“I am not ill, I am just nervous,” said King George III when his court began to worry about his emotional instability. And he was not the only one willing to admit that he suffered from “nervous” symptoms.
From John D. Rockefeller Jr. to Max Weber to Isaac Newton, in the past people had no problem publicly confessing to having a “nervous breakdown.” It was not so unusual to admit that they had succumbed to pressure and reached their limit.
The interesting thing is that accepting this “emotional breakdown” gave them “license” to withdraw from the world. Those who could afford it went to retreats, spas or clinics where they regained energy and perspective, and then got on with their lives.
A nervous breakdown allowed them to claim overwork, sensitivity, worries or simply overwhelming pressure to demand a period of isolation to dedicate to themselves, the time needed to regain their focus and calm their tense nerves on edge.
Today, we live in an era of nervousness, uncertainty and stress, but taking a real break – not only from work but also from daily worries and obligations – is practically unthinkable. In a performance-driven society governed by the Anglo-Saxon idea of “time is money ”, you have to keep going until you are exhausted.
The deep and ancient meaning of the nervous breakdown
The term “nervous breakdown” first appeared in a 1901 medical treatise in which Albert Abrams called it “a disease of the entire civilized world.” It was based on the idea of George Miller Beard, a late 19th-century neurologist, who postulated that we all have a limited amount of nervous force, which can be depleted, like a battery, by the demands and stresses of modern life.
At the time, Beard, who popularized the term neurasthenia, argued that the acceleration brought about by technology, the press, and the telephone, but also the pressures of increasing industrialization on the job, had unleashed an epidemic of nervous diseases. “The primary and principal cause of this… rapid increase in nervousness is modern civilization,” he said. According to this neurologist, the nervous breakdown was only a warning from the body, telling us to stop and draw on our self-healing resources to recover.
Although the term “nervous breakdown” was an umbrella term widely used during the Victorian era and encompassed multiple problems, it implied two ideas that were shared by most of society:
- That, as people, we have limited psychological resources.
- That the demands of our environment are sometimes excessive and can overwhelm us.
- That the solution is not to continue as best you can, but to rest.
However, with the development of psychiatry and psychology, nervous breakdowns were diluted into disorders with their own names, such as generalized anxiety, panic attacks, depression, bipolar disorder or burnout syndrome. Obviously, being more precise in the diagnosis leads to more specific treatments, but we also lost something important along the way: the implicit social authorization to take a break, rest and restart.
From a social evil to a personal disorder
Nervous breakdown was not seen as a mental condition, but rather as a sociological one. Although popular and medical opinion linked the condition with a delicate nature and refined sensitivity, people who suffered from nervous symptoms were able to avoid the stigma and prejudices associated with mental illness that existed in their time. This allowed them to feel freer to acknowledge that they were reaching breaking point.
And nervous breakdown wasn’t seen as a permanent condition, like anxiety or depression, but rather as a sporadic bump in the road, social historian Peter Stearns of George Mason University explained in The Atlantic. You didn’t have to visit a psychiatrist or psychologist to be diagnosed. And you didn’t need a specific cause, either, but it did give you carte blanche to stray from the norm.
However, the rise of psychology – to the detriment of sociology – has pushed us to look more and more within ourselves. While it has encouraged us to reflect on our emotions, moods and thoughts, it has also shifted the focus away from the economic and social circumstances that often produce and fuel this malaise.
The modern imperative of productivity and happiness, according to which if we are in a bad situation it is our fault and we only have to use our willpower to get out of it, blames us and corners us.
Positive Psychology, the climax of this trend, ends up having an atomizing effect, as it makes us responsible and isolates us from our surroundings, making us feel inadequate and ashamed when circumstances overwhelm us. So, instead of waving the white flag and taking a break, we try even harder, carrying our own hard labor camp, as the philosopher Byung-Chul Han said.
Recognize that we can’t do everything
In a society that exalts work and distrusts rest, we may need to recover a concept like the nervous breakdown precisely to protect our individual and collective strength. Zygmunt Bauman said that we live in deeply individualistic and egocentric societies that push people to “seek individual, biographical solutions to what are in reality structural and systemic problems.”
We fall into a trap: either we seek a diagnosis of a mental illness that will allow us to have a “social justification” to rest, or we continue on, stumbling until the next crisis. And yet, the ideal would be not to go to that extreme and to embrace a culture of small pauses or breaks that allow us to recharge our batteries. These small restorative breaks would help us to put the broken pieces back together before it is too late.
We must remember that “being well adjusted to a profoundly sick society is not a good measure of health,” as Jiddu Krishnamurti said. La folie à millions exists, so following the others is not always the best way to ensure our well-being.
Perhaps the term “nervous breakdown” is not the most appropriate one in these times, but we could revive the concept that underpins it: sometimes we can’t cope with everything simply because the demands are excessive. We are not Superman or Wonderwoman. And pretending to be is dangerous for our mental health. Sometimes we simply cannot keep up with the society because it is not built to the measure of human beings. And it is not our fault.
References:
Useem, J. (2021) Bring Back the Nervous Breakdown. In: The Atlantic.
Shorter, E. (2013) The Nervous Breakdown. In: How everyone became depressed. Oxford Academic: Nueva York.
Stearns, P. N. et. Al. (2000) Nervous Breakdown in 20th-Century American Culture. Journal of Social History; 33(3): 565–584.
Oppenheim, J. (1991) Introduction: The Enigma of “Nervous Breakdown”. In: Shattered Nerves: Doctors, Patients, and Depression in Victorian England. Oxford Academic: Nueva York.
Rosenberg, C. E. (1962) The place of George M. Beard in nineteenth–century psychiatry. Bulletin of the History of Medicine; 36(3): 245-259.
Abrams, A. (1901) Nervous Breakdown: Its Concomitant Evils: Its Prevention and Cure, a Correct Technique of Living for Brain Workers. Hicks-Judd Company: San Francisco.
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