The true horror of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories lies in their confessions (yalereview.org)

63 pointsby lermontov2 days ago26 comments

jan_m_savage 4 hours ago

The author of this article needs to hit the books--yesterday.

The conditions she describes as 'perversity' is just the heightened response of an over-stressed brain.

The suicidal thoughts (that still horrify the person thinking them) aren't due to a so-called Freudian perversity as the author implies, but are a first step towards total mental breakdown (which actually ends up in suicide, due to to the struggle with such thoughts--which is a form of depression).

When I was extremely stressed for long periods of time, with no solution in sight, I did enter this stage. Photos I took for a mugshot in this period show a slight shine in my eyes that I hadn't before (that's another sign the brain is disintegrating). I'd stand over overpasses and watch cars drive by, and then a little voice would tell me: jump! jump! while another thought which felt more stronger, would consider this horrifying and made me reflect on why I was thinking such thoughts.

It wasn't limited to the visible possibilities, either. Frequently when the stress would become unbearable, a little strange thought would make me think of tall buildings and let me imagine that by jumping from one, my problems would cease.

I've recovered from those thoughts now -- because luckily my stressors were eliminated -- and I no longer experience such thoughts or voices. I mention all this to help others realize that they need to seek help and solve their stressors instead of falling back on the quack-doctor Freud's ideas that "oh it's in our nature to be perverse!".

strken 4 hours ago

I have the impression you could be confusing suicidality with the little voice that says "what if I stuck my finger in the candle wax?" or "what if I forgot to put on clothes before going to work?" and only mentions tall buildings once or twice a year.

I'm pretty sure the latter is really common. I've always thought it was my brain generating failure cases for risk assessment. We think "What if I dropped this bottle of water on my lap while driving and crashed?" and then we take more care not to drop it.

kranner 3 hours ago

GP mentions concurrent extreme stress and multiple variations of suicidal ideation, along with a prediction of the relief that would bring. Also, that the thoughts stopped once the stress did.

Not sure how they could describe suicidality more clearly. Speaking as someone who has also experienced it due to chronic health conditions that had gotten particularly bad for a while.

strken 3 hours ago

Yes, and I'm saying that is clearly suicidality, but I think TFA is talking about something else.

esseph an hour ago

These are called intrusive thoughts. I have learned about these through a family member with ADHD. With ADHD, you can have the dual problem of both the wandering, intrusive thoughts, with sometimes the lack of impulse control. It can be really dangerous for some.

What the poster is talking about is different, something that occurs in a deep depression where your mind is struggling to find a way out of the situation. Sometimes the will gives out completely and you're just a zombie to the world, only slogging forward out of habit and maybe guilt.

strken an hour ago

I know that the poster is talking about something that occurs in deep depression, but I don't think Edgar Allan Poe was and I don't think TFA was either.

ricardobeat 7 hours ago

A little tangent, but

> With a peak circulation of forty thousand—enormous for its time

How was it possible to make a living - I imagine a full editorial team, writers, printers, office workers - with this volume of sales, while today, magazines with zero distribution cost, and with millions of subscribers are going under. Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?

Exoristos 7 hours ago

What percentage of Condé Nast's or Bertelsmann's gross receipts do you think goes directly to editorial and print workers?

Swizec 7 hours ago

> Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?

The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter.

In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet

Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level

michael0church 6 hours ago

Writing professionally was basically gambling in the 19th century. An “advance” was a loan from your printer and you paid it back even if the book failed.

nephihaha 6 hours ago

I was reading about 19th century Russian writers recently. Very few of them made much money and some like Turgenev and Tolstoy were personally wealthy.

Mikhail_Edoshin 29 minutes ago

Chekhov went from rags to riches. But this was closer to the end of the century.

arbuge 6 hours ago

> Writing professionally was basically gambling in the 19th century.

Plus ça change...

michael0church 6 hours ago

Very few people made a living on writing. Poe was one of the first to attempt, and it didn’t go well for him.

thataccount 9 hours ago

Poe's life had many complications due to poverty and jealousy that made his being a literary genius almost irrelevant. Researching his death produces even more questions than answers, as a strong case could be made that he was made to appear to have died of a morphine overdose in a ditch.

aag 2 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe_Toaster

polotics 9 hours ago

OK so there is a better angle to look at all this, there really is:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357868645_Edgar_All...

saltcured 9 hours ago

Hmm, what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art?

It's one thing for a biographical analysis to look at the person's real life experiences and relationships.

It's another thing entirely when you start conflating the characters in the fiction with the author's own character...

mhurron 8 hours ago

> what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art?

There isn't one because you can dislike a person and/or their works for literally any reason you want.

Is there a label for insisting that people put aside their feelings and engage with something because you have deemed their reason for not doing so invalid?

lazide 8 hours ago

‘Shoulding’?

saltcured 8 hours ago

I said nothing about like or dislike.

I only implied that implied psychological traits of a fictional character are not evidence of the same psychological traits in the author. It's merely evidence that the author is capable of observing or imagining such traits in others.

tecleandor 8 hours ago

That's terribly bad. Badly written, barely three pages long, bad references... Half of the list of references are of himself, but almost all of the references in the text are just from one book from 1965.

And lots of affirmations of that text aren't unsustained or don't make sense.

Terribly bad angle.

nephihaha 6 hours ago

Amazed to see it's from TCD. I don't think posthumous psychological diagnoses are particularly helpful. To diagnose someone you need to interact with them, observe them etc.

_superposition_ 8 hours ago

I think you may be missing the point.

This post was an absolute joy to read.

ricardobeat 7 hours ago

Reducing people to [ ] vetted and [x] refused boxes seems to have become a favorite pasttime worlwide.

nephihaha 6 hours ago

Is there anyone not suspected to be autistic these days? Including me. Personally my finger points more in the direction of Emily Dickinson and James Joyce.