On Lincoln and Depression

Over the weekend, Stanton Peele, whose blog is hosted on the Psychology Today website, posted an interesting essay on Abraham Lincoln and depression. In this, he considered the evidence of Lincoln's well-known bouts with melancholy/depression, coupled with the tragedies and stresses of his life. Given this, and Lincoln's supposed fatalistic religious outlook on life -- and his life in particular -- Peele is amazed at the strength Lincoln displayed in his life.

While I would quibble with a few details in the essay (I'm not entirely sure that Peele represents Lincoln's fatalism accurately, which went beyond simple issues of mortality), I think that Peele hits on a topic that accounts for part of the Lincoln mystique. It is difficult to imagine how Lincoln could endure all of the hard times in his life (his dissatisfied childhood, numerous career frustrations, difficulties with women, stresses of a wartime presidency) and keep going, making strong decisions (often with inspired words).

On the other hand, I wish Peele had gone further, particularly when he admits, "It is hard for modern psychology to fathom how a depressed person was confident and energized enough to guide the most powerful country in the world through the chasm of its self-destruction, while never losing his humanity." Personally, I have a long-held suspicion about modern psychology's understanding of depression, overstating the debilitating effects in many people. Lincoln's biography might be a good case study to push the understanding of depression.

One recent well-publicized book took on this topic: Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. As the subtitle suggests, Shenk tends toward the opposite pole from Peele. It is an interesting book, and one hesitates to challenge Shenk's slightly unusual approach given that he draws on his personal experiences with depression, but it is not a completely realized -- or completely balanced -- argument. But there is room for a more extensive study.

New Lincoln Books This Week

The spate of new Lincoln books continues with two important titles this week, both companions to bicentennial Lincoln exhibits in Washington, DC. While companion books are not always brimming with new scholarship, they usually have lots of high quality photos, and as such are to be recommended.

On January 27

Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2009, paperback, 128 pages)

This is the companion volume one of several Lincoln-related exhibits sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution this year. Unlike some of the other exhibits, the Smithsonian is clear that all of the artifacts in this are from the Smithsonian collection, including one of the few authentic stovepipe hats that can be proved to have been worn by Lincoln.

Here is the website for the exhibition, "Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life." This exhibit at the National Museum of American History opened earlier in January and is tentatively scheduled to be open until January 2011.

I'm looking forward to visiting this exhibit when I'm in DC next. And I imagine I will have to pick up a copy of the book, if only for the photos, as a memento.

In Lincoln's Hand: His Original Manuscripts with Commentary by Distinguished Americans, edited by Harold Holzer and Joshua Wolf Shenk (Bantam, 2009, hardcover, 208 pages)

This book is the companion of the Library of Congress upcoming exhibit: "With Malice Toward None": The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, which is scheduled to open on Lincoln's birthday. (Exhibit website not available; here's the Library of Congress press release.)

This is an intriguing volume, pairing photographs of actual Lincoln documents, personally written by Lincoln, with reflections from a mixture of famous Americans and Lincoln/Civil War scholars. And it is edited by Lincoln editor extraordinaire, Harold Holzer, which means that it should be good (most of his edited stuff is). And, while I haven't seen the book, I'm sure the photographs are high quality and well lit, meaning that these items will probably be easier to read than if you were looking at them directly.

Like many new books, this one has its own (admittedly modest) website.