Mental illness and its Impact on History
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Mental illness and its Impact on History
Garrison and the other abolitionists campaigned for thirty-five years to abolish slavery and were no closer to that goal than when they began. Yet, they succeeded in the end in a manner they never envisioned let alone planned. Their constant propaganda against slavery and slaveholders, culminating with John Brown’s seemingly insane raid, hardened the South’s resolve and paranoia and pushed them into their ill-conceived and totally unnecessary revolt that ultimately ended the “peculiar institution” which otherwise would have endured for God only knows how long into their future. So could Garrison and other mainstream abolitionists really take credit for the accomplishment? I think only Brown could have in actuality. In a perverse way, Brown was one of the most prescient men to have ever lived as his death speech evidenced. He warranted his epithet of being “the meteor of the war.”
Garrsion was a very interesting man on a psychological basis. He had been literally obsessed with this issue for decades. This is why, I think, he closed his newspaper on the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and left the task of integrating the freed slaves to others, declining to continue into another cause at the time. To a person clinically obsessed, there are only two ways to ever resolve the issue. One is with the person’s death and the other is to have the obsessive desire fulfilled. Garrison wanted closure, the final fulfillment of his obsession. He could finally rest in peace. I have known people obsessed with causes and they all have one thing in common. Like both Garrison and Brown, they all have had numerous children. Why? Because having sex is one of the few ways, if not the only way, to offer even temporary relief from the obsessive thought patterns save unconsciousness.
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Re: Mental illness and its Impact on History
Mental illness is basically a social category with the additional risk to the subject of pain and possibly suicide and oppression by others of an unusual personality.
I doubt that any task can be accomplished by someone with no degree of neuroticism.
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