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

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

by PikelEmi • 8 months ago

213 259 8 months ago

theconversation.com

tossandthrow7• 8 months 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.

nephihaha6• 8 months 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• 8 months 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/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.

Tarks2• 8 months 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.

tene80i• 8 months 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.

oersted• 8 months 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.

m4rtink• 8 months ago

CVEs basically.

apples_oranges• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

tossandthrow7• 8 months ago

This is a valid take. But we need to apply it evenly on the entire society.

If we fill up the public discourse with the issues and wants of women and make the issues and wants of men a private matter this will skew the public understanding of the stance of women and men - we see this hardcore these days with boys and men being villainized, made invisible and made suspicious only due to their gender.

From here we have two ways forward: Either make sure that mens issues gain a proportionate part of the public discourse or argue that all issues are a private matter.

21asdffdsa122• 8 months ago

I deeply dislike the inherent ideology of psychology. Liberalism, the idea of a health individual does not pay any idea to the shared whole, suffering which may be "noble" for the common good and rights and privileges awarded for suffering in such. I find such a ideologically loaded construct and the inherent biases (idealizations and an inability to talk about the cultural framework and tradeoffs) quite unhelpful for understanding, helping and as a basis for societal meta-communications.

analog8374• 8 months ago

99% of public human interaction is battles for dominance (ego, status, politics...). Which is gross. When psychology enters the conversation it gets even grosser.

pxc5• 8 months ago

"Trauma" ultimately just means "severe injury" or something like that, doesn't it?

We take it for granted that virtually no one will make it through life without ever sustaining a serious or enduring physical injury. Why is it so implausible to say that practically everyone can expect to eventually have to deal with at least one significant mental injury, too?

elric• 8 months ago

Ah yes, the old "out of sight, out of mind"-solution. Only it never solves anything.

PaulRobinson4• 8 months ago

We're still working a lot of this out because it's actually a relatively new thing culturally - my grandfathers generation would never have talked about mental health at all - but what is pretty clear is that most people do not talk enough about this, and do not deal with mental health very well.

That does not mean we should all be talking to everybody about it all the time. I take stuff into a therapy session I'm not going to discuss anywhere else, because if I started talking about it at work, or even close relationships, I'm asking people without any ability to help me with it to just take it and work it out with me, and that's not helpful.

But at the same time, we do need to talk to people about it. And there are some toxic barriers we could do with addressing.

Men are not "meant" to cry or show vulnerability in almost all contexts in almost all cultures. That's sad, because while we don't all want men breaking down in tears when their coffee order isn't quite right, we also know it's healthy for men to acknowledge and process difficult feelings like grief and rejection.

While most people realise it's not OK to tell a woman she'd look prettier if she smiled more, few people see the hypocrisy in thinking it's OK to tell a man he'd be sexier if he was more confident. That causes problems I think we can all call out and name in modern dating culture.

According to some stats I just pulled up for the UK, surveys suggest that more than 75% of men report as having had mental health issues, but only 60% have ever spoken to another human being about it at all, with 40% of men stating it would have to be so bad that they are considering self-harm or suicide to talk to anyone, ever. This is horrible.

So, sure, perhaps we don't need to talk about Freudian analysis down the pub, and nobody at work wants to hear about you reconciling feelings about how you were treated as a child by members of your family, but please:

Most men need to talk to somebody about their mental health. And for many problems, that somebody needs to be somebody with the appropriate skills and abilities to help them with it.

If you're reading this, and think that might be you, please, for your own sake, go talk to a professional.

You might not gel with the first therapist, counsellor, psychiatrist or psychologist you speak to. That's OK, they won't mind if you say you want to try a few different people. You can find people who will help in your town, on video calls, on apps, all over. Just speak to someone.

SoftTalker• 8 months ago

Agree. Some people have legitimate issues. Many just grab at the easy excuse for not achieving anything. “Suck it up and do the work” is still good advice for them.

ajuc• 8 months ago

Why?

noufalibrahim• 8 months ago

I agree here.

There is something to be said for soldiering through a rough phase. It's not always the right thing to do but below a certain threshold, it's necessary to build some amount of resilience.

Collapsing at the slightest exposure to an uncomfortable situation and having to rely on an extensive support structure that includes a therapist, drugs and other things should not, in my opinion, be the default.

As for Holmes, I read, re-read and practically memorised most of the canon when I was in my late teens and early 20s. Mental health was never one of my take aways. I was fascinated by the intensity of the character and how his work meant so much to him. That the lack of it depressed him might have been something Doyle observed in his patients and decided to use as a foil but I don't think he was "exploring men's mental health" in the stories. He was merely trying to make a believable detective who explains his methods. My feeling is that this is overlaying a 2025 interpretation onto a Victorian tale.

As a matter of interest, many of the traits were inspired by someone Doyle worked for named Dr. Joseph Bell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bell) who emphasised and used careful observation - a skill that can be very useful to a medical practitioner. The relationship between Bell and Doyle was fictionalised into a series called "Murder Rooms". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Rooms:_Mysteries_of_the...

joshcsimmons3• 8 months 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.

vacuity5• 8 months 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.

aspenmayer2• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

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.

tossandthrow7• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

pjc50• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

*six

Archelaos• 8 months 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_aid3• 8 months ago

Original source: https://theconversation.com/arthur-conan-doyle-explored-mens...

mold_aid3• 8 months ago

Although tbf this is probably one of Linford's undergraduate papers

donkey_brains2• 8 months ago

No kidding.

FridayoLeary5• 8 months 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• 8 months 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_...

mosura6• 8 months ago

Yet the UK was most successful when led by people from that system.

GJim4• 8 months ago

a fantastic and hilarious job of portraying holmes as an erratic drug addict.

Except in Conan Doyle's books, Holmes was a user of cocaine, not an addict.

This desire to portray Holmes as a drug addict says far more about our own times.

lazide15• 8 months ago

Where do you draw the line between user and addict?

He was definitely not holding together his life by any traditional measure.

leejoramo• 8 months ago

Regardless of if we consider Holmes a drug addict, abuser or merely a controlled user, it is clear from the stories that Watson was very concerned as both a Friend and Medical expert, that Holmes is damaging his mental faculties

ompogUe2• 8 months ago

Subtle, but the very last line of 1939's "Hounds of the Baskervilles" is "Oh, Watson - the needle!".

donkey_brains2• 8 months 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• 8 months 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_aid3• 8 months 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• 8 months 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!)

JKCalhoun2• 8 months 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.)

FridayoLeary5• 8 months ago

Yes, i thought it was silly as well. revisionist analysis such as these are pretty common, though normally better written. You can probably find half a dozen essays with titles like "Sherlock holmes fought against colonial oppression, a deep dive in how Conan doyle covered unpopular and controversial topics in the victorian age". And another 50 essays arguing the opposite point.

tome• 8 months ago

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.”

Not to mention that that the character in this particular story is not actually struggling with debt, he simply discovers, somewhat incredibly, whilst researching for a newspaper story, that he can earn far more money begging than in his job as a reporter. There simply is no pressure, he just lacks integrity.

JKCalhoun2• 8 months 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?)

varjag2• 8 months ago

Luminaries also were concentrated in but a few spots of the world at the time: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771

valiant55• 8 months ago

I'm not sure I'd refer to some of these individuals as "luminaries" which typically has a positive connotation.

ompogUe2• 8 months 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.

delichon7• 8 months 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• 8 months 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)

delichon7• 8 months ago

or at least "pointless" suffering anyway

What bulletproof word choice. Robert Harris called Cicero the first modern politician, and that looks right.

ongy• 8 months ago

Do you have a link to research pointing at antidepressants being no better than placebo?

joshcsimmons3• 8 months ago

This is 100% not true.

An effective education requires a certain amount of torture, and it works better when self inflicted.

It's the tortured artist myth. You can turn pain into art but it's not a prerequisite.

Kostchei• 8 months ago

Yeh, I agree with this. My art (painting and building) comes at a much faster rate when I am content. Having time and metal space to contemplate colour scheme, being confident to start something bold: that doesn't happen if I am tired, preoccupied or depressed

paxys2• 8 months ago

Quite the opposite in fact. Throughout history the most successful artists have been the well funded ones.

delichon7• 8 months ago

Over-emphasized maybe, but myth? Could Doyle have written a sympathetic lonely depressed addict so well without more than academic understanding of those things?

boh• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

We live in a culture of transparency where you are rewarded for confessing your weaknesses.

Where exactly do you observe this?

lazide15• 8 months 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’.

akimbostrawman7• 8 months ago

claw-el2• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

Also why I enjoyed House which is basically modern Sherlock Holmes in a medical setting

claw-el2• 8 months 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.

PapstJL4U• 8 months ago

I think Elementarys Sherlock is closer to the book version. In the BBC version he is totally aloof of social connections and norms, but in the books it is pretty clear, that Sherlock is able to tranverse London society - he had many case with high society people before Watson was part of his life - he just dislikes it.

squigz11• 8 months ago

I've not read much of Holmes, so I can't really speak to the original character, but I would point out that the "he can socialize, he just doesn't like to" bit is somewhat part of BBC's Sherlock too - look at the relationship he developed with the woman to get at Magnussen. It's an aspect of him they never really explored much beyond that though - you're definitely right in that he seems more incapable of it than anything else.

zem• 8 months ago

I tried watching an episode of the bbc version and found it very off-putting, it was written almost as a caricature of holmes. elementary was definitely a lot closer in spirit.

arionmiles• 8 months ago

If you're looking for a portrayal closer to the books, I'd highly recommend Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes produced by Granada TV from the 80s.

I don't think any actor has come as close as Jeremy Brett did.

GJim4• 8 months ago

Sherlock’s mental health and addiction recovery

As I said downthread.....

In Conan Doyle's books, Holmes was a user of cocaine, not an addict.

This modern desire to portray Holmes as a drug addict says far more about our own times.

fidotron• 8 months ago

In the One True TV Holmes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086661/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_acc... this is even shown as a tension between Holmes and Watson, with Watson showing the modern view.

Of course Brett was in fact completely out of it for much of the filming on all sorts of things.

Edman274• 8 months ago

A few things; one, even if it's not strictly speaking true that cocaine use always leads to addiction every single time, we know now better than in Victorian era England how often it does, and Doyle not having been a cocaine user may have lost some of the elements of how cocaine is addictive and what it looks like. I hate to say that there is some moral duty to show a protagonist using cocaine as having a problem with its use that needs to be overcome, but I do think it'd be strange too to keep what was effectively this SMBC comic (https://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=191) as Holmes' use of coke.

Secondly, the stories that mention coke use are all written from the perspective of Holmes' best friend, who we'd expect to be biased towards writing about his friend in a positive light. I don't think this is accidental. Watson quotes him effectively saying "I just do coke because life is so mundane and boring, and not stimulating enough for me" which is nearly the exact same justification and thought process used by like, every addict and if not a word-for-word quote, then at least very similar for Chris Moltisanti's justification of his own addiction to Tony Soprano.

It may not be an exact rendering of what was in the books but it is extremely natural modification to make, where otherwise we'd have flat Marty Stu character who is talking in ways that seem very consistent with at least problematic use and yet who's not addicted. "Our own times" have dealt with at least 100 years of coke addiction, 50 years of crack so maybe we're just not naive enough to believe that a guy who's saying "my friend just takes it when he's bored, but he's bored all the time because his mind is too sharp for this dull world" isn't a problematic user or addict.

papercrane• 8 months ago

When Doyle wrote most of the Holmes stories cocaine was a popular and novel new drug, it wasn't until later that it's risks became widely known. In one of his later stories, "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter", Doyle portrays it as an addiction that Watson weaned him of, but is still concerned that his friend may fall back into.

"For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug-mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career. Now I knew that under ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes’ ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes. Therefore I blessed this Mr. Overton, whoever he might be, since he had come with his enigmatic message to break that dangerous calm which brought more peril to my friend than all the storms of his tempestuous life."

- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Return_of_Sherlock_Holmes...

sudosteph2• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

caycep• 8 months ago

Holmes is basically a border collie?

tayo42• 8 months ago

If this is an accurate summary, the character sounds relatable enough that I might try one of these books.

elchief• 8 months ago

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

GeoAtreides3• 8 months 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

vacuity5• 8 months 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.

GeoAtreides3• 8 months 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

The RAND American Life Panel and the Ipsos KnowledgePanel are nationally representative probability-based survey panels of adults in the United States

GuB-42• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

Url changed from https://scienceclock.com/arthur-conan-doyle-delved-into-mens..., which points to this.

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

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