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Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

213 points by PikelEmi 10mo ago

tossandthrow 10mo ago
> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems. (emphasis is mine) I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.
- nephihaha 10mo ago
  What do they mean by "vulnerability" here? There is this constant redefinition of words. In mainstream usage, "vulnerability" is not a good thing as it means you are open to problems and can easily be attacked. They presumably mean it in the sense of being "open to your own emotions" or tender. Silly misuse of words for a serious subject.
  - falcor84 10mo ago
    I don't think there's any redefinition here, and it's exactly this dichotomy that makes this a big issue. Vulnerability is indeed not "a good thing", but the issue is that the struggle to constantly keep yourself invulnerable at all times is a "worse thing", leading to many stress-related issues (amongst other problems). So the modern psychological advice, as I understand it, is to find particular people, spaces and opportunities where we can let our guard down, even at the risk of being open to attack, because the alternative is worse. There's a stoic quote I love: > our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them - Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let... The way I see it, if you never let yourself be vulnerable, you can never fully feel your troubles, and you cannot fully overcome them.
    - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
      I guess the question is -> why do we need that guard in the first place? Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school?
      - ben_w 10mo ago
        > Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school? Yes to both. Psychopaths do to everyone what everyone does to out-groups, and we're all someone else's out-group.
        akimbostrawman 10mo ago
        You really don't need to reach that far. As a man if you are too often vulnerable, too much, for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time you will loose the respect of your partner and soon after there love.
        andersonpico 10mo ago
        divorced dad take
        akimbostrawman 10mo ago
        Crazy cat lady take. See I can make useless remarks too.
        andersonpico 10mo ago
        your whole text above is useless for everyone but you, but I understand you can't contain how you feel about woman
        akimbostrawman 10mo ago
        Amateur level reflection
  - Tarks 10mo ago
    My take is you've got the right reasoning but the wrong conclusion, I agree with your contextless definition of vulnerability and with the use of it in this context, vulnerability makes people vulnerable, by definition. From my experience, the reason you'd risk being vulnerable is there are some things you can't achieve without doing so, it'd be like trying to do surgery with a scalpel on someone wearing platemail, or trying to detect radiation with a Geiger counter behind 20 meters of lead, for some tools to work properly they're required to be in a position where they're 'vulnerable', like eyes. I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance. Which in my opinion is worse than nothing as at least when you're not faking something it's easier to agree that you haven't really tried it.
    - andersonpico 10mo ago
      > I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance. You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not and performative anything is not required for acceptance, but people are not accepting of others who deal with their social interaction in these terms and your very language betrays where you stand. These imaginary requirements for affection are not what's sad here.
      - Tarks 10mo ago
        > You only think it's performative because you think people are signalling You're correct that I think something because I think something else. You're assuming I'm unwilling or unable to tell the difference. I don't see a betrayal to state that I think it's a shame that people that have copied a performative action, gotten nothing out of it and are then hesitant to try again because they feel they've already tried that avenue and had bad results. It's the same feeling of sadness I get when people have tried therapy, for whatever reason haven't gotten much out of it and then write it off as a sham. I do get that you're saying 'aha ! I've detected your true intent through my clever analysis of your language' - consider your assumption "You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not" They're not? You can state absolute facts with confidence about the people I've experienced in my life that you don't know anything about? That is either some amazing superpower or regular old conjecture. It might help you to notice how many times I said I think or in my opinion, and how many absolutes you're willing to state.
  - tene80i 10mo ago
    It’s not a misuse - it’s exactly the intended meaning and it is perfectly common in mainstream usage. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable means you are indeed open to attack. But it is also a large part of emotional connection. The alternative is being a fortress - with all the relationship problems that entails. The very fact that you see vulnerability as “bad” is a perfect example of what that language is intended to highlight.
    - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
      Is vulnerable about letting people know how you feel or your weaknesses? What about letting people know how you feel and your weaknesses while not caring if someone judges you for it? Is that being vulnerable or not?
      - erikerikson 10mo ago
        I would say yes. Your weaknesses, if truly shared are weaknesses which can be used against you to hurt you and thereby you are vulnerable to them. Further, even if you don't care about the judgment of others then you can still be harmed by decisions of and social coordination between people who judge you. We agree, assuming self knowledge, that the judgments of others tell you about them rather than about you.
        mewpmewp2 10mo ago
        This leads me to a conclusion that someone can only be truly vulnerable around people that you might consider toxic? It's unavoidable in many cases, but I'd prefer a life where I would surround myself with people who tried to build each other and not take advantage of each other. I think it's definitely possible, and I think I'm pretty much there at least. This leads me to the next point, which is that I don't think it's a problem about men unwilling to be vulnerable, it's more so about them happening to be around people who might use it against them (and it succeeding effectively, ergo there being a critical mass of people supporting this).
        10mo ago
  - oersted 10mo ago
    I think you are projecting the sense of the word from computer security onto people. But "vulnerability" always has that second sense in common speech, as in "showing vulnerability". If a person is actually open to being harmed in some way we use the phrasing "they are vulnerable to ...", which has quite a different meaning.
    - nephihaha 10mo ago
      No, definitely not thinking in computer terms. I know the word from a completely different context. I think what they mean is sensitivity (which can be good or bad) and tenderness (which is generally good). But there are contexts in which it is not helpful. We have a problem with street violence where I live, and showing your emotional side to a potential attacker is not the best way of avoiding trouble.
  - m4rtink 10mo ago
    CVEs basically.
- paganel 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - dmos62 10mo ago
    I'd be surprised if the people I worked with would think twice before working with someone that's been in psychiatric care, though I can't be sure, because I don't know that any of them did. I know that I wouldn't care. I have friends that stayed in hospitals for psychiatric reasons: they'd be great to work with, I think.
    - messe 10mo ago
      Yeah, I have a number of coworkers that have shared with me that they are on psychiatric medications, and have discussed mental health with. It's becoming normalized, and that's a good thing.
    - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
      I think in many places there's now enough of critical mass where people are understanding enough and call out anyone who uses that information negatively towards the person.
    - paganel 10mo ago
      > because I don't know that any of them did This is telling in itself.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago
      It’s still definitely a big deal. Note that the CIA and the NSA routinely declare ex-employees that whistleblow or leak as “mentally ill.” It depends on the company. I worked for fairly “stolid” companies, for most of my career, and I suspect that they would treat mentally-ill people badly. Mental illness is something that, unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with. I have severe mental illness in my family (I deal with it every day), and I spend a significant part of my life, interacting with folks at various stages of recovery from it. I have been seeing therapists for much of my life. When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with autism, but was never told, so I spent decades, trying to “fix” myself, before finding out. Once I found out that I was “on the spectrum,” I realized that it can’t be “fixed”; only mitigated, and things started improving quickly, at that point. That said, I think “mentally-ill” means “diagnosed and professionally-treated,” to most folks. It’s my opinion, that there’s a lot of undiagnosed/untreated mental illness out there. Just looking at the threads of interaction, on any Internet community, makes that clear. One “tell,” that I have encountered, is when someone has extremely strong opinions on psychiatry. It’s not something most folks even think about, so it’s unusual, when it’s a big deal to someone. Mental illness also tends to get worse, as we get older, if untreated. An “eccentric” young man, may become an old hermit, flying around, keeping his piss in canopic jars. Much of what we call “mental illness,” is actually self-developed coping mechanisms, in response to trauma, or brain-chemistry imbalance. That’s why getting medication doesn’t just “fix” us. We need to seek help in defusing the habits and rituals that were developed to help deal with the problem.
- apples_oranges 10mo ago
  I neither like the taboo nor the opposite. Too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc. That may be, but I wish we would handle it all more privately...
  - wiseowise 10mo ago
    > Too much psychology talk in every day life I'm curious to hear how often do you hear it in every day life outside of the internet.
    - tossandthrow 10mo ago
      In all fairness, the internet is for many people a near 100% part of their life. Especially for people working remotely without a family.
      - koakuma-chan 10mo ago
        HN is like 70% of my life.
        pxc 10mo ago
        I also spend what feels to me like a lot of time here. I like it, despite its problems. But HN isn't good enough to deserve to be 70% of anyone's life. :(
        koakuma-chan 10mo ago
        I agree, but it's 12:10 PM, and I am in my third meeting, pretending to pay attention. I wish the job market improved.
        pxc 10mo ago
        I feel that. I wish the same.
- joshcsimmons 10mo ago
  That's right. I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Online feedback was overwhelmingly positive but with plenty of gaslighting sprinkled in, e.g. "everybody's a bit autistic", "that just sounds like working in tech". Minimization is always the default go-to for men's mental health issues.
  - vacuity 10mo ago
    In the instance of your simulator, I think this is moreso due to the popular idea that people in tech tend to be autistic and the cultural desire to be part of the ingroup, rather than a snub at autistic people/men.
  - aspenmayer 10mo ago
    > I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Would you mind linking to the game so I can check it out?
- FireBeyond 10mo ago
  Right. Even here in HN I was arguing with someone who has the hot take that “more conservative leaning men have less mental health issues than liberal and left leaning men and I don’t think we do enough to think about why exactly that might be and what those liberal men could do differently”, and got very angry when I suggested that maybe the reason for that was that conservative men were less likely to seek help or treatment or to even acknowledge, instead of outright deny, any mental health challenges, for fear of anything from seeming weak to being ostracized.
  - baumy 10mo ago
    From experience, my response to this is, por que no los dos? I am 100% certain that conservative men being less likely to seek help is _part_ of the reason why various data shows them as having fewer mental health issues than their liberal counterparts. But I doubt that's the whole picture, and it's also by far the least interesting part of the picture - the cause and effect there is pretty simple and clear. As another commenter in this thread observes, there's "too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc". I think that's part of it as well, and it's not difficult to believe that this is something that impacts "liberal and left leaning men" more than conservatives, due to sheer exposure if nothing else. I think you do a disservice to the discussion if you dismiss this outright.
  - johnsmith1840 10mo ago
    My controverial opinion is that the "left" has more mental problems because of the therapy and pharmasutical industries. Conservatives are less likely to see proffessional help but not help. They simply rely on family which imo has a better incentive structure than therapists. Anecdotally I've watched a lot of people go down the therapy and medication route over the years. I've noticed they become more unstable as time passes. Maybe that would have happened anyways. or Maybe it's because humans weren't designed to spill our guts to strangers and then take prolonged phycoactive drugs to fix mental problems that science does not understand.
  - tossandthrow 10mo ago
    I agree that there is some support that working with your problems create them. As written in a sibling thread, I am mostly concerned with the relative visibility of issues as that creates equal opportunity. The implication of not focusing on men's issues is that we can not focus on women's issues either. Good luck fighting for that.
andreidbr 10mo ago
I re-read most of the stories a few years ago. It's shocking/surprising/depressing just how many things repeat themselves. From the obvious, veteran of Afghanistan war in the form of Dr. Watson, to London being a melting pot of so many cultures, with high society reigning from ... on high. I also agree that the view directly into the state of mind of both Watson and Holmes was refreshing.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 10mo ago
  It's notable that the BBC recent adaptation set in the present day was also able to make Watson an Afghanistan veteran. I read the stories as an child, and seen various of the film adaptations; Holmes became a meme even within Conan Doyle's lifetime, but I'm sure I'd benefit from going back to the source as an adult.
- grebc 10mo ago
  Realising current day events rhyme very closely with historical events is pretty eye opening. It’s a tragedy of the commons we are all largely oblivious as a species.
  - aitchnyu 10mo ago
    Is there a better history pedagogy? I remember history as a set of dates and Kings. Only later I learned about Roman demagoguery, the relationship between newly independant India to present day and other topics that teach there is nothing new under the sun.
Dumblydorr 10mo ago
My personal favorite is The five napoleons. Is someone breaking Napoleonic busts out of some idee fixe? Or is there a motive of crime behind the seemingly delusional behavior?
- boredhedgehog 10mo ago
  *six
- Archelaos 10mo ago
  I suspect that it is purely a literary invention. The core idea of the story is a variant of the "Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", where a stolen gem was eaten by a goose. For the new plot, Conan Doyle needed some identical copies of something where a jewel could be hidden. These copies need to be destroyed, in order to reveal the jewel. If you decide on using busts in 1904 for an American and British audience, Napoleon is an ideal candidate: notorious, but not venerated. Imagine what a scandal it might have been if busts of the late Queen Victoria or of Abraham Lincoln had been smashed.
mold_aid 10mo ago
Original source: https://theconversation.com/arthur-conan-doyle-explored-mens-mental-health-through-his-sherlock-holmes-stories-246728 https://theconversation.com/arthur-conan-doyle-explored-mens...
- mold_aid 10mo ago
  Although tbf this is probably one of Linford's undergraduate papers
  - donkey_brains 10mo ago
    No kidding.
FridayoLeary 10mo ago
I feel like this article is revisionism. The author is making a wild assumption that no male, no matter the circumstances was presented with having issues or trauma in victorian literature. Being nice and sympathetic is also not a concept which was only discovered recently. The article just throws in key words like mental health to make it sound relevant for today. Maybe the only interesting part is that drug use was considered (barely) socially acceptable and holmes was still respectable. Note that he wasn't an alcoholic. Shout out to the bbc adaptation which does a fantastic and hilarious job of portraying holmes as an erratic drug addict.
- niemandhier 10mo ago
  Britain was a very repressed culture at the time and for a long time after this. An Englishman’s proverbial “stiff upper lip” came to be a cliche for a reason. “Boarding school syndrome” would be the term coined for the emotional damage that was an educational ideal for a long while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_school#Psychological_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_school#Psychological_...
  - mosura 10mo ago
    Yet the UK was most successful when led by people from that system.
    - FridayoLeary 10mo ago
      Was? The old boys network and class still plays a big role in UK politics. I'm convinced that the behaviour of Boris Johnson and even Starmer is incomprehensible without that unspoken element. Is it a bad thing? perhaps. Is it a recipe for disaster? I would say the historical evidence is pretty clear that no, not really. It worth pointing out that the US where class is much less important is more successful. In my head Holmes is descended from minor nobility while Watson is solidly upper middle class. Now, Labours envy based attacks on the private schools that gave them all their advantages in life helps nobody. It won't matter to rich kids and is just a barrier to success for middle class kids. When you consider the quality of state education, at least there should be some educated people to run the country, even if it's a bad system. Ot but hogwarts is a great parody of the British boarding school system. A drafty, dangerous castle full of dangerous animals, homicidal, abusive and incompetent teachers, serious injuries are a fact of life and complacent staff. Add in the most incompetent and negligent headmaster in all literature, who hardly does anything throughout the series and thinks that soul sucking demons are an acceptable security measure to protect his students and runs the school as his personal domain. Throw in class based bullying in the student body and you have everything. I always found it striking that the most hatable character in the series is a school inspector (Umbridge).
donkey_brains 10mo ago
How did this make it to the top of HN? It’s an extremely facile work and reads exactly like a high school essay: “In having his character consider execution to protect his and his family’s reputation, Doyle explored the societal expectations of Victorian masculinity and how men struggled with such pressures.” It’s an interesting topic, but the paper makes no revelatory statements and provides a very superficial analysis of Doyle’s work. Hell, it doesn’t even provide a single quote from Holmes to illustrate the mental anguish or “battles with drug addiction” which the author claims that he experiences in the books. Holmes’ 7% “solution of cocaine” usage was never presented as rising to the level of addiction in the books, by the way. Nor does the paper delve into the repressive nature of the Victorian society in which these stories were written and released to show us what was so novel about Doyle allegedly tackling these subjects and why he might have had to merely allude to them rather than discussing them frankly. All in all, this essay is a poor showing and would have earned the author a C at best in high school English for failing to provide adequate supporting evidence for her assertions.
- Aromasin 10mo ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if many of those who upvoted this did so because the agree with the sentiment in principle, not because they read the article and appreciated the contents.
- mold_aid 10mo ago
  >How did this make it to the top of HN? It’s an extremely facile work and reads >exactly like a high school essay Asked and answered
- bell-cot 10mo ago
  If HNer's want to talk about something, or just feel the topic is important, then a short & weak article is more than good enough to be a sort of seed crystal. (If you know of better articles on this topic, then please provide links!)
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  Perhaps it made it to the top of HN because there are a lot of Sherlock Holmes fans here who are curious about some of the nuances of the character not often cited. That the article itself may be lacking in specifics may not be a problem if it has at least whetted the curiosity of a number of us. (And we can then seek out more details, or better still, read the whole series of books with a keener eye.)
JKCalhoun 10mo ago
Not from Doyle, but the film, "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution", presents Holmes as very vulnerable. Especially given the amazing cast, it is an excellent portrayal. That Holmes would encounter Sigmund Freud seemed to me at the time as a wild use of artistic license. Since then though I have come to believe that there were a lot fewer people on the Earth in general than I could really appreciate at the time, and some of these luminaries may well have shared a drink together. (So why not a fictional luminary as well?)
- varjag 10mo ago
  Luminaries also were concentrated in but a few spots of the world at the time: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771
  - valiant55 10mo ago
    I'm not sure I'd refer to some of these individuals as "luminaries" which typically has a positive connotation.
    - varjag 10mo ago
      Fair!
- ompogUe 10mo ago
  One of the Rathbone/Bruce films in the 40s has Holmes chasing Nazi's for some microfilm. I understand "supporting the fighting spirit" of the times, but still find it difficult to reconcile.
Barry-Perkins 10mo ago
[dead]
mosura 10mo ago
[flagged]
- afavour 10mo ago
  If you read the article you’ll discover no, they don’t.
- watwut 10mo ago
  Drug addiction, loneliness and depression are masculinity instead of mental health problems? What about suicide?
  - mosura 10mo ago
    All entirely standard male behaviors. Just look at history for 30 seconds.
    - Starman_Jones 10mo ago
      You should probably reconsider putting loneliness and depression on a pedestal here.
      - mosura 10mo ago
        Where is this happening? The whole point is calling them “mental health problems” infers there is something systematically wrong with them as opposed to the obvious result of putting men in modern society.
        watwut 10mo ago
        Previously you said they are basically traditional masculinity and what men always were. Now they are result of modern society?
        mosura 10mo ago
        A man lives by himself in the woods: is he lonely or depressed?
delichon 10mo ago
> [Holmes] battles with drug addiction, loneliness and depression. His genius thrives in part because of these vulnerabilities, not despite them. If there was a pill for that, how many masterpieces like the Sherlock Holmes books would never be made? The products of misery have always been the devil's advocate's best arguments. If Doyle had not sympathized with Holmes' afflictions, he could not have written him. Or if he had written Holmes as a Mary Sue we wouldn't have cared. (Though for some reason it worked for Harry Potter.) An effective education requires a certain amount of torture, and it works better when self inflicted.
- chuckadams 10mo ago
  For every tortured genius whose passion comes from pain, there's a hundred who never get started because they lack the energy to get out of bed half the time, are slowly killing themselves with alcohol and other substances, and so on. But a pill alone doesn't fix that -- hell, current research shows most of those pills do no better than a placebo -- so the mythology of the nobility of suffering will continue for some time hence. (Fun fact, you know that "lorem ipsum" text that's used as filler? It's not nonsense Latin, it's from a speech by Cicero where he denounces the stoic ideal of suffering being good for the soul, or at least "pointless" suffering anyway)
  - delichon 10mo ago
    > or at least "pointless" suffering anyway What bulletproof word choice. Robert Harris called Cicero the first modern politician, and that looks right.
  - ongy 10mo ago
    Do you have a link to research pointing at antidepressants being no better than placebo?
- nicechianti 10mo ago
  [dead]
- joshcsimmons 10mo ago
boh 10mo ago
We live in a culture of transparency where you are rewarded for confessing your weaknesses. At the time people tackled their issues outside of print, outside of public discourse. Just because there's no record of a person's private life doesn't mean it was taboo. It's just not for you to know about.
- podgorniy 10mo ago
  > We live in a culture of transparency where you are rewarded for confessing your weaknesses. Where exactly do you observe this?
  - lazide 10mo ago
    I suspect they are talking about pop culture which is awash with drama. But it always has been, just less self-important/self-reporting drama (x is getting divorced because they told us!), and more ‘we just found out x celebrity is getting divorced’.
  - akimbostrawman 10mo ago
    HR
claw-el 10mo ago
One reason I like CBS’s Elementary’s depiction of Sherlock (maybe more so than BBC’s Sherlock) is because how Elementary treats Sherlock’s mental health and addiction recovery as central to the character. As great as Sherlock is at solving cases, he still struggles greatly to handle his own mental health and addiction recovery, which makes him more grounded to earth.
- enlyth 10mo ago
  Also why I enjoyed House which is basically modern Sherlock Holmes in a medical setting
  - claw-el 10mo ago
    The American series (House and Elementary) has the advantage of more seasons and episodes, which I think is sometimes required to showcase the challenges of drug addiction and mental health. The fact that these characters having to come back to face the same problem over and over again episode after episode is more true to the nature of the mental health problem itself. BBC Sherlock has too little episodes to bring audience along a prolonged struggle with mental health.
    - isk517 10mo ago
      BBC Sherlock also slowly morphed him into a less empathic version of the Doctor from Doctor Who.
      - truelson 10mo ago
        But I did like how it started with Watson joining him to get a hit of adrenaline and not deal with his soldiering past. Was a great scene. Also, re: Dr. Who, Moffat gonna Moffat
        isk517 10mo ago
        It's definitely one of those pieces of media that is extremely frustrating because of how close it came to being an all-time great adaptation. Moffat needed somebody in the writers room with him to tell him 'no' sometimes.
sudosteph 10mo ago
I've read a lot of Holmes recently, and while I'm not a man, I do think Doyle portrays Holmes' issues in a way that is relatable. Holmes core thing though is that he has an almost ADHD-esque craving for novelty and tolerance for risk taking. He also can't stand not actively working on things, and when he's not working is when he's depressed. He doesn't seem to know how to actually feel good, but he knows how to be useful, thus his penchant for productivity boosters like cocaine. He's a great character, but I wouldn't over pathologize him according to today's understanding of mental health. Doyle was a physician and gave Holmes various traits similar to what he had seen in his patients.
- thesz 10mo ago
  > ...when he's not working is when he's depressed. The cure for that is known since dawn of time - walking. Holmes, being an exceptionally observant man, definitely would observe that walks raise the mood, allow for (most often silly) ideas to come and, last but not least, increase observation capabilities, attention to details and speed of thought. Arthur Conan-Doyle did an extensive walks back then, but his hero was written to not to. This is not right.
  - sireat 10mo ago
    As I recall Holmes did in fact do a lot of walking. He vacillated between periods of inactivity(cocaine, violin, shooting V in wall with a revolver) and intense activity (taking up disguises and doing various physical activities including walking all across London and elsewhere. Just because your logical mind says one thing is good to do and you know you should do it you are not going to always obey your rider, the inertia of the elephant takes over. So you need a trigger to snap out of it, for Holmes it was a new case.
    - geoka9 10mo ago
      > and intense activity AFAIR those had a specific purpose (chasing a perp, tracking down evidence, etc.). Most of his thinking he did sitting in a chair and smoking his pipe for hours on end (sometimes the whole night).
elchief 10mo ago
Didn't Doyle support the White Feather movement, which led to many suicides?
GeoAtreides 10mo ago
Why is this post allowed but this one[1] (40 points, 84 comments) is flagged and buried? [1] New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46067363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46067363
- vacuity 10mo ago
  I'm not sure if you're asking a rhetorical question, but I believe it's because (whether right or wrong) the linked thread is perceived as belonging to the "redpilled, conservative, traditional masculinity" subculture.
  - GeoAtreides 10mo ago
    I'm not asking a rhetorical question. The flagged thread is flagged, not downvoted. 45 points, 87 comments. I doubt RAND[1] and IPSOS are in the redpilled subculture, that's quite the reach. Not everything touching on men's problems in the current age is redpilled [1] https://www.rand.org/about.html https://www.rand.org/about.html >The RAND American Life Panel and the Ipsos KnowledgePanel are nationally representative probability-based survey panels of adults in the United States
    - vacuity 10mo ago
      Well, I was commenting on why I think the thread was flagged, not whether I think it should be. Also, the main content of an HN thread is typically in the comments, not the link.
      - GeoAtreides 10mo ago
        >the main content of an HN thread is typically in the comments, not the link this is what's killing HN (and everything else, tbh)
        vacuity 10mo ago
GuB-42 10mo ago
I wonder how much of it is just Arthur Conon Doyle hating his character. Which has was known for as the stories progressed. He even killed him, just to resurrect him later because of public demand. He accumulated character flaws along the way, as if Doyle wanted to make Holmes as unsympathetic as he could without changing his core traits.
- nosianu 10mo ago
  > Arthur Conon Doyle hating his character But Holmes is not "unsympathetic" in any of the stories, so I don't see your theory matching the facts. > He accumulated character flaws along the way, as if Doyle wanted to make Holmes as unsympathetic as he could [citation needed] I don't even see the first part of that assertion fulfilled, and I read the books multiple times.
dang 10mo ago
Url changed from https://scienceclock.com/arthur-conan-doyle-delved-into-mens-mental-health-through-his-sherlock-holmes-stories/ https://scienceclock.com/arthur-conan-doyle-delved-into-mens..., which points to this.

213 points by PikelEmi 10mo ago

> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems. (emphasis is mine) I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.

nephihaha 10mo ago
What do they mean by "vulnerability" here? There is this constant redefinition of words. In mainstream usage, "vulnerability" is not a good thing as it means you are open to problems and can easily be attacked. They presumably mean it in the sense of being "open to your own emotions" or tender. Silly misuse of words for a serious subject.
- falcor84 10mo ago
  I don't think there's any redefinition here, and it's exactly this dichotomy that makes this a big issue. Vulnerability is indeed not "a good thing", but the issue is that the struggle to constantly keep yourself invulnerable at all times is a "worse thing", leading to many stress-related issues (amongst other problems). So the modern psychological advice, as I understand it, is to find particular people, spaces and opportunities where we can let our guard down, even at the risk of being open to attack, because the alternative is worse. There's a stoic quote I love: > our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them - Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let... The way I see it, if you never let yourself be vulnerable, you can never fully feel your troubles, and you cannot fully overcome them.
  - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
    I guess the question is -> why do we need that guard in the first place? Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school?
    - ben_w 10mo ago
      > Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school? Yes to both. Psychopaths do to everyone what everyone does to out-groups, and we're all someone else's out-group.
      - akimbostrawman 10mo ago
        You really don't need to reach that far. As a man if you are too often vulnerable, too much, for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time you will loose the respect of your partner and soon after there love.
        andersonpico 10mo ago
        divorced dad take
        akimbostrawman 10mo ago
        Crazy cat lady take. See I can make useless remarks too.
        andersonpico 10mo ago
        your whole text above is useless for everyone but you, but I understand you can't contain how you feel about woman
        akimbostrawman 10mo ago
        Amateur level reflection
- Tarks 10mo ago
  My take is you've got the right reasoning but the wrong conclusion, I agree with your contextless definition of vulnerability and with the use of it in this context, vulnerability makes people vulnerable, by definition. From my experience, the reason you'd risk being vulnerable is there are some things you can't achieve without doing so, it'd be like trying to do surgery with a scalpel on someone wearing platemail, or trying to detect radiation with a Geiger counter behind 20 meters of lead, for some tools to work properly they're required to be in a position where they're 'vulnerable', like eyes. I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance. Which in my opinion is worse than nothing as at least when you're not faking something it's easier to agree that you haven't really tried it.
  - andersonpico 10mo ago
    > I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance. You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not and performative anything is not required for acceptance, but people are not accepting of others who deal with their social interaction in these terms and your very language betrays where you stand. These imaginary requirements for affection are not what's sad here.
    - Tarks 10mo ago
      > You only think it's performative because you think people are signalling You're correct that I think something because I think something else. You're assuming I'm unwilling or unable to tell the difference. I don't see a betrayal to state that I think it's a shame that people that have copied a performative action, gotten nothing out of it and are then hesitant to try again because they feel they've already tried that avenue and had bad results. It's the same feeling of sadness I get when people have tried therapy, for whatever reason haven't gotten much out of it and then write it off as a sham. I do get that you're saying 'aha ! I've detected your true intent through my clever analysis of your language' - consider your assumption "You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not" They're not? You can state absolute facts with confidence about the people I've experienced in my life that you don't know anything about? That is either some amazing superpower or regular old conjecture. It might help you to notice how many times I said I think or in my opinion, and how many absolutes you're willing to state.
- tene80i 10mo ago
  It’s not a misuse - it’s exactly the intended meaning and it is perfectly common in mainstream usage. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable means you are indeed open to attack. But it is also a large part of emotional connection. The alternative is being a fortress - with all the relationship problems that entails. The very fact that you see vulnerability as “bad” is a perfect example of what that language is intended to highlight.
  - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
    Is vulnerable about letting people know how you feel or your weaknesses? What about letting people know how you feel and your weaknesses while not caring if someone judges you for it? Is that being vulnerable or not?
    - erikerikson 10mo ago
      I would say yes. Your weaknesses, if truly shared are weaknesses which can be used against you to hurt you and thereby you are vulnerable to them. Further, even if you don't care about the judgment of others then you can still be harmed by decisions of and social coordination between people who judge you. We agree, assuming self knowledge, that the judgments of others tell you about them rather than about you.
      - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
        This leads me to a conclusion that someone can only be truly vulnerable around people that you might consider toxic? It's unavoidable in many cases, but I'd prefer a life where I would surround myself with people who tried to build each other and not take advantage of each other. I think it's definitely possible, and I think I'm pretty much there at least. This leads me to the next point, which is that I don't think it's a problem about men unwilling to be vulnerable, it's more so about them happening to be around people who might use it against them (and it succeeding effectively, ergo there being a critical mass of people supporting this).
        10mo ago
- oersted 10mo ago
  I think you are projecting the sense of the word from computer security onto people. But "vulnerability" always has that second sense in common speech, as in "showing vulnerability". If a person is actually open to being harmed in some way we use the phrasing "they are vulnerable to ...", which has quite a different meaning.
  - nephihaha 10mo ago
    No, definitely not thinking in computer terms. I know the word from a completely different context. I think what they mean is sensitivity (which can be good or bad) and tenderness (which is generally good). But there are contexts in which it is not helpful. We have a problem with street violence where I live, and showing your emotional side to a potential attacker is not the best way of avoiding trouble.
- m4rtink 10mo ago
  CVEs basically.
paganel 10mo ago
[flagged]
- dmos62 10mo ago
  I'd be surprised if the people I worked with would think twice before working with someone that's been in psychiatric care, though I can't be sure, because I don't know that any of them did. I know that I wouldn't care. I have friends that stayed in hospitals for psychiatric reasons: they'd be great to work with, I think.
  - messe 10mo ago
    Yeah, I have a number of coworkers that have shared with me that they are on psychiatric medications, and have discussed mental health with. It's becoming normalized, and that's a good thing.
  - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
    I think in many places there's now enough of critical mass where people are understanding enough and call out anyone who uses that information negatively towards the person.
  - paganel 10mo ago
    > because I don't know that any of them did This is telling in itself.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago
    It’s still definitely a big deal. Note that the CIA and the NSA routinely declare ex-employees that whistleblow or leak as “mentally ill.” It depends on the company. I worked for fairly “stolid” companies, for most of my career, and I suspect that they would treat mentally-ill people badly. Mental illness is something that, unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with. I have severe mental illness in my family (I deal with it every day), and I spend a significant part of my life, interacting with folks at various stages of recovery from it. I have been seeing therapists for much of my life. When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with autism, but was never told, so I spent decades, trying to “fix” myself, before finding out. Once I found out that I was “on the spectrum,” I realized that it can’t be “fixed”; only mitigated, and things started improving quickly, at that point. That said, I think “mentally-ill” means “diagnosed and professionally-treated,” to most folks. It’s my opinion, that there’s a lot of undiagnosed/untreated mental illness out there. Just looking at the threads of interaction, on any Internet community, makes that clear. One “tell,” that I have encountered, is when someone has extremely strong opinions on psychiatry. It’s not something most folks even think about, so it’s unusual, when it’s a big deal to someone. Mental illness also tends to get worse, as we get older, if untreated. An “eccentric” young man, may become an old hermit, flying around, keeping his piss in canopic jars. Much of what we call “mental illness,” is actually self-developed coping mechanisms, in response to trauma, or brain-chemistry imbalance. That’s why getting medication doesn’t just “fix” us. We need to seek help in defusing the habits and rituals that were developed to help deal with the problem.
apples_oranges 10mo ago
I neither like the taboo nor the opposite. Too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc. That may be, but I wish we would handle it all more privately...
- wiseowise 10mo ago
  > Too much psychology talk in every day life I'm curious to hear how often do you hear it in every day life outside of the internet.
  - tossandthrow 10mo ago
    In all fairness, the internet is for many people a near 100% part of their life. Especially for people working remotely without a family.
    - koakuma-chan 10mo ago
      HN is like 70% of my life.
      - pxc 10mo ago
        I also spend what feels to me like a lot of time here. I like it, despite its problems. But HN isn't good enough to deserve to be 70% of anyone's life. :(
        koakuma-chan 10mo ago
        I agree, but it's 12:10 PM, and I am in my third meeting, pretending to pay attention. I wish the job market improved.
        pxc 10mo ago
        I feel that. I wish the same.
joshcsimmons 10mo ago
That's right. I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Online feedback was overwhelmingly positive but with plenty of gaslighting sprinkled in, e.g. "everybody's a bit autistic", "that just sounds like working in tech". Minimization is always the default go-to for men's mental health issues.
- vacuity 10mo ago
  In the instance of your simulator, I think this is moreso due to the popular idea that people in tech tend to be autistic and the cultural desire to be part of the ingroup, rather than a snub at autistic people/men.
- aspenmayer 10mo ago
  > I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Would you mind linking to the game so I can check it out?
FireBeyond 10mo ago
Right. Even here in HN I was arguing with someone who has the hot take that “more conservative leaning men have less mental health issues than liberal and left leaning men and I don’t think we do enough to think about why exactly that might be and what those liberal men could do differently”, and got very angry when I suggested that maybe the reason for that was that conservative men were less likely to seek help or treatment or to even acknowledge, instead of outright deny, any mental health challenges, for fear of anything from seeming weak to being ostracized.
- baumy 10mo ago
  From experience, my response to this is, por que no los dos? I am 100% certain that conservative men being less likely to seek help is _part_ of the reason why various data shows them as having fewer mental health issues than their liberal counterparts. But I doubt that's the whole picture, and it's also by far the least interesting part of the picture - the cause and effect there is pretty simple and clear. As another commenter in this thread observes, there's "too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc". I think that's part of it as well, and it's not difficult to believe that this is something that impacts "liberal and left leaning men" more than conservatives, due to sheer exposure if nothing else. I think you do a disservice to the discussion if you dismiss this outright.
- johnsmith1840 10mo ago
  My controverial opinion is that the "left" has more mental problems because of the therapy and pharmasutical industries. Conservatives are less likely to see proffessional help but not help. They simply rely on family which imo has a better incentive structure than therapists. Anecdotally I've watched a lot of people go down the therapy and medication route over the years. I've noticed they become more unstable as time passes. Maybe that would have happened anyways. or Maybe it's because humans weren't designed to spill our guts to strangers and then take prolonged phycoactive drugs to fix mental problems that science does not understand.
- tossandthrow 10mo ago
  I agree that there is some support that working with your problems create them. As written in a sibling thread, I am mostly concerned with the relative visibility of issues as that creates equal opportunity. The implication of not focusing on men's issues is that we can not focus on women's issues either. Good luck fighting for that.

andreidbr 10mo ago

I re-read most of the stories a few years ago. It's shocking/surprising/depressing just how many things repeat themselves. From the obvious, veteran of Afghanistan war in the form of Dr. Watson, to London being a melting pot of so many cultures, with high society reigning from ... on high. I also agree that the view directly into the state of mind of both Watson and Holmes was refreshing.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
pjc50 10mo ago
It's notable that the BBC recent adaptation set in the present day was also able to make Watson an Afghanistan veteran. I read the stories as an child, and seen various of the film adaptations; Holmes became a meme even within Conan Doyle's lifetime, but I'm sure I'd benefit from going back to the source as an adult.
grebc 10mo ago
Realising current day events rhyme very closely with historical events is pretty eye opening. It’s a tragedy of the commons we are all largely oblivious as a species.
- aitchnyu 10mo ago
  Is there a better history pedagogy? I remember history as a set of dates and Kings. Only later I learned about Roman demagoguery, the relationship between newly independant India to present day and other topics that teach there is nothing new under the sun.

Dumblydorr 10mo ago

My personal favorite is The five napoleons. Is someone breaking Napoleonic busts out of some idee fixe? Or is there a motive of crime behind the seemingly delusional behavior?

boredhedgehog 10mo ago
*six
Archelaos 10mo ago
I suspect that it is purely a literary invention. The core idea of the story is a variant of the "Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", where a stolen gem was eaten by a goose. For the new plot, Conan Doyle needed some identical copies of something where a jewel could be hidden. These copies need to be destroyed, in order to reveal the jewel. If you decide on using busts in 1904 for an American and British audience, Napoleon is an ideal candidate: notorious, but not venerated. Imagine what a scandal it might have been if busts of the late Queen Victoria or of Abraham Lincoln had been smashed.

mold_aid 10mo ago

Original source: https://theconversation.com/arthur-conan-doyle-explored-mens-mental-health-through-his-sherlock-holmes-stories-246728 https://theconversation.com/arthur-conan-doyle-explored-mens...

mold_aid 10mo ago
Although tbf this is probably one of Linford's undergraduate papers
- donkey_brains 10mo ago
  No kidding.

FridayoLeary 10mo ago

I feel like this article is revisionism. The author is making a wild assumption that no male, no matter the circumstances was presented with having issues or trauma in victorian literature. Being nice and sympathetic is also not a concept which was only discovered recently. The article just throws in key words like mental health to make it sound relevant for today. Maybe the only interesting part is that drug use was considered (barely) socially acceptable and holmes was still respectable. Note that he wasn't an alcoholic. Shout out to the bbc adaptation which does a fantastic and hilarious job of portraying holmes as an erratic drug addict.

niemandhier 10mo ago
Britain was a very repressed culture at the time and for a long time after this. An Englishman’s proverbial “stiff upper lip” came to be a cliche for a reason. “Boarding school syndrome” would be the term coined for the emotional damage that was an educational ideal for a long while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_school#Psychological_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_school#Psychological_...
- mosura 10mo ago
  Yet the UK was most successful when led by people from that system.
  - FridayoLeary 10mo ago
    Was? The old boys network and class still plays a big role in UK politics. I'm convinced that the behaviour of Boris Johnson and even Starmer is incomprehensible without that unspoken element. Is it a bad thing? perhaps. Is it a recipe for disaster? I would say the historical evidence is pretty clear that no, not really. It worth pointing out that the US where class is much less important is more successful. In my head Holmes is descended from minor nobility while Watson is solidly upper middle class. Now, Labours envy based attacks on the private schools that gave them all their advantages in life helps nobody. It won't matter to rich kids and is just a barrier to success for middle class kids. When you consider the quality of state education, at least there should be some educated people to run the country, even if it's a bad system. Ot but hogwarts is a great parody of the British boarding school system. A drafty, dangerous castle full of dangerous animals, homicidal, abusive and incompetent teachers, serious injuries are a fact of life and complacent staff. Add in the most incompetent and negligent headmaster in all literature, who hardly does anything throughout the series and thinks that soul sucking demons are an acceptable security measure to protect his students and runs the school as his personal domain. Throw in class based bullying in the student body and you have everything. I always found it striking that the most hatable character in the series is a school inspector (Umbridge).

donkey_brains 10mo ago

How did this make it to the top of HN? It’s an extremely facile work and reads exactly like a high school essay: “In having his character consider execution to protect his and his family’s reputation, Doyle explored the societal expectations of Victorian masculinity and how men struggled with such pressures.” It’s an interesting topic, but the paper makes no revelatory statements and provides a very superficial analysis of Doyle’s work. Hell, it doesn’t even provide a single quote from Holmes to illustrate the mental anguish or “battles with drug addiction” which the author claims that he experiences in the books. Holmes’ 7% “solution of cocaine” usage was never presented as rising to the level of addiction in the books, by the way. Nor does the paper delve into the repressive nature of the Victorian society in which these stories were written and released to show us what was so novel about Doyle allegedly tackling these subjects and why he might have had to merely allude to them rather than discussing them frankly. All in all, this essay is a poor showing and would have earned the author a C at best in high school English for failing to provide adequate supporting evidence for her assertions.

Aromasin 10mo ago
I wouldn't be surprised if many of those who upvoted this did so because the agree with the sentiment in principle, not because they read the article and appreciated the contents.
mold_aid 10mo ago
>How did this make it to the top of HN? It’s an extremely facile work and reads >exactly like a high school essay Asked and answered
bell-cot 10mo ago
If HNer's want to talk about something, or just feel the topic is important, then a short & weak article is more than good enough to be a sort of seed crystal. (If you know of better articles on this topic, then please provide links!)
JKCalhoun 10mo ago
Perhaps it made it to the top of HN because there are a lot of Sherlock Holmes fans here who are curious about some of the nuances of the character not often cited. That the article itself may be lacking in specifics may not be a problem if it has at least whetted the curiosity of a number of us. (And we can then seek out more details, or better still, read the whole series of books with a keener eye.)

JKCalhoun 10mo ago

Not from Doyle, but the film, "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution", presents Holmes as very vulnerable. Especially given the amazing cast, it is an excellent portrayal. That Holmes would encounter Sigmund Freud seemed to me at the time as a wild use of artistic license. Since then though I have come to believe that there were a lot fewer people on the Earth in general than I could really appreciate at the time, and some of these luminaries may well have shared a drink together. (So why not a fictional luminary as well?)

varjag 10mo ago
Luminaries also were concentrated in but a few spots of the world at the time: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771
- valiant55 10mo ago
  I'm not sure I'd refer to some of these individuals as "luminaries" which typically has a positive connotation.
  - varjag 10mo ago
    Fair!
ompogUe 10mo ago
One of the Rathbone/Bruce films in the 40s has Holmes chasing Nazi's for some microfilm. I understand "supporting the fighting spirit" of the times, but still find it difficult to reconcile.

Barry-Perkins 10mo ago

[dead]

mosura 10mo ago

[flagged]

afavour 10mo ago
If you read the article you’ll discover no, they don’t.
watwut 10mo ago
Drug addiction, loneliness and depression are masculinity instead of mental health problems? What about suicide?
- mosura 10mo ago
  All entirely standard male behaviors. Just look at history for 30 seconds.
  - Starman_Jones 10mo ago
    You should probably reconsider putting loneliness and depression on a pedestal here.
    - mosura 10mo ago
      Where is this happening? The whole point is calling them “mental health problems” infers there is something systematically wrong with them as opposed to the obvious result of putting men in modern society.
      - watwut 10mo ago
        Previously you said they are basically traditional masculinity and what men always were. Now they are result of modern society?
        mosura 10mo ago
        A man lives by himself in the woods: is he lonely or depressed?

delichon 10mo ago

> [Holmes] battles with drug addiction, loneliness and depression. His genius thrives in part because of these vulnerabilities, not despite them. If there was a pill for that, how many masterpieces like the Sherlock Holmes books would never be made? The products of misery have always been the devil's advocate's best arguments. If Doyle had not sympathized with Holmes' afflictions, he could not have written him. Or if he had written Holmes as a Mary Sue we wouldn't have cared. (Though for some reason it worked for Harry Potter.) An effective education requires a certain amount of torture, and it works better when self inflicted.

chuckadams 10mo ago
For every tortured genius whose passion comes from pain, there's a hundred who never get started because they lack the energy to get out of bed half the time, are slowly killing themselves with alcohol and other substances, and so on. But a pill alone doesn't fix that -- hell, current research shows most of those pills do no better than a placebo -- so the mythology of the nobility of suffering will continue for some time hence. (Fun fact, you know that "lorem ipsum" text that's used as filler? It's not nonsense Latin, it's from a speech by Cicero where he denounces the stoic ideal of suffering being good for the soul, or at least "pointless" suffering anyway)
- delichon 10mo ago
  > or at least "pointless" suffering anyway What bulletproof word choice. Robert Harris called Cicero the first modern politician, and that looks right.
- ongy 10mo ago
  Do you have a link to research pointing at antidepressants being no better than placebo?
nicechianti 10mo ago
[dead]
joshcsimmons 10mo ago

boh 10mo ago

We live in a culture of transparency where you are rewarded for confessing your weaknesses. At the time people tackled their issues outside of print, outside of public discourse. Just because there's no record of a person's private life doesn't mean it was taboo. It's just not for you to know about.

podgorniy 10mo ago
> We live in a culture of transparency where you are rewarded for confessing your weaknesses. Where exactly do you observe this?
- lazide 10mo ago
  I suspect they are talking about pop culture which is awash with drama. But it always has been, just less self-important/self-reporting drama (x is getting divorced because they told us!), and more ‘we just found out x celebrity is getting divorced’.
- akimbostrawman 10mo ago
  HR

claw-el 10mo ago

One reason I like CBS’s Elementary’s depiction of Sherlock (maybe more so than BBC’s Sherlock) is because how Elementary treats Sherlock’s mental health and addiction recovery as central to the character. As great as Sherlock is at solving cases, he still struggles greatly to handle his own mental health and addiction recovery, which makes him more grounded to earth.

enlyth 10mo ago
Also why I enjoyed House which is basically modern Sherlock Holmes in a medical setting
- claw-el 10mo ago
  The American series (House and Elementary) has the advantage of more seasons and episodes, which I think is sometimes required to showcase the challenges of drug addiction and mental health. The fact that these characters having to come back to face the same problem over and over again episode after episode is more true to the nature of the mental health problem itself. BBC Sherlock has too little episodes to bring audience along a prolonged struggle with mental health.
  - isk517 10mo ago
    BBC Sherlock also slowly morphed him into a less empathic version of the Doctor from Doctor Who.
    - truelson 10mo ago
      But I did like how it started with Watson joining him to get a hit of adrenaline and not deal with his soldiering past. Was a great scene. Also, re: Dr. Who, Moffat gonna Moffat
      - isk517 10mo ago
        It's definitely one of those pieces of media that is extremely frustrating because of how close it came to being an all-time great adaptation. Moffat needed somebody in the writers room with him to tell him 'no' sometimes.

sudosteph 10mo ago

I've read a lot of Holmes recently, and while I'm not a man, I do think Doyle portrays Holmes' issues in a way that is relatable. Holmes core thing though is that he has an almost ADHD-esque craving for novelty and tolerance for risk taking. He also can't stand not actively working on things, and when he's not working is when he's depressed. He doesn't seem to know how to actually feel good, but he knows how to be useful, thus his penchant for productivity boosters like cocaine. He's a great character, but I wouldn't over pathologize him according to today's understanding of mental health. Doyle was a physician and gave Holmes various traits similar to what he had seen in his patients.

thesz 10mo ago
> ...when he's not working is when he's depressed. The cure for that is known since dawn of time - walking. Holmes, being an exceptionally observant man, definitely would observe that walks raise the mood, allow for (most often silly) ideas to come and, last but not least, increase observation capabilities, attention to details and speed of thought. Arthur Conan-Doyle did an extensive walks back then, but his hero was written to not to. This is not right.
- sireat 10mo ago
  As I recall Holmes did in fact do a lot of walking. He vacillated between periods of inactivity(cocaine, violin, shooting V in wall with a revolver) and intense activity (taking up disguises and doing various physical activities including walking all across London and elsewhere. Just because your logical mind says one thing is good to do and you know you should do it you are not going to always obey your rider, the inertia of the elephant takes over. So you need a trigger to snap out of it, for Holmes it was a new case.
  - geoka9 10mo ago
    > and intense activity AFAIR those had a specific purpose (chasing a perp, tracking down evidence, etc.). Most of his thinking he did sitting in a chair and smoking his pipe for hours on end (sometimes the whole night).

elchief 10mo ago

Didn't Doyle support the White Feather movement, which led to many suicides?

GeoAtreides 10mo ago

Why is this post allowed but this one[1] (40 points, 84 comments) is flagged and buried? [1] New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46067363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46067363

vacuity 10mo ago
I'm not sure if you're asking a rhetorical question, but I believe it's because (whether right or wrong) the linked thread is perceived as belonging to the "redpilled, conservative, traditional masculinity" subculture.
- GeoAtreides 10mo ago
  I'm not asking a rhetorical question. The flagged thread is flagged, not downvoted. 45 points, 87 comments. I doubt RAND[1] and IPSOS are in the redpilled subculture, that's quite the reach. Not everything touching on men's problems in the current age is redpilled [1] https://www.rand.org/about.html https://www.rand.org/about.html >The RAND American Life Panel and the Ipsos KnowledgePanel are nationally representative probability-based survey panels of adults in the United States
  - vacuity 10mo ago
    Well, I was commenting on why I think the thread was flagged, not whether I think it should be. Also, the main content of an HN thread is typically in the comments, not the link.
    - GeoAtreides 10mo ago
      >the main content of an HN thread is typically in the comments, not the link this is what's killing HN (and everything else, tbh)
      - vacuity 10mo ago

GuB-42 10mo ago

I wonder how much of it is just Arthur Conon Doyle hating his character. Which has was known for as the stories progressed. He even killed him, just to resurrect him later because of public demand. He accumulated character flaws along the way, as if Doyle wanted to make Holmes as unsympathetic as he could without changing his core traits.

nosianu 10mo ago
> Arthur Conon Doyle hating his character But Holmes is not "unsympathetic" in any of the stories, so I don't see your theory matching the facts. > He accumulated character flaws along the way, as if Doyle wanted to make Holmes as unsympathetic as he could [citation needed] I don't even see the first part of that assertion fulfilled, and I read the books multiple times.

dang 10mo ago

Url changed from https://scienceclock.com/arthur-conan-doyle-delved-into-mens-mental-health-through-his-sherlock-holmes-stories/ https://scienceclock.com/arthur-conan-doyle-delved-into-mens..., which points to this.