The problem with defining insanity for any study of nineteenth century
chessplayers is that it would be asking for much more information than what we
have available.

I know of only one case where the form of mental illness is relatively
straightforward. That would be Morphy, who seems to have been schizophrenic
(there is a letter from Maurian, I believe, discussing the fact that he hears
voices). Even Steinitz, whose case was covered much more than most other players,
is too unclear to give a diagnosis as to the exact type of illness he suffered
from.

Most of the time, we do not have any indication of the form of illness. For
example, several newspapers report in 1900 that Schiffers (a prominent Russian
player, prize winner at Hastings, teacher of Tchigorin) has become insane, and
get the name of the hospital he is committed to, but get nothing more about it.
This is clearly relevant information for the issue of mental health of chess
players, but it would be hard to get much more, especially if I would want to do
this for a reasonable size set of players.

One reaction would be to say that since we have so little information, the
problem is unsolvable. I feel that the problem is too interesting (and has been
suggested too often in press reports) to leave to completely anecdotal argument,
and would prefer a somewhat unbiased look which is also within the range of study
without impossibly large amount of research time.

Jerry Spinrad