Black Bile, Manic Depression and Melancholy: Two Pillars of Our Understanding

I aim to demonstrate the movement of the argument of the Aristotelian Problem XXX.1 as it illuminates the phenomena of melancholy, which it is argued is more rightly understood as manic depression, and black bile. The discussion will aid contemporary researchers in psychiatry as well as those in ancient philosophy and medicine. An appeal to both Emil Kraeplin and the Aristotelian author will demonstrate surprising resonances. An appeal to Aristotle’s discussion of anger in the De Anima will make clearer what is at stake in Problem XXX.1.

Chapter 1

Barker discusses the causes, frequency, and treatment of insanity, with references to contemporary articles and authorities on mental illness such as Benjamin Rush, Philippe Pinel, and Thomas Arnold. Case presentations include delirium, suicide, and problems associated with use of ardent spirits. A case of frenzy alternating with dejected behavior would today be called bipolar disorder or manic depression. Treatments include diet, bloodletting, blisters, mercurials and salivation, cathartics, cold baths, and other modalities.

Ghosts in the Closet: Catastrophizing and Spectral Disability in Anne Charlotte Robertson’s Apologies

Anne Charlotte Robertson, who died in 2012, was a Super 8 experimental filmmaker whose primarily diaristic films record her experience with a diagnosis of manic depression and the corresponding nervous breakdowns. This article specifically addresses Robertson’s film Apologies (1983–1990), which features 17 min of the filmmaker apologizing to the camera for everything from drinking non-organic coffee to returning her camera a day late to her eventual nervous breakdown in the final scene of the film. Beginning with the psychological concept of catastrophizing, this paper shows how Robertson’s film engages with larger contemporaneous philosophical conceptions of disaster, or apocalypse, and its corresponding temporality. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida and Maurice Blanchot, mental disability is shown to be more thoroughly understood through shifting and multiple temporalities, termed as ‘spectral disability’ within this paper. Apologies not only reveals the personally specific details of Robertson’s experience and identity, but also responds to a larger history of representing madness in photography and film. Robertson’s engagement with the moving image is not only related to philosophy and history, but predates similar techniques devised in psychology as well. Ultimately, through disability theorist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s concept of misfitting, this paper explores how Apologies exposes the creative possibilities of mental disability.

March 1967

As the month begins, the Jimi Hendrix Experience begins to get press coverage in the U.S. and make unforgettable television appearances on Beat-Club and, during the first of two European tours this month, on the Belgian show Vibrato. In a series of interviews, Hendrix addresses his stressful childhood, love for blues music, and dislike of the “ordinary.” Sting recalls the Experience’s performance in Yorkshire as “the first time I’d ever seen a black man.” With the release of the “Purple Haze”/“51st Anniversary” single, the band embarks on tour of Germany, while Michael Jeffery secures them an American deal with Reprise Records. In studio sessions, the Experience record “Manic Depression” and other tracks. On the opening night of the Walker Brothers tour, Jimi Hendrix upstages the other acts by burning a guitar onstage for the first time, nearly setting the Finsbury Park Astoria ablaze. As the Walker Brothers tour progresses, Jimi’s onstage antics become front-page news.

Psychiatry: A Very Short Introduction

Psychiatry: A Very Short Introduction explores the nature of psychiatry, focusing on what it can and cannot do, and discussing why its history has been beset by dramatic shifts in emphasis and types of treatment. Considering the main disorders that have shaped its practice (such as schizophrenia and manic depression), it analyses how it differs from (and overlaps with) psychology and psychotherapy. Discussing philosophical issues of psychiatry’s legitimacy, this VSI explores the mistakes psychiatry has made and the blind alleys in its history, before looking forward to the problems associated with ageing populations and the likely changes in its practice with the coming of artificial intelligence and virtual reality.