Discussion of Milton L. Miller's Article, Manic Depressive Cycles of the Poet Shelley

It is evident that the making of an exact psychiatric diagnosis on a person who lived before the age of scientific psychiatry is apt to be most difficult, even though he wrote voluminously. As Freud demonstrated, authors' literary productions subjected to critical scrutiny by a psychoanalyst will yield information concerning the author's unconscious motivations and conflicts. This information, when supplemented with biographical data, may permit certain conclusions regarding his character structure and predominant ego defenses.

Psychoanalytic authors since Freud's time have not hesitated to use the writings and biographical material of literary men and women long dead as material possessing diagnostic value. They have been able to demonstrate that the basic structure of the human psyche is essentially unchanging with time. The type of neuroses from which humans suffer is a different matter. The character neuroses seen today were seen much more rarely a generation or

two ago, while the so-called classical neuroses so commonly observed then are rare now.

These factors make exact diagnostic conclusions regarding the type of psychopathology from which Shelley suffered difficult. There can be no doubt that elation and feelings of depression were prominent features of his psychiatric illness. When we try to speak of a cyclic alternation between episodes of manic excitement and depression the situation becomes less clear.

Miller has clearly demonstrated the use of denial as an ego defense in Shelley's works and in his actions. Miller seems to indicate that the defense of denial is responsible for the absence of a clearly cyclical character in Shelley's mood shift. Was Shelley a manic-depressive? As the Italians say, “One swallow does not make a summer” and evidence of moods of elation and excitement together with more or less alternate moods of depression can be observed in certain schizophrenic syndromes as well. Nor do the existence of hallucinations and delusions, such