A modern melancholia: Van Gogh's portrait of Dr Gachet

摘要

It would be unwise to hazard a diagnosis for those attacks of illness to which Van Gogh was subject and which he dreaded. Karl Jaspers (1922) believed it might be possible to speak of schizophrenia, but few people today would retain this diagnosis as there is no indication of it in either the paintings or in the copious writings. Psychomotor epilepsy has, more recently and with greater plausibility, been proposed while certain symptoms are suggestive of attacks of vertigo of labyrinthine origin. The outbursts of anger, the anxiety attacks contribute to a clinical picture indisputably exacerbated by absinthe abuse. And there were frequent periods of dysphoria and depression. But who would dare to pin any of the classical labels of melancholia on Van Gogh?