Abraham Lincoln – A Case Study in Depression, Trauma and Resiliency

 I have recently been interested in reading about Abraham Lincoln and the depression that significantly affected his life to the point of being a defining characteristic of who he was. 

I started by reading (yes, I will admit this) Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith.  I doubt it was Mr. Grahame-Smith’s intent, but in knowing that Lincoln suffered from depression I found the novel to be an allegorical representation of Lincoln’s struggle against the demons of depression (and slavery).  This fight strengthened him and led to the heroic acts that defined his presidency. 

The book, Lincoln’s Melancholy, How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatest by Joshua Wolf Shenk is definitely a more serious and enlightening depiction of the life of Abraham Lincoln.  I invite you to read the first chapter and listen to the podcast at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4976127

Mr. Shenk does an excellent job in outlining the struggles that the president experienced in his life and is able to do research that delineates the genetic heritage of depression in the Lincoln family.  Although he makes a great amount of mention to the struggles in Lincoln’s earlier life, Mr. Shenk does not seem to make the connect between these early traumatic experiences and the depth of Lincoln’s depression.

According to historians (including Mr. Shenk and James Swanson in Manhunt: The 12 Day Search for Lincoln’s Killer) Lincoln experienced the following traumatic experiences in early life:

· the death of his mother when he was nine
· frequent moves due to poor business decisions on the part of Thomas Lincoln, his father
· the death of his older sister who had been his primary caretaker after the death of his mother until his father remarried.
· raised by a distant and abusive father who had witnessed his own father being killed in an Indian raid
· Living in neglect and poverty
· The death of two children before his assassination.
· Marriage to a woman with her own trauma and mental health issues.

If we used today’s ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) score see http://opendoorsnh.blogspot.com/2010/07/adverse-childhood-experiences.html , Lincoln would probably score 5 or above, well within the range that leads to risky and negative consequences in life.

Lincoln also experienced two strong characteristics of many trauma survivors. After the death of a woman with whom he may or may not have had a serious relationship in his twenties, Lincoln’s friends organized themselves into a suicide watch. Lincoln himself reported that he was fearful of carrying a knife for fear of following through on his desire to end his life.

In a letter to John T. Stuart, his first law partner, Lincoln wrote:

“I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

Secondly, Lincoln had what is known as a ‘foreshortened sense of future,’ which in hind sight was definitely prophetic. He often commented having a sense or dreams of his impending assassination. Given the politics of the time and his position, it is understandable that he may be fearful but this started much earlier than his rise to the national political stage.

Abraham Lincoln had tremendous resiliency. He was able to take each negative experience and eventually turn it to his advantage. Even his backwoods poverty served him well in connecting to the constituency that eventually elected him to office. Lincoln also was able to attract people into his life that enhanced his abilities and balanced his deficits.

In understanding Lincoln’s history and theories of attachment, it can be seen that four people nurtured Lincoln’s innate resilient nature: his mother, Nancy; his sister, Sarah; his stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston; and his friend, Joshua Speed. I encourage you to read more about these relationships, but I wish to particularly note that it was his stepmother who encouraged his love of learning even in opposition to a father who believed that reading anything other than the Bible was frivolous and lazy. It is my opinion that this relationship was the most stabilizing influence of his life and greatly offset the mercurial relationship he had with his abusive and distant father.

It is very apparent that Lincoln was a great politician with high ideals. His desire to be of service and to make meaning of his life was a component of his strength and resiliency. Abraham Lincoln was a man of conscience who was determined to leave this world better for his being in it and he succeeded, not in spite of his depression, but because he was able to use his struggles to his advantage. Unfortunately, a person with the same history of mental illness would probably be unable to rise to the status that Abraham Lincoln did due to stigma. However, I think that those of us who struggle with depression and the effects of childhood and adult trauma can find Lincoln’s story enlightening and inspiring.