The many layers of Vincent Van Gogh's illness
Hello to all the lovely creatures out there!
In today's post as you have already seen from the title, we will be finally discussing about one of the most famous and influential artist in the world and how his mental health affected him and his art. And of course I'm talking about no other that Vincent van Gogh himself! In this post I'll be attempting to sum up the major ideas behind what was the illness that tormented the artist, as there have been many theories over the years about his condition and how this affected his creativity.
Vincent van Gogh was only 35 years old when he cut off part of the lobe of his left ear, just before Christmas, 1888 and thus a period of ups and lows began, with several severe crises and attacks coming and go, without ever coming to a good enough answer as to what was his condition.
Vincent's dream was to have his own artists' community in his Yellow House in Arles. With the arrival of his painter friend Paul Gaugin, he finally thought this dream would come true. Vincent wrote after his arrival in Arles: " I was surely about to suffer a stroke when I left Paris. It affected me quite a bit when I had stopped drinking and smoking so much, and as I began to think instead of knocking the thoughts from my head. Good heavens, what despair and how much fatigue I felt at that time." . Yet he soon resumed his former habits of using absinthe and cognac in Arles as well. He explained in a letter how he was coping with his state of heightened emotionality: instead of thinking of disastrous possibilities, he would throw himself completely into his work and " if the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass more to stun myself". He became more disturbed as time passed by. Feverish creativity alternated with episodes of listlessness to the point of exhaustion. Unpredictable mood shifts of dysphoria althernating with euphoria or with "indescribable anguish" became more frequent.
%201888.webp)
His mental health had started to deteriorate, with the peak coming after a heated argument between the two painters, where Vincent in utter confusion cut off part of his left ear. He then wrapped it in paper and presented it to a prostitute in the village. The girl fainted and the entire brothel was in commotion. They called the police and Vincent was hospitalised while Gaugin returned to Paris. Vincent's condition unfortunately deteriorated further, making the hospital's main physician to sent a lettter to the mayor stating that "Ms Vincent is sufferinf from insanity". Vincent lapsed into an acute psychotic state with agitation, hallucinations, and delusions that required 3 days of solitary confinement. He retained no memory of his attacks on Gaugin, the self-mutilation or the early part of his stay at the hospital. The physician recommended that Vincent be committed to a psychiatric hospital but fortunately he recovered and was allowed to go home after two weeks. There he tried to pick up the pieces and began painting again. He wrote to his brother Theo: "...I didn't know that one could break one's brain and that afterwards that got better too.".
Unfortunately for him, his condition deteriorated again. During the attacks, he was utterly confused and had no idea what he was saying or doing. This affected not only him, but also the people around him with their concern for Vincent growing by each day. Vincent was very sad about this: "At least I have not harmed anyone and I am not dangerous to anyone", and in May 1889, he voluntarily had himself admitted to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole psychiatric hospital in Saint-Remy where he would spend his next year. Initially, the structure life of the psychiatric hospital calmed him down. He had his own studio to paint, and once he felt well enough, he could go outside to paint. Painting seemed to be the best remedy for his psychiatric disorder, but he couldn't work during attacks and indeed wasn't allowed to. During the first few months, he did not suffer any new crises, which made him hopeful for recovery. But in July, new crises followed, making him fearful and insecure. The following months were marked by alternating periods of crises and recovery. Vincent had "little or no hope" of ever getting better, but still longed to paint.
Vincent started to feel increasingly trapped in the hospital, and in May 1890, he left for Auvers in northern France where he was also closer to his brother Theo who lived in Paris. Vincent still found it difficult to deal with his uncertainty about his future and illness and felt lonely and depressed. However he continued painting. Within a period of 70 days he produced some 75 paintings and over a hundred sketches and drawings of the village and vast cornfields and forests around it. Vincent continued to believe in the healing power of painting, sadly this was not enough. Two months after his arrival in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise he shot himself in the chest. He died there on 29 July 1980.
Taking a deep dive into what could have triggered his condition, researchers over the years have suggested many ideas around his sudden eruption of mental state. Vincent van Gogh's ancestry includes Dutch preachers, art dealers and artisans. Both his father and grandfather were preachers, however there in no record of mental illness incidences among his ancestors. Vincent had 5 younger siblings, three sisters and two brothers. His brother Theo, died 6 months after Vincent's suicide by some form of lung disease. Cornelis, the youngest brother, enlisted as a volunteer in the Boer arm in South Africa, and it is speculated that he either commited suicide or was killed in battle. The youngest sister, Wilhelmina, was admitted in a psychiatric asylum at the age of 35, at a similar age when Vincent showed his first symptoms of his deteriorating mental state. She is said to have suffered from schizophrenia, and died at the asylum at the age of 79. His mother, lived to the age of 87 outliving all of her sons. Her three sons all died in their 30s while her three daughters lived into their 70s.
The illness of van Gogh has perplexed 20th-century physicians, as at least 30 different diagnoses have been offered, from lead poisoning or Ménière’s disease, to a wide variety of psychiatric disorders. Many writers have acknowledged epilepsy, but considered the psychiatric disorder an independent mental illness. Earlier in his life, van Gogh experienced two prolonged episodes of reactive depression. Both episodes were followed by a prolonged period of hypomanic or even manic behavior: first as evangelist to the poor miners in Belgium and then as the quarrelsome and overly talkative artist in Paris. The major illness of his last 2 years developed in the presence of seizures, and its nature has remained controversial. During his stay in Paris, where he was introduced to absinthe, van Gogh developed complex partial seizures with gradual accentuation of partially preexisting emotional and behavioral changes.
Researhers have recognised the unique episodicity of Vincent's mental changes, the role of absinthe in his illness, and an underslying epileptoid limbic dysfunction that was associated with his creativity but also if overly intense, would render him ill. Earlier studies had reasoned that the artist's psychiatric changes were based on temporal lobe epilepsy produced by the use of absinthe in the presence of an ealy limbic lesion. Certain behavioral and emotional changes among patients with epilepsy have been specifically related to mesial (limbic) temporal lobe epilepsy: episodic irritability, slow-adhesive personality traits and hyposexuality. In many of his letters written after his first breakdown document his mental states: "I am unable to describe exaclty what is the matter with me; now and then there are hirrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head...and at times I have attacks of melancholy and of atrocious remorse". "There are moments when I am twisted by enthusiasm or madness or prophecy, like a Greek oracle on the tripod. And then I have great readiness of speech". He became more prone to violent rages and noticed an increasing lack of sexual arousal. He frequently complained of feeling faint and of having "poor circulation" and a "weak stomach". The artist was not known to become intoxicated and may not have been drinking more than many of his contemporaries, but he was particularly vulnerable to the epileptogenic properties of absinthe, which contained oil of wormwood which contitutes the toxic principle of absinthe. Those who consume large amounts of alcohol in combination with malnutrition, run the risk of brain function impairment including mental problems. Moreover, abrupt stopping with excessive alcohol consumption can lead to withdrawal phenomena, including a delirium.
Coming to Vincent's mental state when the whole incident with Gaugin took place, there are some plausible explanations for these strange happenings. Already in a psychotic state, van Gogh may have carried out the first attack to Gaugin driven by hallucinatory command voices and may have cut off part of his own ear in self-punishment for his offensive voices. Some researchers have suggested that this action worked as a psychotic logic that have been influenced by van Gogh knowledge of the bullfight ritual, in which the matador presents a cut-off ear of the killed bull to a fair lady of his choice.
When he voluntarily entered the asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1889 and through the 1 year he remained there, he experienced three psychotic relapses with prominent amnesia, at least twice upon leaves to Arles with resumption of his use of absinthe. The last psychotic episode was the most protracted, lasting from February to April 1890 where he experienced terrifying hallucinations and severe agitation. At the height of his illness, van Gogh became hallucinatory, paranoid, and delusional with confusiona;-amnestic features, all known to occur in psychosis due to epilepsy. This form of epilepsy is also called "masked epilepsy" where a patient does not have classical seizures, but a paroxysmal behavior disorder based on epileptic activity in the deeper brain structures.
Nevertheless, he continued to write to Theo and he kept painting. When he announced to Theo his first painting of a starry night, he wrote, “It is good for me to work hard. But that does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—yes, of religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars”. He continued zealously painting and creating until his last moments, where even the idea of his suicide was not expected by others. Suicidal attempts infrequently may be carried out in a state of acute postictal depression. It seems that the artist's earlier suicide attempts probably had been of this nature and were not consciously planned. In patients with interictal dysphoric disorder, the moods of euphoria tend to be brief and their depressive moods more prominent. With the latter though, there is a higher suicidal risk among patients with epilepsy and is also particularly associated with chronic temporal lobe epilepsy. In such cases, suicide tends to occur, peculiarly, at a time when a long-standing seizure disorder has been brought into remission and often somes as a surprise.
Nonetheless, several authors have offered a tentantive diagnosis of schizophrenia for van Gogh. However, because of the absence of any of the fundamental symptoms of the disorder and the presence of psychotic episodes with amnestic-confusional features and complete recovery, this diagnosis appears improbable, even thought that late-onset schizophrenia was diagnosed in his sister Wilhelmina.
The diagnosis of neurosyphilis was considered due to van Gogh's lifestyle (he was treated fron gonorrhea in 1882) and its diverse symptoms. However, none of the relatively specific symptoms of the disease was ever noted. He laso did not show any persistent impairment of mental or somatic functions so this diagnosis is quite unlikely.
Although van Gogh, showed mood swings and according to his brother Theo was as if he consisted of two conflicting personalities "the one marvellously gifted, sensitive and gently, and the other self-loving and unfeeling", the question remains whether the diagnostic threshold of a manic episode with social disfunction has even been exceeded at some point in its life, meaning that his episodes with manic symptoms were only hypomanic episodes.
Thus, it is likely that van Gogh suffered from a bipolar disorder, probably bipolar 2 disorder where it is characterized by episodes of major depression and hypomania. It must also be considered that his mood symptoms were part of a personality disorder, that could be affected by epilepsy. Overall, the case Vincent van Gogh is a peculiar one, as no sinlge disorder can explain all his mental problems throughout his life, but he most likely suffered from several comorbid disorders.
I know this particular post was quite long, but I did want to include a brief, but still full story on van Gogh's mental state throughout all the stages of his illness. I'd also like to mention that this post as you could probably tell, was a bit different than my usual ones (could you tell I have favorites?) so I'd like your thoughts on this format as well. I know it was more focused on the mental health of van Gogh, rather than his painting, so I'll probably have another post about it in the future so that you can have a better idea. Today I wanted to explain to complicated mentality that was part of van Gogh's identity, and lay a background foundation maybe about how his mental illness affected the whole of his art. I'll also have some interesting medicai articles I found and got inspiration from linked down below if you want to read more!
As always thank you for reading and I will see you in a next post!
xoxoxo
Links:
The Illness of Vincent van Gogh | American Journal of Psychiatry
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment