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Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

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Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#181

Post by lazide »

GJim wrote: post #77
FridayoLeary wrote: post #20

I feel like this article is revisionism. The author is making a wild assumption that no male, no matter the circumstances was presented with having issues or trauma in victorian literature. Being nice and sympathetic is also not a concept which was only discovered recently. The article just throws in key words like mental health to make it sound relevant for today. Maybe the only interesting part is that drug use was…

> a fantastic and hilarious job of portraying holmes as an erratic drug addict. Except in Conan Doyle's books, Holmes was a user of cocaine, not an addict. This desire to portray Holmes as a drug addict says far more about our own times.

Where do you draw the line between user and addict?

He was definitely not holding together his life by any traditional measure.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#182

Post by SoftTalker »

apples_oranges wrote: post #41
tossandthrow wrote: post #2

> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems. (emphasis is mine) I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.

I neither like the taboo nor the opposite. Too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc. That may be, but I wish we would handle it all more privately...

Agree. Some people have legitimate issues. Many just grab at the easy excuse for not achieving anything. “Suck it up and do the work” is still good advice for them.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#183

Post by krapp »

delichon wrote: post #154
paxys wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite in fact. Throughout history the most successful artists have been the well funded ones.

The most miserable people I've known were rich people's children. Depression is more about the lack of hope than money.

When you're poor in a capitalist society, money is hope.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#184

Post by GJim »

claw-el wrote: post #130

One reason I like CBS’s Elementary’s depiction of Sherlock (maybe more so than BBC’s Sherlock) is because how Elementary treats Sherlock’s mental health and addiction recovery as central to the character. As great as Sherlock is at solving cases, he still struggles greatly to handle his own mental health and addiction recovery, which makes him more grounded to earth.

> Sherlock’s mental health and addiction recovery

As I said downthread.....

In Conan Doyle's books, Holmes was a user of cocaine, not an addict.

This modern desire to portray Holmes as a drug addict says far more about our own times.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#185

Post by mewpmewp2 »

Joeboy wrote: post #171
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think the 2nd type of relationship is much worse than no relationship, I'd say the problem there wouldn't be with someone being vulnerable, it's the problem with the relationship... Yeah, during school it's difficult since you are forced together with potentially toxic people. As an adult you can choose at least in personal life and to an extent workplace, although sometimes workplace can also be difficult to…

The thing is, what you want is specifically a relationship where you are not vulnerable. If you're not worried about the consequences of the things you say, there's no actual vulnerability. You're just adapting to a safe situation. In which case good for you and you partner.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to do though, is to build myself such a life that if my internal principles are good, I shouldn't have to worry in most cases about what I'm saying since I want to believe in my principles. I want my interactions with people to be win-win, and I want to surround myself with people who want that too. If someone displays lose-win behavior, I should always naturally have the "moral" upper-hand assuming other people around me are reasonable. And if none of the people around me are reasonable, I should go and find the reasonable people.

People seem to be romanticizing the term "vulnerable" though. I think it would be important to go deeper into this. What does "vulnerability" exactly mean. I have had depression, anxiety diagnosed in the past and addictions and other similar issues, are these vulnerabilities because they may interfere with me acting optimally or are they vulnerabilities because they provide someone a tool to try and get at me if they so wanted because they think there's stigma around those labels to influence others to think worse of me?

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#186

Post by uxp100 »

n4r9 wrote: post #164
sho_hn wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a personal trainer for your physical fitness is something I'd expect a very low percentage of very wealthy individuals to have access to. Therapy appears to be more prevalent.

By "personal trainer" I just mean someone that you pay for a training session 1-3x per week. It's a comparable expense to therapy (depending on qualifications etc...).

I mean, that’s what they meant too. They’re expensive! Kinda a stereotypical rich thing to have, more so than therapy. One distinction that you might be thinking of without saying between individual sessions and group workouts which are cheaper.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#187

Post by GJim »

lazide wrote: post #181
GJim wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a fantastic and hilarious job of portraying holmes as an erratic drug addict. Except in Conan Doyle's books, Holmes was a user of cocaine, not an addict. This desire to portray Holmes as a drug addict says far more about our own times.

Where do you draw the line between user and addict? He was definitely not holding together his life by any traditional measure.

Tell me you haven't read the books without telling me you haven't read them!

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#188

Post by truelson »

isk517 wrote: post #168
claw-el wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American series (House and Elementary) has the advantage of more seasons and episodes, which I think is sometimes required to showcase the challenges of drug addiction and mental health. The fact that these characters having to come back to face the same problem over and over again episode after episode is more true to the nature of the mental health problem itself. BBC Sherlock has too little episodes to bring a…

BBC Sherlock also slowly morphed him into a less empathic version of the Doctor from Doctor Who.

But I did like how it started with Watson joining him to get a hit of adrenaline and not deal with his soldiering past. Was a great scene.

Also, re: Dr. Who, Moffat gonna Moffat

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#189

Post by baumy »

FireBeyond wrote: post #174
tossandthrow wrote: post #2

> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems. (emphasis is mine) I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.

Right. Even here in HN I was arguing with someone who has the hot take that “more conservative leaning men have less mental health issues than liberal and left leaning men and I don’t think we do enough to think about why exactly that might be and what those liberal men could do differently”, and got very angry when I suggested that maybe the reason for that was that conservative men were less likely to seek help or…

From experience, my response to this is, por que no los dos?

I am 100% certain that conservative men being less likely to seek help is _part_ of the reason why various data shows them as having fewer mental health issues than their liberal counterparts. But I doubt that's the whole picture, and it's also by far the least interesting part of the picture - the cause and effect there is pretty simple and clear.

As another commenter in this thread observes, there's "too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc". I think that's part of it as well, and it's not difficult to believe that this is something that impacts "liberal and left leaning men" more than conservatives, due to sheer exposure if nothing else. I think you do a disservice to the discussion if you dismiss this outright.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#190

Post by johnsmith1840 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #174
tossandthrow wrote: post #2

> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems. (emphasis is mine) I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.

Right. Even here in HN I was arguing with someone who has the hot take that “more conservative leaning men have less mental health issues than liberal and left leaning men and I don’t think we do enough to think about why exactly that might be and what those liberal men could do differently”, and got very angry when I suggested that maybe the reason for that was that conservative men were less likely to seek help or…

My controverial opinion is that the "left" has more mental problems because of the therapy and pharmasutical industries.

Conservatives are less likely to see proffessional help but not help. They simply rely on family which imo has a better incentive structure than therapists.

Anecdotally I've watched a lot of people go down the therapy and medication route over the years. I've noticed they become more unstable as time passes. Maybe that would have happened anyways.

or

Maybe it's because humans weren't designed to spill our guts to strangers and then take prolonged phycoactive drugs to fix mental problems that science does not understand.

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