Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theconversation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 304 posts

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

#191

Post by ompogUe »

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…

Subtle, but the very last line of 1939's "Hounds of the Baskervilles" is "Oh, Watson - the needle!".

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

#192

Post by michaelscott »

delichon wrote: post #177
paxys wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably don't know very many poor people then, because poverty, food insecurity, physical insecurity, homelessness, job loss are all very common depression triggers. It's just that these cases don't make the front page of newspapers at the same rate as celebrities committing suicide.

The ones I knew weren't celebrities, they were friendless and isolated and consumed with self disgust. Poor people trapped in unemployment have something in common with rich kids trapped in lethargy. A kind of spiritual constipation.

No, more like literal survival. In these conditions there is no mental bandwidth for things like spiritual constipation

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

#193

Post by fidotron »

GJim wrote: post #184
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.

In the One True TV Holmes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086661/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_acc... this is even shown as a tension between Holmes and Watson, with Watson showing the modern view.

Of course Brett was in fact completely out of it for much of the filming on all sorts of things.

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

#194

Post by sudosteph »

delichon wrote: post #131
joshcsimmons wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100% not true. > An effective education requires a certain amount of torture, and it works better when self inflicted. It's the tortured artist myth. You can turn pain into art but it's not a prerequisite.

Over-emphasized maybe, but myth? Could Doyle have written a sympathetic lonely depressed addict so well without more than academic understanding of those things?

He was a physician and had said that his experience treating patients influenced his characters. So, he had more than academic experience, but I'm not sure if it's enough to prove he experienced those things personally.

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

#195

Post by Starman_Jones »

mosura wrote: post #61
Starman_Jones wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should probably reconsider putting loneliness and depression on a pedestal here.

Where is this happening? The whole point is calling them “mental health problems” infers there is something systematically wrong with them as opposed to the obvious result of putting men in modern society.

> ...loneliness and depression...

> All entirely standard male behaviors

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

#196

Post by balamatom »

zozbot234 wrote: post #166
PaulRobinson wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Integrity and character are about values and how you plan to behave and expect to have others behave towards you. They are not the same as your ability to process emotions that emerge as a result of that behaviour. Having values is important. Integrity, humility, all of that, absolutely useful. They are not in themselves sufficient to assure you of good mental health.

We care about the smooth processing of emotions, among other reasons, because when impeded it generally affects how we're going to plan and behave; especially when under some sort of stress. This is not something new to our generation; philosophers have had a clear undestanding of this for millennia, in both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions.

We care about how we plan and behave, because we feel emotions about things that happen. Like you say, nothing new.

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

#197

Post by mewpmewp2 »

erikerikson wrote: post #150
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is vulnerable about letting people know how you feel or your weaknesses? What about letting people know how you feel and your weaknesses while not caring if someone judges you for it? Is that being vulnerable or not?

I would say yes. Your weaknesses, if truly shared are weaknesses which can be used against you to hurt you and thereby you are vulnerable to them. Further, even if you don't care about the judgment of others then you can still be harmed by decisions of and social coordination between people who judge you. We agree, assuming self knowledge, that the judgments of others tell you about them rather than about you.

This leads me to a conclusion that someone can only be truly vulnerable around people that you might consider toxic?

It's unavoidable in many cases, but I'd prefer a life where I would surround myself with people who tried to build each other and not take advantage of each other. I think it's definitely possible, and I think I'm pretty much there at least.

This leads me to the next point, which is that I don't think it's a problem about men unwilling to be vulnerable, it's more so about them happening to be around people who might use it against them (and it succeeding effectively, ergo there being a critical mass of people supporting this).

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

#198

Post by sudosteph »

I've read a lot of Holmes recently, and while I'm not a man, I do think Doyle portrays Holmes' issues in a way that is relatable.

Holmes core thing though is that he has an almost ADHD-esque craving for novelty and tolerance for risk taking. He also can't stand not actively working on things, and when he's not working is when he's depressed. He doesn't seem to know how to actually feel good, but he knows how to be useful, thus his penchant for productivity boosters like cocaine.

He's a great character, but I wouldn't over pathologize him according to today's understanding of mental health. Doyle was a physician and gave Holmes various traits similar to what he had seen in his patients.

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

#200

Post by koakuma-chan »

pxc wrote: post #175
koakuma-chan wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is like 70% of my life.

I also spend what feels to me like a lot of time here. I like it, despite its problems. But HN isn't good enough to deserve to be 70% of anyone's life. :(

I agree, but it's 12:10 PM, and I am in my third meeting, pretending to pay attention. I wish the job market improved.
Post reply on HN