The Anatomy of Melancholy

Subsection 9. Anger as a cause.

Anger is a disturbance that carries the spirits outwards, predisposing the body to melancholy and even to madness: “Anger is a brief madness.” Piccolomini counts it among the three most violent passions. Aretaeus names it as a particular cause of this illness, as does Seneca, letter 18, book 1. Magninus gives the reason: “Frequent anger heats them beyond measure”; it overheats their bodies, and, if too frequent, breaks out into manifest madness, says Saint Ambrose.

It is a familiar saying: “Patience too often injured turns to fury.” Even the most patient spirit, repeatedly provoked, will be driven mad with anger; it will make a devil of a saint. Presumably that is why Basil, in his homily On Anger, calls it “the darkness of reason, a disease of the soul, and a most evil demon”—the darkening of our understanding, and an evil angel.

Lucian, in The Disowned Son, volume 1, holds that this passion has that effect especially in old men and women. Anger and slander, he says, disturb them at first and after a while break out into open madness. Many things cause frenzy in women, especially excessive love or hatred, envy, deep grief or anger; these things gradually lead them into this illness. From a disposition they advance to a settled condition, for during his fit there is no difference between a madman and an angry man.

Anger, as Lactantius describes it in On the Anger of God, addressed to Donatus, chapter 5, is “a savage storm of the mind,” and so on—a cruel tempest of the mind, making a man’s eyes flash fire and stare, his teeth grind, his tongue stammer, his face turn pale or red. What uglier likeness of a madman could there be?

Faces swell with anger, veins boil with blood; Eyes flash more fiercely than a Gorgon’s snake.

For the time being they are without reason, unyielding and blind, like beasts and monsters. They say and do they know not what: curse, swear, abuse, fight—what do they not do? How could a madman do more? As the character says in the comedy, “Anger puts me beside myself”—I am not my own man. If these fits are excessive, prolonged or frequent, they undoubtedly bring on madness.

Montanus, in consultation 21, had a Jewish patient suffering from melancholy, and ascribes his illness principally to this cause: “He became angry over trifles”—he was easily moved to anger. Ajax’s madness had no other beginning. And Charles VI, that mentally deranged French king, fell into this condition through the extremity of his passion, his desire for revenge and his malice. Enraged against the Duke of Brittany, he could neither eat, drink nor sleep for several days together. Finally, about the first of July 1392, he went mad on horseback, drawing his sword and striking indiscriminately at anyone who came near him; and he continued so for the rest of his life. Aemilius, French History, book 10.