The Banality of Attaching Psychiatric Labels to Historical Persons
The Banality of Attaching Psychiatric Labels to Historical Persons It is a well known, though trite, truism that psychiatric diagnoses cannot be made on the basis of symptoms alone. If this is true of living persons, how much more does it obtain in the case of historical persons? All psychiatric symptoms can occur in any “normal”, i.e., non-disordered person, some time or other in their lives. How, then, can a psychiatric diagnosis be made of a historical person who, by default, cannot be examined by a qualified psychiatrist? If such possibilities arise in the minds of some persons, they should clearly and emphatically be stated as very, very tentative and by no means confirmed. Otherwise, such labelling will be illogical or naive at best and nefarious at worst. Such labelling, however, has been going on regarding personages such as Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Mahakavi Subramania Bharati and several others. Let us consider the appropriateness of this in...