>        I have been disinclined to jump into the discussion on Pound's
>mental health since I have no particular wisdom or insight on the subject
to
>offer.
>        However, I am dubious about the bipolar disorder diagnosis. That
is
>another label for manic-depression. I know one manic depressive
personally,
>and for that reason have been treated to anecdotes about others. On the
>basis of that slight, amateur acquaintance, I cannot see how the diagnosis
>fits Pound.
 
 
Dear Leon,
 
From what I know about the neurotransmitters involved in manic depression
and what I know about the disorder in general, you are absolutely right.
I've been skeptical about this diagnosis too, but didn't know what bipolar
disorder really stood for. Currently, a few configurations of
neurotransmitters are known to involve some form of depression:
 
low serotonin, normal dopamine
low serotonin, high dopamine
low serotonin, low dopamine
 
Put simply, serotonin is the substance in the mind which makes you feel
good about yourself. The stuff, typically, is created in the brain among
others by virtue of sunlight, eating complex carbohydrates (in full-grains
and such), drinking alcohol, etc., and has the effect of slowing down the
brain by slowing down neurotransmission in the brain. That is why when you
drink alcohol, your actions become uncontrolled, noticeable when you speak
(with a double tongue) or drive, because the delay between your physical
actions and the signals sent out in your brain has become longer, and hence
also your reaction-time. When you get so drunk that you almost pass out
this simply means that your brain has slowed down to such an extent that it
can no longer function.
 
Dopamine on the other hand excellerates neurotransmission. It is brought
into the brain among others by cocaine and large quantities of chicken. The
effect of this excellerated transmission is that you become more creative,
quicker to associate and solve problems, and think more clearly. However,
you are also unable to concentrate for very long. This combination is a
pest for every one who's had a great idea about something literary (like
Pound's work), but then cannot write an essay about it because the idea was
either caused by or resulted in a large dose of concentration-inhibiting
dopamine. A tip on the side-line - if you don't feel creative, try eating
300+ grams of chicken - after as little as ten minutes you can actually
feel the effect, which is (clinically) like a mild cocaine shot! I had a
discussion a few months ago with a friend during which I basically solved
what consciousness is (according to me) and reading the book only a week
after it struck me that on that particular night we had eaten a large
quantity of chicken... .
 
A final word on the change of 'normal' levels of neurotransmission. The
brain has certain 'baselines', standard quantities of neurotransmitters in
the brain which it tries to uphold. You drink a few glasses of alcohol, for
instance, and your brain is flooded with serotonin; it then starts breaking
down the substance so that eventually a normal level is reached. If large
quantities of alcohol are consumed, however, the brain breaks down more
than what the alcohol brought into it, thus resulting in a 'low' feeling
afterwards. High levels of serotonin are harmful to a proper functioning of
the brain and the brain tries to anticipate another flood of the
transmission substance by lowering its baseline and thus increasing the
excess margin it can handle. This is one road to eventual depression.
 
Well, you can read much more about these transmitters in decent literature,
but basically, these two neurotransmitters (I leave out Norepinephrine for
the moment, which is in some sense a part of dopamine anyway) lead to the
following permutations with accompanying depressive disorders:
 
'normal' depression: low serotonin, normal dopamine. The patient basically
feels bad about himself, often involved with a lost sense of meaning, but
otherwise the patient leads a normal life.
 
'manic' depression: low serotonin, low dopamine. The patient is depressed,
and avoids arousing activities because he does not feel secure enough to
handle anything arousing; the irony being that dopamine involving
activities often result eventually in higher levels of serotonin, and on a
fundamental level are often even the only way out (apart from Prozac that
is, which also increases serotonin - a 'feel good' drug). Therefore, the
patient, by sitting on the couch or lying in bed all day, perpetuates his
or her own disorder.
 
'active' depression: low serotonin, high dopamine. The patient masks
depression by high levels of activity, which is basically a way to avoid
dealing with the depression, usually caused by something unpleasant which
the patient does not wish to face (can even be the meaninglessness of
life). Because high levels of dopamine (in themselves capable of causing
ill side effects) are not mitigated by high levels of serotonin,
schizophrenia and other hyperactivity disorders are common among people
with this configuration (as schizophrenia is also caused by too high levels
of brain activity).
 
This last condition is, I believe, the most common among artists and the
most intersting for us to study: it results in an active person who is
unhappy, an ideal configuration for writing the poetry that we know. I
think this is the condition Eliot suffered from a lot, and who knows Pound
did too during the period Tim suggests? I know too little about Pound's
personal life, but it might be worth studying.
 
Kind regards,
 
Arwin
 
>        He was somewhat obsessive about economic reform, but that would
tend
>to the diagnosis of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. And that disorder
>normally manifests itself in physical behaviour together with paranoid
types
>of worries.
>        Pound's belief in Jewish conspiracies and the like does not really
>support a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder in my view. Perhaps
Tim
>has information on this, but I have not heard any reports of compulsive
>behaviour of the sort associated with this disorder.
>        As for bipolarism, where is the evidence that Pound ever had a
>depressive phase? I have read thousands of letters from Pound's youth to
his
>very old age--as Tim has also. I cannot recall any instances that are
>vaguely depressive. He gets angry frequently, occasionally confesses
>frustration, but I am unaware of any extended periods of inactivity such
as
>one would expect from one suffering from bipolarism. A very common result
of
>the derpressive phase of this disorder is suicide. Pound never indicated
the
>least desire to end it all, and so far as I am aware, never made any
effort
>to harm himself. Indeed, he seems to me to have been an extraordinafily
>irrepressible individual.
>        I have only the greatest admiration for Tim Redman's thoroughness,
>carefulness and acumen, but I would urge him to consider this diagnosis
very
>carefully. Surely some of the psychiatrists at St. E's would have been
able
>to diagnose this rather common disorder if Pound had suffered from it. It
is
>some time since I have read Torrey's book, but I don't think either he or
>the staff at St. E's ever made such a diagnosis.
>        Since Tim is not yet committed to his diagnosis, I thought it
worth
>passing on these observations while there is still time for him to
reconsider.
>