancholy

Aretaeus also describes mania, both in its inoffensive and its


destructive and forms.

‘And they with whose madness joy is associated, laugh, play, dance
night and day, and sometimes go openly to the market crowned,
as if victors in some contest of skill; this form is inoffensive to
those around. Others have madness attended with anger; and
these sometimes rend their clothes and kill their keepers, and lay
violent hands upon themselves. This miserable form of disease is
Ch VI on mania
not unattended with danger to those around.’

Aretaeus does not see mania as a form of melancholy, but makes a


clear distinction between two.

‘For in those who are mad, the understanding is turned sometimes


to anger and sometimes to joy, but in the melancholics to sorrow
and despondency only.’ ch. V

He deals with mania and melancholy in two separate chapters38.

49
Aretaeus does see a link between mania and melancholy in the sense
that a person’s mind can turn from one extreme to the other. In his
experience melancholy can sometimes be the beginning of the
opposite state, mania.

‘and it appears to me that melancholy is the commencement and a


part of mania.’ ch. V

He notes the changeability of one and the same person from one
state to the other.

‘They are prone to change their mind readily; to become base,


mean-spirited, illiberal, and in a little time, perhaps, simple,
extravagant, munificent, not from any virtue of the soul, but from
the changeableness of the disease. But if the illness become more
urgent, hatred, avoidance of the haunts of men, vain lamentations;
they complain of life, and desire to die.’

Like Aristotle, Aretaeus sees an underlying temperament or natural


constitution, making people prone to melancholy or mania

‘Those prone to the disease, are such as are naturally passionate,


irritable, of active habits, of an easy disposition, joyous, puerile;
likewise those whose disposition inclines to the opposite
condition, namely, such as are sluggish, sorrowful, slow to learn,
but patient in labour, and who when they learn anything, soon
forget it; those likewise are more prone to melancholy, who have
formerly been in a mad condition.’

Aretaeus is more precise that Aristotle about the episodic character


of the illness. He also notes the influence of seasonal changes. Spring
was, it would seem, even in Roman times, the season of march hares.

‘mania intermits, and with care ceases altogether. And there may
be an imperfect intermission, if it take place in mania when the
evil is not thoroughly cured by medicine, or is connected with the
temperature of the season. For in certain persons who seemed to

50
be freed from the complaint, either the season of spring, or some
error in diet, or some incidental heat of passion, has brought on a
relapse.’

Aretaeus gives only brief mention of the positive side of the illness,
but like Aristotle he couples it to the mild forms of high mood, not
to low mood.

‘But the modes are infinite in those who are talented, creative and
learned,--untaught astronomy, spontaneous philosophy, poetry
truly from the muses.’

What Aretaeus is saying is that, coupled to talent, mild mania, is a


positive factor. It can lead to creative contributions in endless variety.
So, underneath their different use of the term ‘melancholy’ -
bipolar versus unipolar- , there is, between Aristotle and Aretaeus,
basic agreement on the contribution the well-tempered warmth of
high mood mania can have in enhancing talent in human endeavours.
For the modern reader however, the subtle terminological
difference between the Greek and the Roman is rather confusing. It
offers ample opportunity for misunderstanding. By taking Aretaeus’
narrow, unipolar definition of melancholy- as - depression and then
sticking on Aristotle’s link between melancholy and creativity, the
myth of creative depression is created.
This is a far cry from what both Aristotle and Aretaeus and Seneca
claimed: that excellence, outstanding performance, in short, genius, is
not linked to despondency and sluggishness, but to the high flight the
mind takes, when the mood is just underneath madness. Creativity is
enhanced during that phase of bipolar melancholy, when the mood is
just beneath mania, a state now appropriately called ‘hypomania’.
When the Roman Empire fell apart most of Aristotle’s work was
forgotten in the West, to be kept and cultivated in the Islamic States.
Only from the 11th century onward did his main works reappear in
Europe, via Islamic philosophers.
Aristotle’s notes on melancholy were collected and annotated by

51
Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), an ecclesiastical philosopher with a
medical education and a great interest in nature.
Two centuries later, the Italian philosopher and physician Ficino
(1433-1499), who admitted to suffering from melancholy himself,
made Aristotle’s ideas more widely accessible. In the course of his
astrological studies, then considered a full-fledged branch of science,
he linked melancholy to the planet Saturn, under whose influence
many melancholy intellectuals supposedly stood. Ficino followed
Aristotle in distinguishing two sides of melancholy, and warning
against both extremes. He summarizes Aristotle’s ideas as follows:

‘Aristotle states ...that all those who became famous, in whichever


field, were melancholics.

Indeed, learned men could be the happiest people if they did not
also undergo the negative effects of black bile, such as depression
or sometimes even madness, ...that is why you must try to regulate
the temperature of your black bile...Melancholy tends towards
both extremes.. if extremely hot it brings forth extreme courage,
even fanaticism...extremely cold it produces fear and extreme
cowardice.

But if it is tempered, it can, once kindled, burn longer and shine...


thanks to a long-lasting and powerful flame there is a strong and
lasting activity and radiating power.’
Ficino, Three

Books of Life, 1482

Through the ages the word ‘melancholy’, in its bipolar meaning,


reappeared time and again. Robert Burton, himself a melancholic,
shows the two faces of the disorder in a poem at the opening of his
elaborate and influential book The Anatomy of Melancholy, (1621).

‘When I build castles in the air,


Void of sorrow and void of fear,
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet.

52
All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as melancholy.

When I lie waking all alone,


Recounting what I have done,
My thoughts on me then tyrannize,
Fear and sorrow me surprise,
Whether I tarry still or go,
Methinks the time moves very slow.
All my griefs to this are jolly,
Naught so sad as melancholy.’ Burton, p.11-13

This British parson is not speaking about melancholy as an


innocuous bittersweet, wistfully reflective mood evoked by the
vagaries of life, as Porter will have it.39 Burton describes a serious
disorder with two disastrous extremes: he expresses the swing from
one pole to the other and back and forth, and back and forth, until
the patient finally cries out for suicide.

‘Lend me a halter or a knife.’ Burton, p.13

Melancholy is no joking matter. According to this pious Englishman


this bipolar disease can injure the soul more than can a devil or
vengeful god.

‘If there is a hell on earth, then it must be in the heart of one who
suffers melancholy.’ Burton, p.146

The doctor-reformer Philippe Pinel (1745-1825), who during the


French Revolution literally freed mental patients from their fetters
and exchanged coercion for ‘psychotherapy par persuasion’, also
distinguished the two sides of melancholy.

‘Nothing is more difficult to understand and simultaneously well


documented, than the two opposite forms which melancholy can
take. Sometimes it is a blown up pride, the fantastic idea of being
unbelievably rich or possessing unlimited power; at other

53
moments there is a cowardly depression, a deep confusion or even
despair.’ Pinel, Traité 1800,40

But the problem with the term ‘melancholy’ is that it conceptually


couples a phenomenon, or group of phenomena, to one cause, the
biochemical constitution of the body: and even to a single bodily
fluid, that in retrospect turns out to be non-existent: black bile. At the
very most the body yields yellow bile that has turned brownish. Of
course the Greeks couldn’t have known that ‘melaina cholè’ was
fictional, because their ethical beliefs forbade them to dissect a
human body. But as the empirical knowledge of the functioning of
man increased, the word ‘melancholy’ lost its biochemical
connotation. It had however become so current that it kept cropping
up in serious medical thinking, often associated with brilliance.
Pinel’s pupil Jean-Etienne-Dominique Esquirol presented a list of
famous melancholics, to which the doctor of Vincent van Gogh,
Gachet referred in his thesis l’Etude de la Melancholie. This rather
daring list included Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Sophocles, Dante,
Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Luther, Calvin, Cromwell, Jeanne
d’Arc Queen Elizabeth, Mary Stuart, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt,
Newton, Archimedes and Galileo. In this context Gachet himself
referred to a bipolar concept of melancholy.

‘If one admits that there are two sorts of melancholy,


l’aménomanie and tristomanie, (friendly and sad melancholy),
ecstasy, expressing a blissful state of the soul, with silence, absence
of words and movements, is only a form of the illness which we
are dealing with.’Paul Ferdinand Gachet, Études sur Mélancolie, p. 34

Esquirol however had wanted to get rid of ‘melancholy’ as too vague


a term. But the alternative terms he proposed for the two sides of the
disease, ‘monomania versus lypomania’, did not become accepted.
It was the German Wilhelm Griesinger who around 1845 first
began to systematically use the word ‘depression’ for a morbid state
of dejection. The advantage of this word is that it describes a

54
condition without saying anything about its cause. What it is that
depresses patients remains an open question, to be answered by
further research and diagnosis. This advantage the term ‘depression’
shares with the Greek word ‘mania’ which likewise reveals nothing
about its cause, be it divine, biochemical or social. Griesinger himself
was aware of the other pole of the disorder the ‘psychological state of
exaltation’.41
The French doctor Jules Falret was the first to point to the
circular character of the illness, introducing the term ‘forme circulaire
de maladie mentale’ in 1851. His colleague Baillanger described the
malady two years later as ‘la folie á double forme.’ The ensuing
discussion motivated the French Medical Academy to hold an essay
competition on the question:

‘Is there an illness with a circular, double, or alternating character?’

The winner was the French psychiatrist Ritti who presented his view
in 1883, in Traité Clinique de la Folie á Double Forme.
The term ‘manic depressive’ was formally introduced into
psychiatry at the Conference for European Medicine in 1885. The
notion was elaborated by the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, in
the successive editions of his handbook Psychiatrie.42 With his term
‘cirkuläres Irresein’, he emphasized the recurring character of
depressive and manic episodes. In this way he distinguished this
illness, with its long periods of normalcy, from disorders of a more
continuous and degenerative character. Aristotle had probably not
noticed the cyclical nature of the disease. Only when melancholics or
manic-depressives could be systematically observed by experts over
for longer periods of time could the cyclical character of the illness be
established.
Thus, as the term ‘manic-depressive’ won ground, the term
‘melancholy’ became marginal in medicine. In literary circles it evokes
a rather innocuous despondency or nostalgic wistfulness. So current
has that unipolar meaning of melancholy become, that the original
meaning, a terrible bipolar mental affliction, has practically

55
disappeared. Thus so many contemporary writers, such as Porter,
Radden, and Solomon more or less equate Aristotle’s concept of
melancholy with a unipolar mood disorder, depression. They fail to
see that Aristotle’s concept of melancholy is much nearer to
Kraepelin’s ‘manic-depressive syndrome43.
In the last few decades the word ‘bipolar’ has become en vogue.
This term was introduced by the American K. Leonhard in 1957, to
make a clear distinction between ‘unipolar’ depression and the mood
disorder with depression and mania (or hypomania). In 1980 the term
‘bipolar mood disorder’ was included in the authoritative DSM-III44,
and was shortly thereafter adopted by the World Health
Organization. This term made it easier to distinguish different
degrees of the malady’s intensity. The term ‘Bipolar I’ is used for the
variant of the disorder in which both deep depression and intense
mania occur. Bipolar II indicates the variant with recurrent
depressions in which the mood is never elevated beyond hypomania.
A pattern of lighter mood swings to both sides is called ‘cyclothymia’.
This terminology is more limited and more precise than Aristotle’s
and leaves room both for differences in gradation and a combination
of causes, somatic and socio-psychic.

56
13 RELEVANCE FOR TODAY

‘Ideal treatment requires a sensitive understanding of the possible


benefits of mood disorder to creativity and also the severe
liabilities of untreated depression and mania, including the risk of
suicide.’
Goodwin &
Jamison, 1990, p. 36

The ideal held by Aristotle of a consciously tempered bipolar


melancholy as a breeding ground for excellence, remained out of
reach during centuries. The means available, herbs such as hellebore
and mineral waters, were not sufficient for the systematic avoidance
of extremes. Neither did voluntarily imposed behavioral codes have
much effect in extreme cases. A disturbing number of bipolar
melancholics plunged themselves and their environment into misery.
The lives of an estimated one-fifth of manic-depressives ended in
suicide.
Only in the second half of the twentieth century, with the
rediscovery of lithium, did the realization of Aristotle’s ideal of
avoiding extremes to enhance creativity become possible.
Contemporary psychiatrists are not in total agreement with Aristotle.
Not áll exceptional men suffer from melancholy or bipolar disorder.
On the one hand, there are brilliant people with a stable mood
pattern. On the other hand, bipolar melancholy is for many sufferers

57
no more than a burden. In this era of empirical research and statistics
absolute pronouncements are avoided.
However recent research conducted by prominent psychiatrists
does indicate a special relation between creativity and bipolar mood
disorder. Ronald Fieve, Nancy Andreasen, Julian Lieb, Peter Dally,
John Gartner, Nassir Ghaemi and last but not least, Kay Redfield
Jamison agree that creative persons suffer from bipolar mood
disorder more often than the rest of the population, and that
extremes can and must be avoided.
Nancy Andreasen investigated groups of living American writers45.
To her surprise 80 % suffered from mood disorder. 13 % were
Bipolar I, 30 % Bipolar II, and 37 % suffered from unipolar
depression. Their relatives also showed mood disorders relatively
often, and were more creative than average. The gist of these results
was confirmed by the research of Kay Redfield Jamison among
English writers46. Ruth Richard investigated exceptional and everyday
creativity among bipolars in Denmark47. Hagop Akiksal researched
creativity among a large number of French and American patients
suffering from mood disorder48.
The case history of ‘famous bipolars’ from the past point in the
same direction. Kay Redfield Jamison discusses many artists,
composers, poets and writers, such as Vincent van Gogh, Robert
Schumann and Lord Byron in her classic book Touched with Fire. In
their Manic Depression and Creativity Hershman and Lieb present case
histories of the composer Ludwig van Beethoven, the writer Charles
Dickens, the artist Vincent van Gogh and the scientist Isaac
Newton.
The coincidence of creativity and mood disorder does not only
occur in the arts. In his Moodswing Fieve devotes a separate chapter,
Moneymanagers, Wall Street Wizards and the Midas Touch49, to successful
businessmen and investors. Industrial psychologist Kets de Vries
describes the special abilities of the hypomanic manager.
The case of political or military leader is interesting. Goodwin and
Jamison devote a paragraph to the political and military leaders in

58
their textbook Manic-depressive Illness and Leadership’50. They touch on
political and military leaders such as Alexander the Great, Lord
Nelson and Winston Churchill, and also on religious leaders such as
Martin Luther. Nassir Ghaemi’s book A first Rate Madness diagnoses
great leaders like Ghandi, Churchill and Lincoln. Fieve likewise deals
in a chapter ‘Moods and Great Men’ 51 with Churchill, Theodore
Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
Psychiatrists follow Aristotle in that creativity gets the best
opportunity in mildly elated or hypomanic episodes. That’s when a
multitude of ideas, combined with heightened energy, can lead to a
strong creative urge that is reflected in objective achievements.
Increased self-confidence gives the hypomanic the courage to present
his novelties to the world. The authors of DSM-IV, Frances and
First, also see a connection between achievement and hypomania.
They note that during hypomanic periods achievements can suddenly
increase and projects and tasks that were long neglected can be
completed with great speed. A strongly heightened level of activity is
translated into increased productivity without leading to fatigue.52
A manic episode on the other hand, if not an outright
obstacle, is at least unfriendly to creativity, in spite of the way
it is experienced. The manic feels capable of anything, but
reality is otherwise. Delusions and hallucinations may yield
original images, but an innovative idea alone does not usually
survive to become part of our cultural heritage. Creativity
requires calmer waters. Furthermore, the manic is so
absorbed by a grand feeling of cosmic unity to be interested
in details. He hardly takes any pains to communicate with his
environment, because he already feels one with the world
around him. A manic episode is often a time of pseudo-
creativity: the manic experiences an almost divine ability to
create, but in actual fact he hardly produces anything.
A depressive episode however seems to be contrary to
creativity, both in the eyes of the depressed patient and his
environment. He experiences an overall withering of

59
capabilities. Obsessive doubt and lack of confidence curb the
creative process. In its place comes the equivalent of a
writer’s block. The words, ideas, solutions, or paint that
flowed so profusely during hypomania, are no longer
forthcoming. If anything is squeezed from the empty mind by
hard work and self-discipline it becomes the focus of
scorching self-criticism emanating from a negative self-
image.
Is depression then just a waste of time, a useless struggle,
pain for no reason? Not entirely. During a light depression
certain basic conditions of creativity are prepared. During this
period of negativity and demolition, rubble is cleared so that a
new building can be erected during a hypomanic episode.
Thus light depression has as special function in the creative
process.
Deep depression is another matter. For depressive
delusions and hallucinations the same holds as for those of
manic episodes. In exceptional cases images can emerge that
can be processed in quieter times. But in general, in the
creative process, deep depression can be done without.
Contemporary psychiatrists agree with Aristotle, that
extremes should be avoided, for the benefit of the person and
of his creativity. Mania can make the bipolar’s creative
capabilities run riot, depression can paralyze them, and, in the
case of suicide, even damage them forever. It is not in the
extremes of mood swing but in the slight deviation in both
directions that the source of creativity can be found.

Thus the basic insights of Aristotle on well-tempered ‘bipolar


melancholy’ and creativity remain relevant today.

60
61
LITERATURE

Forster, E,S, Translation of Aristotle’s text on melancholy Problemata XXX .i


The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1927
http://archive.org/stream/worksofaristotle07arisuoft/worksofaristot
le07arisuoft_djvu.txt

Hett, W.S. Aristotle: Problems, vol 16 Harvard University Press, 1936/


1957 Reproduced in Radden, Jennifer, The Nature of Melancholy, from
Aristotle to Kristeva, Oxford University Press, 2000

Translation in Klibansky, Raymond, Panofsky, Erwin, & Saxl, Fritz.


(1964). "Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the history of national philosophy,
religion and art". London

Mayhew, R. and Mirhady D.C. Aristotle, Problems, Volume II: Books 20-
38, edited and translated edited and translated by Loeb Classical
library, Harvard University Press, 2011

Philip van der Eijk, Aristoteles, Over Melancholie, Historische Uitgeverij,


Groningen 2001 (Dutch)

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics translator H. Rackham, Loeb Classical


Library
Aristotle, Poetics, Loeb Classical Library, translator, Stephen Halliwell
Aristotle On Sleep and Dreams, translator D. Gallop, Broadview Press,
1990
Aristotle, On Memory and Recollection, translator Bloch, Brill 2007

62
Burton, Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy, edited and introduced by
Holbrook Jackson, W.H. Gass, New York Review Books, 2001
Dally, P. Virginia Woolf, Robson Books London 1999
Eijk, Ph.J., Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge
University Press, 2005
Euripides, The Heracles of Euripides (Focus Classical Library) translator
M. R. Halleran 1988
Euripides, Madness of Hercules, Children of Hercules, translator A.S. Way,
Loeb Classical Library, William Heineman ltd, London, 1971
Fieve, R.R. Moodswing, Doubleday Dell publishing 1989
Gaemi, N. A first-rate madness, Penguin Press, 2012
Gartner ,J.D. The Hypomanic edge, Simon & Schuster, 2005
Goodwin, F.K. and K.R. Jamison, Manic Depressive Illness, Oxford 1990
Goodwin, F.K. and K.R. Jamison, Manic Depressive Illness, Bipolar Disorder
and Recurrent Depression, Oxford 2007
Homer, The Odyssey, transl. R. Fagles, Penguin Classics, 1997
Homer, The Iliad, transl. R. Fagles, Penguin Classics, 1992
Jamison, K.R., Touched with Fire, Manic-depressive Illness and the Artistic
Temperament, Simon & Schuster, New York,1993
Northwood, H.M., The Melancholic Mean: the Aristolean Problemata
XXX.1, Paideaia online project, proceeding of the 1998 World
Congress of Philosophy, Summer 1999, hmnorthw@naz.edu
Ovid III: Metamorphoses, Books I-VIII , Loeb Classical Library,
translator F.J.Miller
Porter, R. Madness, a Brief History, Oxford University Press, 2002
Seneca, Hercules Furens, in Seneca, VIII, Tragedies I, translator F.J.Miller,
Heinemann, London 1917/68
Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus, in Seneca, IX, Tragedies II, translator F.J.Miller,
Heinemann, Londen 1917/68
Plato, Faidros, vert. H. Warren, M. Molengraaf, Bert Bakker,
Amsterdam,1998
Solomon, A., The Noonday Demon, an atlas of depression, Simon &
Schuster, New York, 2001
Sophocles, Lloyd- Jones, ed. Aias, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus Lloyd-
Jones, ed. Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press 1997

63
1
That Aristotle was the author of this influential essay On Melancholy was
taken for granted until recently. Some argue that it should be attributed not
to Aristotle himself, but to his pupil Theophrastus.1 Klibansky1 argues that
if not actually from Aristotle, it is very Aristotelian in style and content.
Radden wisely puts the authorship down to ‘Aristotle (or his follower)’1.
After a thorough comparison of the problemata and other
acknowledged works of Aristotle on the same subject Philip van Eijk,
expert on Greek medicine, concludes that the text on melancholy is close
enough to Aristotelian thought for Aristotle to be named as the author on
the cover of his Dutch translation. (Aristoteles , Over Melancholie, 2001) A
comment I would like to add to this discussion is, that if Thepophrastos
wás responsible for the idea that all eminent philosophers are melancholics,
the question arises why he did not add his master to the names of Socrates
and Plato. That Aristotle himself would leave out his own name when
discussing eminent melancholic seems more obvious. In the end, no single
conclusion on the authorship of the famous text on melancholy is definite.
That Aristotle was taken to be the author by eminent men throughout the
ages, as diverse as Seneca and Ficino, is, on the other hand, beyond doubt.
Such debates can be put into perspective by noting that authorship in
Aristotle’s days was not such a black and white issue as it is in our day of
tightly regulated copyright and intellectual property. In Rembrandts day,
filling in the details of their master’s work was normal procedure. So in
Aristotle’s time’, taking down and expanding upon the master’s lectures,
inheriting his manuscripts upon his death, and revising and editing before
(posthumous) publication, was rule rather than exception. Thus the
Nichomachean Ethics, named after his bastard son Nichomachos, who
possibly did some editing, leads no-one to doubt the authorship of
Aristotle.
So why all the fuss about that tiny work ‘On melancholy’? Perhaps it is not so
much the authorship as such, as the hot character of the question itself
which is at stake. For how can a moody, a melancholy, a sick man be a
genius? It is to the answer to this intriguing question that my book is
dedicated. Whenever this tiny booklet- known to experts as Problemata
XXX.1, to lay persons as ‘On Melancholy’, is mentioned, critical readers
are requested to insert ‘or inspired by him’ after the word ‘Aristotle’.
2 ‘Through what’ is my translation of  - the questioning word with

which many discourses of Aristotle start. The word is sometimes translated


as why, but that could also refer to the reason in the teleological sense. Why

64
am I writing this book? I prefer the literal translation, asking for the cause
in the empirical sense, in colloquial English ‘how come’?
Eg. Why,/through what, is it that the tongue of those who are drunk stumbles
? The discourse following the question gives the answer. This question
implies that there is something unusual here, something that needs
explaining. That outstanding persons turn out to be mentally ill, or at least
unstable, came and still comes as something of a shock.
3In ancient Greece, epilepsy was considered as caused by the gods. It was

also named after Herakles as the ‘herculeian disease. Symptoms of epilepsy


described by the Greek doctor, Hyppocrates were shivering, loss of speech,
trouble breathing, contraction of the brain, blood stops circulating,
excretion of the phlegm. According to Hippocrates (about 400 BC),
epilepsy was not a divinely cause disease but one to be explained in natural
terms, as caused by disharmony in bodily fluids .
‘I am about to discuss the disease called 'sacred.' It is not, in my opinion,
any more divine or more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause,
and it’s supposed divine origin is due to men's inexperience and to their
wonder at its peculiar character.’
Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) argues the same for melancholy. Often
epilepsy and what is today called bipolar disorder were seen together as
diseases caused by imbalance of bodily fluids, phlegm and black bile
respectively.
4 According to tragic myth the hero Hercules, who overcame so many of

the tyrants and monsters threatening the Greek people, killed his wife and
children in a manic fury.
5 Lysander was the Spartan General who defeated the Athenians. Plutarch

writes of him : “And since he was now of an altogether harsh disposition,


owing to the melancholy which persisted into his old age….Plutarch,
Lysander, Bernadotte Perrin, Ed. 28.
6 According to myth, the valiant fighter Ajax committed suicide using his

own sword.
7 The mythical hero Bellophoron, slayer of monsters including the

Chimaera, fell ( into a sate of melancholy) when trying to climb to the


Olympos, seat of the Gods.
8 Iliad vi. 200-2.
9 Empedocles was a Greek philosopher (492-432 BC) who ended his life

falling (or jumping?) into a working volcanic crater


10 Plato, (427 –347 BC) the great Greek philosopher and master of

Aristotle
11 Socrates, (470- 399 BC), the master of Plato, who was forced by the

Athenian government to kill himself by drinking poison.


12 Odyssea. xix. 122

65
13 Greek god of wine
14 Greek goddess of love, Latin name Venus
15 Archelaus I was a king of Macedon from 413 to 399 BC. He was a

capable and beneficent ruler, known for the sweeping changes he made in
state administration, the military, and commerce; and for his ruthless cruelty
16 This phrase is usually translated as ‘as all melancholic people are

extraordinary’ ( eg. Mahew p. 295)


If extraordinary is taken to mean ‘abnormal’, then it is so obvious that it
becomes futile. Of course melancholics are different from most people.
If it is taken to mean that all melancholics are outstanding in terms of
achievements, it seems highly unlikely if not absurd. Moreover this
conclusion does not answer the question posed at the beginning of the
essay:
‘Through what is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy
or politics or poetry or the arts turn out to be melancholics’ ?
My translation of the concluding phrase keeps the Greek sequence, and
offers an answer to the initial question.
s
‘outstanding persons are all melancholics.
In Greek the definitive article hoi often accompanies a noun without extra
meaning, and in other cases a noun without a definitive article can be
translated with the definitive article ‘the’. The addition of a definite article
to an abstract noun is common in Greek.
17 The Noonday Demon, p. 288 and note 15 on p. 445
18 Radden, p. 3
19 Radden, The Nature of Melancholia, p.4
20 Radden p. 57
21 Radden. P.58
22 Porter, Madness a brief History, ch.4
23 Klibansky, pp.29
24 Eijk, Over Melancholie, introduction, p.7-10
25 Jamison, Touched with Fire, p. 51
26 Northwood, The Melancholic Mean, p. 6
27 Iliad vi. 200-2.
28 Metamorphoses, XIII, Ovid, 384-390, Jupiter is the name the Romans gave

Zeus. Phrygian blood refers to the Trojans Ajax slew.


29 ‘Chimera’, Greek for ‘goat’, has assumed the signification of ‘apparition’

in modern usage.
30 In Greek the definitive article hoi often accompanies a noun without

extra meaning, and in other cases a noun without a definitive article can be
translated with the definitive article ‘the’. The addition of a definite article
to an abstract noun is common in Greek.

66
31 The table Aristotle refers to in Nicomachean Ethics has been lost. On the
basis of the text I have made a diagram adapted to the peculiarities of
modern usage. This is partly based on the diagram in the Eudemian Ethics,
that Pannier and Verhaeghe included in their translation of Aristotle’s Ethica
Nicomachea, p. 349. The table in English needs further refinement and
checking against the English translation of Eudemian Ethics.
32 Poetics 6, VI 27-8, translated by Stephen Halliwell
33 The Greeks saw a close connection between epilepsy and melancholy
34 those wild women who honour the wine god Bacchus, and indulge in

wine and sex, often reaching a wild frenzy of violence.


35 See Cornelis Verhoeven, Een apathische stoicijn? Seneca en het onmogelijke ideaal

van de ‘apatheia’
36 siue Aristoteli, "nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit".

Non potest grande aliquid et super ceteros loqui nisi mota mens. Cum
uulgaria et solita contempsit instinctuque sacro surrexit excelsior, tunc
demum aliquid cecinit grandius ore mortali. Non potest sublime quicquam
et in arduo positum contingere, quamdiu apud se est: desciscat oportet a
solito et efferatur et mordeat frenos et rectorem rapiat suum, eoque ferat
quo per se timuisset escendere
37 Porter, R. Madness : A Brief History
38 Aretæus, the Cappadocian, on the causes and symptoms of chronic

disease, Book I, chapter V on Melancholy, chapter VI on Mania.


39 Madness, a Brief History, chapter 2
40 Pinel, 142-143, see Godderis p. 127-28
41 Griesinger, W., Die Pathologie und Therapie der psychische Krankheiten,

Stuttgart, 1945,
42 Kraepelin, E. Psychiatrie, Leipzig 1883-1913. This was a gradual evolution.

In the fifth edition of 1896 the term ‘melancholy’ changes to ‘depression’.


The ‘depressive condition’ had only been absorbed completely into the
term ‘manic-depressive disorder’ in the eighth edition of 1913.
43 These terms are not completely synonymous. Aristotle’s term included a

wider range of phenomena, including epilepsy. ‘Falling sickness’ is


nowadays strictly distinguished from the bipolar mood disorder. But it is
remarkable that some medicine, valproaat and carbamazepine, is used to
fight both diseases, although lithium is the medium of choice for manic
depressive illness. For a more detailed analysis of the significations of
‘melancholy’ through the centuries, see Radden, Godderis and Klibansky.

67
44 American Psychiatric Association, DSM III-V, Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders
45 Andreasen, p. 237-38, and Andreasen, ‘Creativity and Mental Illness:

Prevalence Rate in Writers and First Degree Relatives’, American Journal of


Psychiatry, 144: 1288-1292, 1987.
46 Kay Redfield Jamison, Mood Disorder and Patterns of Creativity in

British Writers, in Runco and Richards


47 R.R. Richards and D.K. Kinney, Mood Swings and Creativity, in Runco and

Richards,
48 H.S. Akiskal and D. Akiskal, ‘Reassessing the Prevalence of Bipolar

Disorders, Clinical Significance and Creativity’, Psychiatry and Psychobiology, 3,


1988, p. 29-36,
49 Fieve, p. 71 and onward
50 Goodwin and Jamison, p. 353-363
51 Fieve, Moodswing, p. 127-153
52 Frances & First, Am I Okay?: A Layman's Guide to the Psychiatrist's

Bible 2.2

68

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