MHA's Blog: Chiming In

Sometimes, I read a theory about something online (I do that a lot), and the absurdity of it sticks with me. I enjoy reading conspiracy theories because I enjoy following the logic of the people thinking of them, and I enjoy the attempts to support theories with fact. They often illuminate ideas and facts that we just take for granted.

I found out about the Winnie the Pooh Mental Illness Theory from the website Cracked, as one of their Insane (but Convincing) Theories on Children’s Pop Culture (http://www.cracked.com/article_19673_6-insane-but-convincing-theories-childrens-pop-culture.html). Cracked is a humor site, but their articles are well-written and interesting (and their articles touching on mental health are surprisingly insightful). The theory itself comes from Canadian Medical Association Journal (http://www.cmaj.ca/content/163/12/1557.full), in a published paper from December of 2000. The authors of the paper argue that all of the characters in A.A. Milne’s classic children’s book represent mental health conditions, with their personalities mirroring the symptoms of each disorder. Eeyore represents depression, lacking feelings of happiness at anything, and manifesting feelings of worthlessness and alienation. Piglet represents general anxiety disorder, with his chronic fear of everything and anything. Tigger represents ADHD, literally bouncing from one idea to the next. These diagnoses seem to fit perfectly, encapsulating the major symptoms of each illness. Christopher Robin illustrates schizophrenia, his fantasies highlighting his break with reality. The only problem is that there’s no evidence that A. A. Milne intended this interpretation.

Literary scholarship is full of theories about what pieces of literature mean. Often, these ideas don’t have any basis in what the author intended the story to be. Milne created Pooh using his son Christopher’s toys, and setting it in the woods near their home. He was a noted playwright before he wrote the two original Winnie the Pooh books, and spent time in the military. There’s no evidence he knew anything about mental health diagnoses, or that he intended his children’s book to be about them. But, as you savvy readers point out, some books can mean things that their author’s don’t intend. That’s true, but this theory implies that Milne meant to include that meant to include when writing the story.  It’s very complete, with every character included in the diagnosis, even the new ones.  . Every story is part of the evidence (even stories he didn’t write, but were invented by Disney, who bought the rights to the stories in 1961).

This type of shallow armchair diagnosis is often found in literature, which has no understanding of psychology beyond the stereotypical Freudian interpretation. Every character whose mother is mentioned is in love with her. No one looks at novels from the Gestalt theory or looks at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in relation to characters. That’s a shame because both literature and psychology help illuminate the ways people relate to the world around us. The more people know about both of them, the better we all are for it.

This theory is a cautionary tale about reading too much into something. People often believe that mental health conditions aren’t real illnesses, often because they have some of those symptoms themselves. When a person is feeling sad, they may label themselves as depressed. When someone with Major Depression identifies themselves, that person remembers when they were “depressed” and how they snapped out of it, and tells the others to do the same. This definition of depression removes much of the salient clinical information and makes the illness something much shallower than it is. Theories like this encourage that lack of understanding, as do posthumous diagnoses of people in history and tabloid diagnoses of celebrities. Without talking to someone, observing their symptoms and learning how the illness interfered with their lives, all those things are doing is reinforcing the shallow definition of serious illnesses and making people who suffer from them have to work harder to get the attention they need.

Next week, we’re going to discuss the wonderful indie movie Safe, and agoraphobia, another popular pop culture favorite.

What do you think of the Winnie the Pooh theory? Have you read the original stories?