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Hemingway's Brain
A forensic psychiatrist's corrective and innovative diagnosis of the conditions that led to Ernest Hemingway's suicide
Hemingway's Brai n is an innovative biography and the first forensic psychiatric examination of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway. After committing seventeen years to researching Hemingway's life and medical history, Andrew Farah, a forensic psychiatrist, has concluded that the writer's diagnoses were incorrect. Contrary to the commonly accepted diagnoses of bipolar disorder and alcoholism, Farah provides a comprehensive explanation of the medical conditions that led to Hemingway's suicide.
Hemingway received state-of-the-art psychiatric treatment at one of the nation's finest medical institutes, but according to Farah it was for the wrong illness. Hemingway's death was not the result of medical mismanagement, but medical misunderstanding. Farah argues that despite popular mythology Hemingway was not manic-depressive and his alcohol abuse and characteristic narcissism were simply pieces of a much larger puzzle. Through a thorough examination of biographies, letters, memoirs of friends and family, and even Hemingway's FBI file, combined with recent insights on the effects of trauma on the brain, Farah pieces together this compelling, alternative narrative of Hemingway's illness, one that has been missing from the scholarship for too long.
Though Hemingway's life has been researched extensively and many biographies written, those authors relied on the original diagnoses and turned to psychoanalysis and conjecture regarding Hemingway's mental state. Through his research Farah has sought to understand why Hemingway's decline accelerated after two courses of electroconvulsive therapy and in this volume explains which current options might benefit a similar patient today. Hemingway's Brain provides a full and accurate accounting of this psychiatric diagnosis by exploring the genetic influences, traumatic brain injuries, and neurological and psychological forces that resulted in what many have described as his tortured final years. It aims to eliminate the confusion and define for all future scholarship the specifics of the mental illnesses that shaped legendary literary works and destroyed the life of a master.
Hemingway's Brai n is an innovative biography and the first forensic psychiatric examination of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway. After committing seventeen years to researching Hemingway's life and medical history, Andrew Farah, a forensic psychiatrist, has concluded that the writer's diagnoses were incorrect. Contrary to the commonly accepted diagnoses of bipolar disorder and alcoholism, Farah provides a comprehensive explanation of the medical conditions that led to Hemingway's suicide.
Hemingway received state-of-the-art psychiatric treatment at one of the nation's finest medical institutes, but according to Farah it was for the wrong illness. Hemingway's death was not the result of medical mismanagement, but medical misunderstanding. Farah argues that despite popular mythology Hemingway was not manic-depressive and his alcohol abuse and characteristic narcissism were simply pieces of a much larger puzzle. Through a thorough examination of biographies, letters, memoirs of friends and family, and even Hemingway's FBI file, combined with recent insights on the effects of trauma on the brain, Farah pieces together this compelling, alternative narrative of Hemingway's illness, one that has been missing from the scholarship for too long.
Though Hemingway's life has been researched extensively and many biographies written, those authors relied on the original diagnoses and turned to psychoanalysis and conjecture regarding Hemingway's mental state. Through his research Farah has sought to understand why Hemingway's decline accelerated after two courses of electroconvulsive therapy and in this volume explains which current options might benefit a similar patient today. Hemingway's Brain provides a full and accurate accounting of this psychiatric diagnosis by exploring the genetic influences, traumatic brain injuries, and neurological and psychological forces that resulted in what many have described as his tortured final years. It aims to eliminate the confusion and define for all future scholarship the specifics of the mental illnesses that shaped legendary literary works and destroyed the life of a master.
216 pages, Hardcover
Published April 18, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 3, 2017
A riveting study of Ernest Hemingway's complex, often seemingly contradictory life by a psychiatrist who writes like a dream, so that the book is harder to put down than most novels. Farah is an unapologetically modern psychiatrist, meaning that he is primarily "biological and neurological (that is neurochemical) in theory and practice." As such, he "diagnoses" Hemingway in neuropsychiatric terms that dispense, thank God, with such contemporary cliché formulations as manic-depressive or bipolar or even PTSD, though there are elements of physical trauma to the brain. Hemingway was not depressive or bipolar, Farah states, because he responded negatively to Electrochock therapy (ECT) when he was subjected to it at the Mayo Clinic near the end of his life. (Farah, as one might expect, is a defender of ECT, one of the few points where I am in strong disagreement)
Hemingway's psychiatric illness was a complex combination of neurological disorders, including heredity, the many head injuries he suffered in his obsessively "macho" life, and, more than anything his long-term chronic.alcoholism, which he never gave up even as he knew it was ruining him. All this in the context of narcissism and a peculiar kind of genius that went to the heart of human emotion in a compellingly direct, unadorned, powerful literary style - and you have Hemingway on a long strange trip to suicide. Normally, I would hate a psychiatrist in the age of Big Pharma taking on a literary genius, but Farah contextualizes it so well that even when I disagree with him I find him plausible.
"Hemingway's Brain" is also deliciously, compellingly, disgracefully gossipy, another reason it's such a breezy read. The great lost generation icons are all there: Fitzgerald, whose alcoholism topped Hemingway's, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, John dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, who taught Hemingway how to write, only to be savagely satirized by his star pupil. There is a great deal of irresistible information about Hemingway's four wives and how they interacted with him and one another and caused the Master both great happiness and great pain. So the book reads like a combination medical text and tell-all on everyone worth knowing, something you might expect someone like, say, Gore Vidal to write.
Farah is well-read, but not a literary critic, and the weakest parts of Hemingway's Brain are where he tries to connect Hemingway's personality and dizzying roller-coaster life to his literary output. He does, however, take a stab at insights into the collected short stories, and a couple of them are poignant, even heartbreaking.
In short, this is a book worth reading even if you're going to disagree with most of it. It is an incomplete analysis of Papa and his life, but what it does cover is astonishingly readable, authentic, and enlightening. Someone wrote me on Goodreads saying she'd wait for my review before she read the book. This is the review. Go for it!
Hemingway's psychiatric illness was a complex combination of neurological disorders, including heredity, the many head injuries he suffered in his obsessively "macho" life, and, more than anything his long-term chronic.alcoholism, which he never gave up even as he knew it was ruining him. All this in the context of narcissism and a peculiar kind of genius that went to the heart of human emotion in a compellingly direct, unadorned, powerful literary style - and you have Hemingway on a long strange trip to suicide. Normally, I would hate a psychiatrist in the age of Big Pharma taking on a literary genius, but Farah contextualizes it so well that even when I disagree with him I find him plausible.
"Hemingway's Brain" is also deliciously, compellingly, disgracefully gossipy, another reason it's such a breezy read. The great lost generation icons are all there: Fitzgerald, whose alcoholism topped Hemingway's, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, John dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, who taught Hemingway how to write, only to be savagely satirized by his star pupil. There is a great deal of irresistible information about Hemingway's four wives and how they interacted with him and one another and caused the Master both great happiness and great pain. So the book reads like a combination medical text and tell-all on everyone worth knowing, something you might expect someone like, say, Gore Vidal to write.
Farah is well-read, but not a literary critic, and the weakest parts of Hemingway's Brain are where he tries to connect Hemingway's personality and dizzying roller-coaster life to his literary output. He does, however, take a stab at insights into the collected short stories, and a couple of them are poignant, even heartbreaking.
In short, this is a book worth reading even if you're going to disagree with most of it. It is an incomplete analysis of Papa and his life, but what it does cover is astonishingly readable, authentic, and enlightening. Someone wrote me on Goodreads saying she'd wait for my review before she read the book. This is the review. Go for it!
August 20, 2017
This was an endlessly fascinating medical biography of Ernest Hemingway that was a great companion to being immersed in all things Hemingway on Key West and is remarkable for the amount of information packed into its brief running time. Despite being only an armchair enthusiast of Mr. Hemingway's work and life, and I nevertheless was able to grasp almost everything presented. The book could have used another round of copy editing before publication (there's a minor typo or grammar issue every other page or so), and it does occasionally go into more detail than necessary on issues that feel peripheral to its central thesis (for example, tracing the life of Mary Hemingway and the estate after Ernest's death), which keep it from a solid five star read for me. This is an interesting read after Jim Harrison's A Really Big Lunch, as both men "lived vividly" (to borrow Harrison's term), consumed epically, and had to cope with a variety of health issues resulting from such lifestyles in the final thirds of their lives. Nevertheless, Harrison managed to live a lot longer, and the pairing of the two books is instructive as I traverse middle age and ponder my future self.
September 15, 2017
Andrew Farah accumulates all of Hemingways ailments and brain trauma, and makes a diagnoses that is different from the diagnoses in 1960 that led to Hemingways undergoing of electro shock therapy at Mayo clinic which essentially accelerated his decline. Farah doesn't point fingers but makes an assessment using modern understanding of brain trauma and depression.
*9 documented concussions (and who knows how many undocumented)
*PTSD from being involved in every major war of his lifetime
*Reconstructed knee
*Broken back
*Two airplane crashed
*Skin cancer
*Diabetes (that was going untreated)
*Bipolar disorder
*Dementia
*Pain and regret from 3 divorces and 4 marriages
*How about toll of everyday stress
Hemingway already had genetic disposition to dementia, but the trauma and concussions over his lifetime almost certainly led to C.T.E, the same regressive brain trauma that football players get. Rather than the electro-shock therapy helping Hemingway, like it would have done if he had normal depression like symptoms, it actually made his memory and functioning worse and the bubble popped.
*9 documented concussions (and who knows how many undocumented)
*PTSD from being involved in every major war of his lifetime
*Reconstructed knee
*Broken back
*Two airplane crashed
*Skin cancer
*Diabetes (that was going untreated)
*Bipolar disorder
*Dementia
*Pain and regret from 3 divorces and 4 marriages
*How about toll of everyday stress
Hemingway already had genetic disposition to dementia, but the trauma and concussions over his lifetime almost certainly led to C.T.E, the same regressive brain trauma that football players get. Rather than the electro-shock therapy helping Hemingway, like it would have done if he had normal depression like symptoms, it actually made his memory and functioning worse and the bubble popped.
January 19, 2019
I really enjoyed reading this book. Mr. Farah's main premise is that Ernest Hemingway was misdiagnosed as relating to depression and paranoia, and that the ECT treatments given hastened his end. He approaches Hemingway's condition with the insight of modern medicine, makes a diagnosis (which takes dementia into account) and even delineates a treatment protocol if he were one of his patients today. There is so much information about different stages of Hemingway's life, his wives and his works that it reads like a novel and is a page turner of the best kind. I agree with Farah that before a suicidal patient is released to home, the guns should be removed from the premises. I don't know how long Hemingway would have lasted absent his guns, but by that time, his writing career was already over. I would think that the keys to the gun cabinets would not have been left on the kitchen window sill, but maybe Mary had had enough. This book served to make Hemingway more human to me.
June 15, 2019
One of the best biographies about Papa that I've read in a long time. It explores the physical reasons for much of his writing and behavior, especially later in life. Excellent read that comes from a really interesting perspective.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews