Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- OK so there is a better angle to look at all this, there really is:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357868645_Edgar_All...
by polotics - I think you may be missing the point.
This post was an absolute joy to read.
- Is there anyone not suspected to be autistic these days? Including me. Personally my finger points more in the direction of Emily Dickinson and James Joyce.by nephihaha
- That's terribly bad. Badly written, barely three pages long, bad references... Half of the list of references are of himself, but almost all of the references in the text are just from one book from 1965.
And lots of affirmations of that text aren't unsustained or don't make sense.
Terribly bad angle.
by tecleandor - Hmm, what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art?
It's one thing for a biographical analysis to look at the person's real life experiences and relationships.
It's another thing entirely when you start conflating the characters in the fiction with the author's own character...
by saltcured - This is really interesting and a fun read, but the way they mix in dated psychology around this historical figure in a serious way without much reference to subsequent work adds up to pretension.by ilaksh
- by aag
- Poe's life had many complications due to poverty and jealousy that made his being a literary genius almost irrelevant. Researching his death produces even more questions than answers, as a strong case could be made that he was made to appear to have died of a morphine overdose in a ditch.by thataccount
- A little tangent, but
> With a peak circulation of forty thousand—enormous for its time
How was it possible to make a living - I imagine a full editorial team, writers, printers, office workers - with this volume of sales, while today, magazines with zero distribution cost, and with millions of subscribers are going under. Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
by ricardobeat - What percentage of Condé Nast's or Bertelsmann's gross receipts do you think goes directly to editorial and print workers?by Exoristos
- > Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter.
In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet
Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level
by Swizec - The author of this article needs to hit the books--yesterday.
The conditions she describes as 'perversity' is just the heightened response of an over-stressed brain.
The suicidal thoughts (that still horrify the person thinking them) aren't due to a so-called Freudian perversity as the author implies, but are a first step towards total mental breakdown (which actually ends up in suicide, due to to the struggle with such thoughts--which is a form of depression).
When I was extremely stressed for long periods of time, with no solution in sight, I did enter this stage. Photos I took for a mugshot in this period show a slight shine in my eyes that I hadn't before (that's another sign the brain is disintegrating). I'd stand over overpasses and watch cars drive by, and then a little voice would tell me: jump! jump! while another thought which felt more stronger, would consider this horrifying and made me reflect on why I was thinking such thoughts.
It wasn't limited to the visible possibilities, either. Frequently when the stress would become unbearable, a little strange thought would make me think of tall buildings and let me imagine that by jumping from one, my problems would cease.
I've recovered from those thoughts now -- because luckily my stressors were eliminated -- and I no longer experience such thoughts or voices. I mention all this to help others realize that they need to seek help and solve their stressors instead of falling back on the quack-doctor Freud's ideas that "oh it's in our nature to be perverse!".
by jan_m_savage - I also feel like they don't understand what self-destructive impulses are. Forgetting your wallet on your car and driving away? Seriously?
I think it's better captured by this line from a Tunng song:
They clearly haven't seen self-sabotage in action if they think forgetting your wallet is it! Think more throwing away a long term relationship whose stability you've longed for all your life, or getting drunk on the day of your bar exam.When I see land you will conjure up a stormby vintermann - > then a little voice would tell me
You may not answer if you don't want to but from an idle curiosity: do you have an inner monologue in your regular life?
> Photos I took for a mugshot in this period show a slight shine in my eyes that I hadn't befor
It's always fascinated me how 'the mirror of the soul' not only a very apt metaphor but how we see it even when it's a still shot.
- I fail to see how the author of this piece is the one who called those things “perversity”, here is a direct quote from the piece that refutes your claim:
> he wrote about what he called perverseness: the “unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself”—the mysterious desire he felt, and believed we all feel, to get in our own way.
> Perverseness, Poe thought, was as fundamental a drive as hunger or libido, with its own dedicated region of the brain. When we are perverse, we turn not only against our better judgment but also against what are apparently our desires. “The Imp of the Perverse” begins with an essay defining the concept and giving examples that range from the harmless to the unsettling; Poe classes as perverse both procrastination and the impulse to kill oneself by jumping from a great height.
Where does the author define the things that are perverse? All are attributed to Poe.
- I have the impression you could be confusing suicidality with the little voice that says "what if I stuck my finger in the candle wax?" or "what if I forgot to put on clothes before going to work?" and only mentions tall buildings once or twice a year.
I'm pretty sure the latter is really common. I've always thought it was my brain generating failure cases for risk assessment. We think "What if I dropped this bottle of water on my lap while driving and crashed?" and then we take more care not to drop it.
by strken - Psychology is so much more complex and varied in its manifestations and etiologies than you're suggesting here.
I'm glad that you found a framework that helped you with your experiences, but it's very important that you understand that many other people had deeply different experiences than you did for very different reasons. Suggesting a single cause of suicidality as due to stress is profoundly irresponsible, and enforcing that framework on other people could quite literally kill them.
I agree with you that the author of the article is wildly off base, but so are you. Suggesting she needs to "hit the books" and then describing your personal journey as universal is a particular study in not taking your own advice.
by hiddencost