Word: melancholia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
AMPHIGOREY by Edward Gorey. Unpaged. Putnam. $12.95. Corey's grueling tales dwell lightly on melancholia and misfortune; the illustrations are precise, deadpan and tenebrific. Together they create a quaint, surreal world where horror and humor blandly lurk on every page. Fifteen of Gorey's works are collected here, including "The Curious Sofa" (which may be the ultimate sexual instrument). Only for those who think they would like to smile at an unfurling nightmare...
...Danish theologian-philosopher Sören Kierkegaard called despair "the sickness unto death." His description also applies to the severe psychiatric illnesses once labeled melancholia by Freud. These are not the down moods that plague everyone occasionally, but immobilizing and devastating conditions that often cause physical signs and symptoms like loss of appetite and weight, insomnia and slowness of body movement...
...breakdowns, Franklin Pierce was an alcoholic, Abraham Lincoln had recurring periods of near-suicidal depression, Rutherford Hayes as a young man wandered about the streets of Sandusky, Ohio, weeping uncontrollably. Lesser officials have also been afflicted. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal committed suicide in 1949 while hospitalized for involutional melancholia. Alabama Governor George Wallace, who announced last week that he would not seek a third-party nomination this year, still receives a 10% disability check from the Veterans Administration because of "psychoneurosis" incurred during World War II. As for Eagleton's illness, medical experts know neither what causes depression...
There is no clear-cut medical definition of depression (which used to be known as melancholia). No consensus exists on whether it is merely an aggravated degree of the sadness or "blues" that everyone feels at times, whether it stems from some deeply rooted inner psychological condition, or whether it has a biochemical origin in the body. Pragmatically, it tends to be defined by its symptoms: feelings of worthlessness, guilt and anxiety; an inability to find pleasure in normal activities; early-morning sleeplessness; fatigue and change of weight; and occasionally, serious consideration of suicide. When a person's feelings...
Underneath the ebullient Kissinger exterior, friends have detected a touch of melancholia. His ego and his humor are a cover for his closely held deeper feelings, which he is reluctant to talk about or share in public. But at the moment he has cause to be contented. At the Washington Press Club last week, he joked about how he would like to "come to meetings of the National Security Council in dark glasses and tennis shoes. And I would like to hold all my briefings over the longdistance telephone. If I didn't like the way it turned...