The Anatomy of Melancholy

It is characteristic of all melancholic people, says Mercurialis, consultation 11, to be deeply, violently and continually occupied with whatever idea they have once entertained. “It presents itself against their will”: do what they may, they cannot get rid of it; against their will they must think of it a thousand times over. “They are perpetually troubled and cannot forget.” It troubles them continually, in company or alone, at meals, at exercise, at all times and in all places.

“They never stop thinking about the things they least wish to.” Especially if it is distressing, they cannot forget it; they cannot rest or sleep because of it, but keep tormenting themselves. “They roll Sisyphus’s stone for themselves,” as Brunner observes: “a perpetual calamity and a miserable scourge.”

Crato, Laurentius and Fernel list bashfulness as a common symptom. “Somewhat rustic shyness,” or “faulty shyness,” is something that greatly haunts and torments them. If they have been ill-treated, mocked, disgraced, scolded or the like, or upset by any disturbance of mind, it troubles them so deeply that they often become quite stupefied, so disheartened and dejected that they dare not go out, especially among unfamiliar people, or manage their ordinary affairs. So childish, fearful and bashful are they that they cannot look anyone in the face. Some are more disturbed in this way, some less; some for longer, others for shorter spells, and so on; though others, on the contrary, according to Fracastorius, are “shameless and obstinate”—impudent and ill-tempered.

But for the most part they are very shy, and that makes them, like Peter of Blois, Christopher Urswick and many others, refuse honours, offices and promotions that sometimes fall into their laps. They cannot speak or put themselves forward as others can: “fear holds these back, shyness those.” Fearfulness and bashfulness hinder their progress; they are content with their present condition, unwilling to undertake any office, and therefore unlikely ever to rise.

For that reason they seldom visit their friends, except a few intimates: “speaking little,” of few words, and often wholly silent. Frambesarius, a Frenchman, had two such patients, “altogether silent,” whom their friends could not get to speak. Rodrigo da Fonseca, Consultations, volume 2, consultation 85, gives the example of a young man aged twenty-seven who was frequently silent, bashful, stupefied and solitary, would neither eat his food nor sleep, and yet at other times was prone to anger, and so on.

For the most part they are, as Plater notes, “inactive, silent, hard to stir, and will not go forward unless compelled,” and so on. They can scarcely be forced to do what concerns them, even for their own good: so distrustful, so sluggish, showing little or no courtesy, unsociable, hard to get to know, especially for strangers. They would rather write their thoughts than speak, and above all things love solitude. “Are they alone for pleasure or from fear?” Are they so solitary for pleasure, someone asks, or pain? For both; yet I think it is rather from fear and sorrow, and so on.

“Hence they fear, desire, grieve and flee; they do not Look towards the daylight, shut in darkness and a blind prison.”