If she were alive today, what psychiatric condition would she be diagnosed with? (assume post-Abe’s death)
It’s playing a guessing game, and I’m not a mental health expert, but after checking some of the sites, I’d hazard a WAG and say clinical depression, with associated anxiety disorders, possibly paranoia. Quite a few sites (copying each other) claim she was:
While this says:
According to a couple biographies I’ve read, Mary’s alleged mental health problems have been either greatly exaggerated, or, according to some, fabricated out of the whole cloth.
Yes, Mary was implusive and careless with money. She often bought many of the same items, and items she thought she might need someday, but currently did not. This was used as “evidence” in her insanity trial.
She did fall into passionate, lengthy mourning after her sons and husband died. Her loud and dramatic mourning violated the ettiquette of the day, earning her much dissaproval.
Worse, she showed an un-ladylike interest in her finances, and shocked many with her fundraising efforts, such as an auction of her dresses. She begged for money from Congress. (With her spendthrift ways, she always thought she needed more money.)
She was not a woman well liked by her peers. She was vastly unpopular even while Lincoln was alive. To some extent, her behavior would be considered completely normal today, but violated a lot of ettiquette norms and conventional “good taste.” Her personality was grating, and she carried grudges for percieved slights.
Mary did believe that fate was out to get her, but given the tragic deaths of so many around her, this isn’t really unreasonable. Her son, Robert, thought that Mary’s visits with spiritualists were a sign that she had cracked because of his personal beliefs that spiritualism was nutty. However, many people go on the John Edward show without being threatened with an asylum today.
Was she crazy? No, I don’t believe so. She may have had a few “issues,” as we would have called them, but she wasn’t loony. Her son claimed she was. Historians still debate what his motivations were. Was it to get control of her money? Was it to rid himself of an irritating mother? Many don’t believe that he could have comitted her out of genuine concern. Mary may have been an irritating person whose behavior violated conventional norms, but she wasn’t mentally ill.
Some modern speculation as to her problem has been manic-depression, borderline personality disorder, or narcissism. She needed some kind of treatment - therapy at least, and/or possibly drugs.
We have our own conventions. If she violated them to the same extent she did those of her own day, I’m sure she’d earn our disapproval as well.
Even sympathetic biographers have called her prone to hysteria and emotionally unstable.
In the White House, much of her “interest in finances” was how to get more money by various devious ways, some close to embezzlement.
The money she spent on furnishing the White House and on her own clothing was considered extravagant and scandalous for wartime and earned angry comments from President Lincoln.
She was almost literally insanely jealous of the slightest attention shown between President Lincoln and other women and created several scenes vastly out of proportion to the actual “offense”. (IMHO analogous behavior on the SDMB would get her pitted in relatively short order and probably banned.)
William Stoddard, a White House secretary, wrote that he couldn’t understand how one day she could be exceedingly kind and on the next vicious.
It’s not unreasonable that she might feel this way at least for a time. It is a terrible tragedy when a child dies, and in no way do I minimize parents’ grief. But other than the shattering experience of having her husband shot and killed in front of her, the deaths of those close to her were, sad to say, common occurrences of the day. Most bore up better than she did.
Would we call her behavior insanity today and commit her to an institution? Of course not. In her day one was either sane or insane, with nothing in between. But her behavior involves more than just “issues”.
True, but today we don’t commit people to a mental institution unless she is a threat to herself or others, or she agrees to go. She probably had a reactive depression due to life stressors, but she was not psychotic.
Just because you’re parinoid doesnt mean people aren’t out to get you!
You haven’t mentioned that in addition to having three children die, her husband murdered in front of her, she also had brothers fighting for the Confederacy who were killed by her husband’s troops…She was considered a spy by the northerners and a traitor by her southern family…She had few if any true friends, a husband who experienced huge deep periods of depression.(He wouldnt talk to her for days)…these experiences would tend to annoy anyone…doncha think?
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IANAD, but I’d say that any medication she would need would be light. I honestly don’t see any of her behavior as a sure indicator of emotional/mental problems that would need it. A good chat or two with a counselor might have been all she’d need. The woman did have a rough life, after all, starting in early childhood. No matter how grating your personality may be, it hurts to know that people don’t like you, and Mary was extremely unpopular.
I think a good deal of the criticism that people wished to heap on Lincoln fell on Mary. She was blamed, in a lot of respects, for many of her husband’s melancholy moods, blamed for distracting him, for squandering the nation’s money, and treated with suspicion because of her family.
Her imperious nature, insecurity and temper lost her many potential friends. Mostly, she faced bitter contempt from those around her, making her lash out harder against those that hurt her.
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Yes, but we’d probably just say, “What a bitch!” and shrug it off. It’s not as if she were swinging upside down from the chandelier. She was an impulsive, disagreeable, tempermental woman, but not crazy.
I think that the prevailing attitude towards her behavior was that one would * have * to be crazy to act like that, and that so many disliked her that they were eager to agree, and add examples of their own of her insanity. It could be that many of the stories which are passed down about her have been exaggerated, or taken out of context.
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Some do, yes. I think, though, that a lot of them buy into the myth of “crazy Mary” rather than evaluating her behavior through modern eyes.
According to Victorian standards, Mary was a mess. Her loud and demonstrative mourning, and emotional outbursts were shocking and appalling. It seems like to me that contemporary feelings toward her have seeped over into our time, much like the misconception that Cleopatra VII was a slut.
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Had Mary been a man, her somewhat dubious tactics to get money wouldn’t even be a footnote in history. I’d also gander to say that few modern wives haven’t irritated their husbands with their over-spending.
Mary was extremely extravagant with money, there’s no doubt. However, do remember that the White House was badly in need of refurbishment and Mary believed that the home of the President should be furnished with the best. Yes, she went grossly over budget, and her spending was seen as insensitive during wartime shortages. Still, being extravagant is not necessarily a sign of mental impairment.
Mary shot herself in the foot when she tried to auction off her dresses. Not only did it give the public a view of her extravagance, but it was un-ladylike to even think of such a thing. She was viciously attacked. The press was even unkind enough to note the sweat-stains beneath the armpits of the gowns. It’s a testament to how much she was disliked that such a thing would have even been mentioned.
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Again, being a bitch is not necessarily a sign of insanity.
But then again, some histories try to prove Mary’s jealousy right by claiming that Lincoln never loved her . . . some go to the extent of saying he actively disliked her.
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The problem wasn’t Mary’s lengthy mourning. *That * was perfectly acceptable, even laudable for such a figure as Lincoln. (Queen Victoria set a fine example.)The problem was * how * Mary mourned. The ideal widow was a pale, sighing, silently grieving figure. Instead, Mary was loud, dramatic and effusive: things a lady should never be. Her mourning was attention-grabbing, and critics thought she milked it for all it was worth.
Quite right. Asylums were a good way to get rid of untractable, mouthy or agressive women. It wasn’t hard to prove a woman mad. Any desire on a woman’s part to deviate from the norm was insane in of itself.
I just don’t think that Mary had a “diagnosable” problem.
One of the problems that people have when they’re looking at Mrs. Lincoln is that, for a long time, the main primary source that was used for information about all the Lincolns was Herndon’s biography of Lincoln. Unfortunately, he and Mrs. Lincoln hated each other, so his description of her was extremely unflattering.
Mary Todd was high-strung, she was outspoken, and she could be narcicistic (which I can’t spell), but I don’t think she was crazy, with the possible exception of depression that set in after Willie Lincoln’s death.
One of the more interesting problems with Mary Todd that may have contributed to various estimations of her mental health was that she got taken in by a con man at one point, who kept producing ghost images on photos of Lincoln hanging around her. Of course, he was just using a photo trick and old phtographs.
Mary Lincoln’s case was an important one for the rights of the mentally ill. Mrs Lincoln was undeniably mentally ill, however, she was functional and did not pose a danger to herself or others. Her involuntary committment was essentially done because she was an embarassment to her family (although in her son Robert’s defense, his actions were normal for the time and he was genuinely concerned about his mother’s well-being). The legal standard of the day basically was that if you were a woman and acted strangely, the male head of the family could have you put away. A female lawyer fought to have Mrs Lincoln released and have the practice changed to considering what was best for the patient rather than what was best for the people around him or her.
One biographer claims that Mary was perfectly aware that the picture was a fake, but that it pleased her sentimental nature to have a photo as if he was looking over her shoulder. Such photographs were popular at the time, but the biographer claims that people were well aware that they weren’t really seeing a ghost.
I really don’t think that she * was * mentally ill, Little Nemo. I think that she had the reputation of being insane, and people used her behavior as a justification for that label. I also think that a lot of the “evidence” for calling her crazy may have been exaggerated and taken out of context in order to fit into the legend of “Crazy Mary.”
Nor do I necessarily think that Robert’s motivation was loving concern for his mother. She embarassed and irritated him, and he would have much preferred if she had stayed for the rest of her life in the asylum. Not only did it give him control of her money, but it got rid of someone he didn’t particularly like. Also, given Victorian expectations of what responsibilities a son bore toward his mother, he could push her care off on someone else, and not appear to others like he had abandoned her. His actions were as “normal” as someone today shoving their parents into a third-rate nursing home so they can sell the family home. His actions may have been legal and somewhat socially acceptable, but they were heartless and cruel.