Rob Rodgers wrote:
"Spam Scone" wrote in
news:1110701993.913323.250510
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:


Rob Rodgers wrote:
"Spam Scone" wrote in
news:1110678340.621229.95930
@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:



I think belief that such an offer was made by Steinitz is a sign
that
you will swallow anything.


What is the basis for your disbelief? Do you also doubt ....

No, because we have documentation for this. The "God at Pawn and
Move"
story is an anecdote from Chernev, twisted by Fine. Here is
Chernev's
remark from The Bright Side of Chess:

[snip]

Neither writer gave any sort of contemporary source for this story.
(Thanks to Dr. Louis Blair for providing the quotations.)

If there is indeed no contemporary documentation for the statement, I

stand corrected. In light of the Chernev and Fine quotes, your
explanation is quite reasonable. My point, however, was that insanity
is
a nebulous term not recognized by modern medicine and that it would
be
better to use specific symptoms such as those in the DSM (delusions,
hallucinations, etc.) in trying to establish aberrant behavior among
famous chess players.

Agreed.

Steinitz was only an example, but a valid example
nevertheless because of his belief in his supposed telepathic and
psychokinetic abilities, which, as far as I am aware, were documented
at
the time, and which would qualify as delusions. Using specific
symptoms
would enable an investigator to examine behavior more objectively
than
the term "insanity," which has meant different things to different
people
throughout history. The term even varies from culture to culture.

Agreed.

Of course, there would still be problems in assessing aberrant
behavior,
but I think an approach that uses specific symptoms holds more
promise
than searching for "insanity," whatever that may mean.

Agreed.

In the year of our Lord Mon, 14 Mar 2005 07:19:32 +0800, "Few Good
Chessmen" wrote:



This is an excellent example of why it's important to use good
statistics rather than rely upon making your judgements from anecdotal
information (as the original poster did way back when in commenting
upon chessplayers and insanity.)

In the USA in 2002 (the latest year with available statistics) 17.9
males per 100,000 committed suicide as opposed to 4.3 females per
100,000.

This statistic is indecision (Male and Female composition per 100, 000 is
unknown).

You can check the NCHS report yourself to be sure. That is the gross
number, not the adjusted number. Adjusted, males were slightly higher
and females slightly lower, but I didn't bother wading through the
footnotes to see exactly how those numbers were adjusted.



The enemy fight in chains, invisible chains, but heavy;
Their minds are fetter'd; then how can they be free,
-- William Blake

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