5 ms·

The true horror of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories lies in their confessions

93 points by lermontov 2mo ago

polotics 2mo ago
OK so there is a better angle to look at all this, there really is: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357868645_Edgar_Allan_Poe_was_on_the_autism_spectrum_overlapping_with_antisocial_personality_disorder_psychopathic_traits_addiction_and_depressive_disorder_Introduction#:~:text=had%20a%20very%20high%20IQ%2C%20a%20great,*%20His%20writing%20was%20other%2Dworldly%20and%20unique. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357868645_Edgar_All...
- saltcured 2mo ago
  Hmm, what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art? It's one thing for a biographical analysis to look at the person's real life experiences and relationships. It's another thing entirely when you start conflating the characters in the fiction with the author's own character...
  - mhurron 2mo ago
    > what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art? There isn't one because you can dislike a person and/or their works for literally any reason you want. Is there a label for insisting that people put aside their feelings and engage with something because you have deemed their reason for not doing so invalid?
    - lstodd 2mo ago
      [flagged]
    - lazide 2mo ago
      ‘Shoulding’?
    - saltcured 2mo ago
      I said nothing about like or dislike. I only implied that implied psychological traits of a fictional character are not evidence of the same psychological traits in the author. It's merely evidence that the author is capable of observing or imagining such traits in others.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
  - watwut 2mo ago
    > Hmm, what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art? It is called reading with context. Famous examples being, writing "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number" song and then their career ends with long term sentence over underage abuse. Or making movies that center old men in relationships with young women again and again and then ending up in host of scandals over similar.
- tecleandor 2mo ago
  That's terribly bad. Badly written, barely three pages long, bad references... Half of the list of references are of himself, but almost all of the references in the text are just from one book from 1965. And lots of affirmations of that text aren't unsustained or don't make sense. Terribly bad angle.
  - nephihaha 2mo ago
    Amazed to see it's from TCD. I don't think posthumous psychological diagnoses are particularly helpful. To diagnose someone you need to interact with them, observe them etc.
    - tecleandor 2mo ago
      I just checked that guy's page in Research Gate [0] and it's a collection of hundreds of two page essays where he reads a biography of a famous person and ends on a "conclusion" declaring that person was autistic. They're so badly written than some of them declare the "autism" in the title, but then on the "conclusion" say something else. On his website he says that in 2010 reached "...a milestone of diagnosing over 5,000 individuals with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, showcasing his extensive clinical expertise and commitment to patient care.". Even if I do the math from the beginning of his research in the 70s, that's a diagnose every two or three days non stop including weekends. He's either a) counting all the diagnoses done on the clinics he owns (I've seen referrals in Reddit), b) Counting his quick diagnoses that he makes from a biography he reads in the morning, c) really doing 3 or 4 diagnoses a week, while doing his research, giving interviews, appearing in Hitler documentaries [1] and writing books. -- 0: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Fitzgerald-6 1: https://professormichaelfitzgerald.eu/695-2/
      - kbelder 2mo ago
        >...a milestone of diagnosing over 5,000 individuals with autism and Asperger’s syndrome Maybe he spent an afternoon browsing HN? Seriously, I agree, remote diagnosis of psychological conditions is wildly unprofessional, and in this case the schtick this guy is working is a huge red flag. Nobody should take him seriously.
- _superposition_ 2mo ago
  I think you may be missing the point. This post was an absolute joy to read.
  - ricardobeat 2mo ago
    Reducing people to [ ] vetted and [x] refused boxes seems to have become a favorite pasttime worlwide.
- nephihaha 2mo ago
  Is there anyone not suspected to be autistic these days? Including me. Personally my finger points more in the direction of Emily Dickinson and James Joyce.
thataccount 2mo ago
Poe's life had many complications due to poverty and jealousy that made his being a literary genius almost irrelevant. Researching his death produces even more questions than answers, as a strong case could be made that he was made to appear to have died of a morphine overdose in a ditch.
ricardobeat 2mo ago
A little tangent, but > With a peak circulation of forty thousand—enormous for its time How was it possible to make a living - I imagine a full editorial team, writers, printers, office workers - with this volume of sales, while today, magazines with zero distribution cost, and with millions of subscribers are going under. Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
- Exoristos 2mo ago
  What percentage of Condé Nast's or Bertelsmann's gross receipts do you think goes directly to editorial and print workers?
- Swizec 2mo ago
  > Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives? The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter. In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level
  - michael0church 2mo ago
    [dead]
    - nephihaha 2mo ago
      I was reading about 19th century Russian writers recently. Very few of them made much money and some like Turgenev and Tolstoy were personally wealthy.
      - Mikhail_Edoshin 2mo ago
        Chekhov went from rags to riches. But this was closer to the end of the century.
jan_m_savage 2mo ago
The author of this article needs to hit the books--yesterday. The conditions she describes as 'perversity' is just the heightened response of an over-stressed brain. The suicidal thoughts (that still horrify the person thinking them) aren't due to a so-called Freudian perversity as the author implies, but are a first step towards total mental breakdown (which actually ends up in suicide, due to to the struggle with such thoughts--which is a form of depression). When I was extremely stressed for long periods of time, with no solution in sight, I did enter this stage. Photos I took for a mugshot in this period show a slight shine in my eyes that I hadn't before (that's another sign the brain is disintegrating). I'd stand over overpasses and watch cars drive by, and then a little voice would tell me: jump! jump! while another thought which felt more stronger, would consider this horrifying and made me reflect on why I was thinking such thoughts. It wasn't limited to the visible possibilities, either. Frequently when the stress would become unbearable, a little strange thought would make me think of tall buildings and let me imagine that by jumping from one, my problems would cease. I've recovered from those thoughts now -- because luckily my stressors were eliminated -- and I no longer experience such thoughts or voices. I mention all this to help others realize that they need to seek help and solve their stressors instead of falling back on the quack-doctor Freud's ideas that "oh it's in our nature to be perverse!".
- strken 2mo ago
  I have the impression you could be confusing suicidality with the little voice that says "what if I stuck my finger in the candle wax?" or "what if I forgot to put on clothes before going to work?" and only mentions tall buildings once or twice a year. I'm pretty sure the latter is really common. I've always thought it was my brain generating failure cases for risk assessment. We think "What if I dropped this bottle of water on my lap while driving and crashed?" and then we take more care not to drop it.
  - kranner 2mo ago
    GP mentions concurrent extreme stress and multiple variations of suicidal ideation, along with a prediction of the relief that would bring. Also, that the thoughts stopped once the stress did. Not sure how they could describe suicidality more clearly. Speaking as someone who has also experienced it due to chronic health conditions that had gotten particularly bad for a while.
aag 2mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe_Toaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe_Toaster
ilaksh 2mo ago
This is really interesting and a fun read, but the way they mix in dated psychology around this historical figure in a serious way without much reference to subsequent work adds up to pretension.

93 points by lermontov 2mo ago

OK so there is a better angle to look at all this, there really is: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357868645_Edgar_Allan_Poe_was_on_the_autism_spectrum_overlapping_with_antisocial_personality_disorder_psychopathic_traits_addiction_and_depressive_disorder_Introduction#:~:text=had%20a%20very%20high%20IQ%2C%20a%20great,*%20His%20writing%20was%20other%2Dworldly%20and%20unique. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357868645_Edgar_All...

saltcured 2mo ago
Hmm, what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art? It's one thing for a biographical analysis to look at the person's real life experiences and relationships. It's another thing entirely when you start conflating the characters in the fiction with the author's own character...
- mhurron 2mo ago
  > what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art? There isn't one because you can dislike a person and/or their works for literally any reason you want. Is there a label for insisting that people put aside their feelings and engage with something because you have deemed their reason for not doing so invalid?
  - lstodd 2mo ago
    [flagged]
  - lazide 2mo ago
    ‘Shoulding’?
  - saltcured 2mo ago
    I said nothing about like or dislike. I only implied that implied psychological traits of a fictional character are not evidence of the same psychological traits in the author. It's merely evidence that the author is capable of observing or imagining such traits in others.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- watwut 2mo ago
  > Hmm, what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art? It is called reading with context. Famous examples being, writing "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number" song and then their career ends with long term sentence over underage abuse. Or making movies that center old men in relationships with young women again and again and then ending up in host of scandals over similar.
tecleandor 2mo ago
That's terribly bad. Badly written, barely three pages long, bad references... Half of the list of references are of himself, but almost all of the references in the text are just from one book from 1965. And lots of affirmations of that text aren't unsustained or don't make sense. Terribly bad angle.
- nephihaha 2mo ago
  Amazed to see it's from TCD. I don't think posthumous psychological diagnoses are particularly helpful. To diagnose someone you need to interact with them, observe them etc.
  - tecleandor 2mo ago
    I just checked that guy's page in Research Gate [0] and it's a collection of hundreds of two page essays where he reads a biography of a famous person and ends on a "conclusion" declaring that person was autistic. They're so badly written than some of them declare the "autism" in the title, but then on the "conclusion" say something else. On his website he says that in 2010 reached "...a milestone of diagnosing over 5,000 individuals with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, showcasing his extensive clinical expertise and commitment to patient care.". Even if I do the math from the beginning of his research in the 70s, that's a diagnose every two or three days non stop including weekends. He's either a) counting all the diagnoses done on the clinics he owns (I've seen referrals in Reddit), b) Counting his quick diagnoses that he makes from a biography he reads in the morning, c) really doing 3 or 4 diagnoses a week, while doing his research, giving interviews, appearing in Hitler documentaries [1] and writing books. -- 0: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Fitzgerald-6 1: https://professormichaelfitzgerald.eu/695-2/
    - kbelder 2mo ago
      >...a milestone of diagnosing over 5,000 individuals with autism and Asperger’s syndrome Maybe he spent an afternoon browsing HN? Seriously, I agree, remote diagnosis of psychological conditions is wildly unprofessional, and in this case the schtick this guy is working is a huge red flag. Nobody should take him seriously.
_superposition_ 2mo ago
I think you may be missing the point. This post was an absolute joy to read.
- ricardobeat 2mo ago
  Reducing people to [ ] vetted and [x] refused boxes seems to have become a favorite pasttime worlwide.
nephihaha 2mo ago
Is there anyone not suspected to be autistic these days? Including me. Personally my finger points more in the direction of Emily Dickinson and James Joyce.

thataccount 2mo ago

Poe's life had many complications due to poverty and jealousy that made his being a literary genius almost irrelevant. Researching his death produces even more questions than answers, as a strong case could be made that he was made to appear to have died of a morphine overdose in a ditch.

ricardobeat 2mo ago

A little tangent, but > With a peak circulation of forty thousand—enormous for its time How was it possible to make a living - I imagine a full editorial team, writers, printers, office workers - with this volume of sales, while today, magazines with zero distribution cost, and with millions of subscribers are going under. Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?

Exoristos 2mo ago
What percentage of Condé Nast's or Bertelsmann's gross receipts do you think goes directly to editorial and print workers?
Swizec 2mo ago
> Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives? The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter. In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level
- michael0church 2mo ago
  [dead]
  - nephihaha 2mo ago
    I was reading about 19th century Russian writers recently. Very few of them made much money and some like Turgenev and Tolstoy were personally wealthy.
    - Mikhail_Edoshin 2mo ago
      Chekhov went from rags to riches. But this was closer to the end of the century.

jan_m_savage 2mo ago

The author of this article needs to hit the books--yesterday. The conditions she describes as 'perversity' is just the heightened response of an over-stressed brain. The suicidal thoughts (that still horrify the person thinking them) aren't due to a so-called Freudian perversity as the author implies, but are a first step towards total mental breakdown (which actually ends up in suicide, due to to the struggle with such thoughts--which is a form of depression). When I was extremely stressed for long periods of time, with no solution in sight, I did enter this stage. Photos I took for a mugshot in this period show a slight shine in my eyes that I hadn't before (that's another sign the brain is disintegrating). I'd stand over overpasses and watch cars drive by, and then a little voice would tell me: jump! jump! while another thought which felt more stronger, would consider this horrifying and made me reflect on why I was thinking such thoughts. It wasn't limited to the visible possibilities, either. Frequently when the stress would become unbearable, a little strange thought would make me think of tall buildings and let me imagine that by jumping from one, my problems would cease. I've recovered from those thoughts now -- because luckily my stressors were eliminated -- and I no longer experience such thoughts or voices. I mention all this to help others realize that they need to seek help and solve their stressors instead of falling back on the quack-doctor Freud's ideas that "oh it's in our nature to be perverse!".

strken 2mo ago
I have the impression you could be confusing suicidality with the little voice that says "what if I stuck my finger in the candle wax?" or "what if I forgot to put on clothes before going to work?" and only mentions tall buildings once or twice a year. I'm pretty sure the latter is really common. I've always thought it was my brain generating failure cases for risk assessment. We think "What if I dropped this bottle of water on my lap while driving and crashed?" and then we take more care not to drop it.
- kranner 2mo ago
  GP mentions concurrent extreme stress and multiple variations of suicidal ideation, along with a prediction of the relief that would bring. Also, that the thoughts stopped once the stress did. Not sure how they could describe suicidality more clearly. Speaking as someone who has also experienced it due to chronic health conditions that had gotten particularly bad for a while.

aag 2mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe_Toaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe_Toaster

ilaksh 2mo ago

This is really interesting and a fun read, but the way they mix in dated psychology around this historical figure in a serious way without much reference to subsequent work adds up to pretension.