He also pioneered the politics of nonviolent resistance. I believe these two facts are related. His global impact is well known, but his depression is less so. As we’ll see in this chapter, he suffered from at least three major depressive episodes, and he had a dysthymic personality, an abnormal temperament of chronic mild depression and anxiety, which is genetically and biologically related to severe depressive illness. To say that Gandhi was mentally unusual is not news. The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson saw the Mahatma’s inclusive and peaceful approach as a “maternal” politics, related to his identification with his mother. Such psychoanalytic speculation aside, no historian has seriously examined the potential effects of Gandhi’s depression on his politics and worldview. FIRST, LET’S QUICKLY ESTABLISH the fact of Gandhi’s depression, using the four indicators we’ve used earlier in this book: symptoms, genetics, course of illness, and treatment. Beginning with symptoms, Gandhi clearly suffered a severe depressive episode in the final two years of his life.
What do You think about A First-Rate Madness (2011)?
