This article has an interesting psychiatric diagnosis of Gollum’s possible mental illness [HT: Eric Crampton]:
Sméagol (Gollum) is a single, 587 year old, hobbit-like male of no fixed abode. He has presented with antisocial behaviour, increasing aggression, and preoccupation with the “one ring.”… …His forensic history consists of Deagol’s murder and the attempted murder of Samwise Gamgee. He has no history of substance misuse, although like many young hobbits he smoked “pipe weed” in adolescence....
Several differential diagnoses need to be considered, and we should exclude organic causes for his symptoms. A space occupying lesion such as a brain tumour is unlikely as his symptoms are long standing. Gollum’s diet is extremely limited, consisting only of raw fish. Vitamin B-12 deficiency may cause irritability, delusions, and paranoia. His reduced appetite and loss of hair and weight may be associated with iron deficiency anaemia. He is hypervigilant and does not seem to need much sleep. This, accompanied by his bulging eyes and weight loss, suggests hyperthyroidism. Gollum’s dislike of sunlight may be due to the photosensitivity of porphyria. Attacks may be induced by starvation and accompanied by paranoid psychosis....
Gollum displays pervasive maladaptive behaviour that has been present since childhood with a persistent disease course. His odd interests and spiteful behaviour have led to difficulty in forming friendships and have caused distress to others. He fulfils seven of the nine criteria for schizoid personality disorder (ICD F60.1), and, if we must label Gollum’s problems, we believe that this is the most likely diagnosis.
Certainly a plausible diagnosis. However, as a law and economics scholar I can’t resist pointing out the possibility that Gollum was acting rationally all along, given his somewhat unusual preferences. After all, getting and keeping the Ring of Power was Gollum’s only way to achieve a measure of wealth, power, and a long lifespan far beyond that of other Hobbits. He successfully kept possession of the ring for decades, and nearly recovered it in The Lord of the Rings, despite facing huge obstacles.
If we assume that Gollum valued long life, power, and wealth above companionship, socializing, and conventional morality, his actions seem perfectly rational. True, the Ring didn’t ultimately make him wealthy. But it was reasonable to assume that it might when he first stole it. And it did give him a much longer life and greater power than he would have had otherwise. As for his supposed multiple personality disorder, perhaps inventing a second personality was a good way to pass the time during his long years of living alone. When he met Sam and Frodo, the supposed second personality was a good excuse for evading responsibility for his deceptions and efforts to steal back the Ring. If not for the alternate personality, Frodo might have let Sam kill Gollum or drive him away. Finally, Gollum’s theft of the ring and his obsessive guarding of it afterwards was arguably a rational response to the extremely poor enforcement of property rights in Middle Earth.
Maybe Gollum is an example of Bryan Caplan’s thesis that many seemingly insane people are not irrational, but merely have unusual preferences. In the same article, Caplan also explains the rationality of Denethor, another Tolkien character sometimes diagnosed as insane.
In the comments to the psychiatry article, Gollum himself takes a potshot at his psychiatric critics:
Nasty psychiatrissstss! Hates them, my precious! They locks uss up in padded cell! They makes uss look at inkblotsss! Tricksy, sly inkblotsss! Nasty Elvish pills burnsss our throat!
...
Yesss We Hatesss themsss Evil oness yess my preciousss we hatess themsssBut They Helpsss us!
No they hurtsss usss, hurtsss usss sore!
numeral says:
best post this week
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February 20, 2010, 3:32 amMark N. says:
Good to see Ilya piling on some precautionary advantage in the nerd law-blogging sphere: just in case Star Trek and Dungeons & Dragons combined weren’t enough, here’s J.R.R. Tolkien to stretch out the lead! Quickly becoming a truly unassailable record: if Monty Python or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy appear it will be all over for the competition (and I say this as a computer scientist, a field not used to being outcompeted in geekery).
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February 20, 2010, 4:03 amleo marvin says:
Not to diminish how impressive Ilya’s geekery is, but that comment from Gollum is really inspired.
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February 20, 2010, 4:15 amIlya Somin says:
Good to see Ilya piling on some precautionary advantage in the nerd law-blogging sphere
One nerd to rule them all, one nerd to find them, one nerd to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
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February 20, 2010, 4:40 amjosh bornstein says:
Several years ago, my sister sent me a link to an article in a medical journal, where the author/doctor did a diagnosis (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) of Tintin, to see if the numerous concussions he suffered (Tintin, not the doctor) could account for his appearance, behavior, etc.. The article is a 3-minute read, and the funniest bit is the footnote, relating to how the man co-wrote the article with his 2 (very!) young sons.
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/171/12/1433″>
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February 20, 2010, 5:10 amArkady says:
I recall reading an article on LOTR in which the author said that Tolkein had presented one of the most compelling descriptions of addiction in literature. Gollum, and Frodo, became addicts. In the movie Gollum looked like some of the speed freaks I knew back in the day.
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February 20, 2010, 6:29 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Getting James Carville to play him was a stroke of genius.
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February 20, 2010, 7:14 amDiagnosing Gollum | Liberal Whoppers says:
[...] more from the original source: Diagnosing Gollum [...]
Syd Henderson says:
Gollum is truly a heroic figure in Lord of the Rings, keeping the One Ring from Sauron’s hands for centuries and perhaps would have kept it indefinitely if not for interference from those nasssty hobbits. And he was instrumental in its final destruction at great cost to himself.
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February 20, 2010, 8:49 amDaniel Chapman says:
The Ring was waiting until Sauron regained enough power to reclaim it. If Bilbo hadn’t found it, it would have gone to a mindless goblin as it intended.
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February 20, 2010, 9:09 amG. May says:
Coffee spitting comment right there. Thanks a ton, jerk!
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February 20, 2010, 9:35 amcorneille1640 says:
Gollum was really afflicted with pride. The ring plays to people’s pride, or self idolatry, and draws them to a lonely life focused on themselves.
Now, for a shameless attempt to get people to look at my own blog, my views on the matter can be found by clicking here.
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February 20, 2010, 9:57 amJon says:
I’m not sure why they mention vitamin B-12. If he’s living mostly on fish, raw or cooked, the last thing he’s likely to be suffering from is a B-12 deficiency.
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February 20, 2010, 10:13 amjohn knox says:
Do we really know the nutritional profile of food sources in middle earth? Plus there might have been global warming in middle earth leaching the ecosystem of the nutrients the fish needed to make B12.
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February 20, 2010, 10:19 amJonathan says:
This is what happens when you ignore Tolkien’s Catholicism....:P
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February 20, 2010, 10:24 amBill Woods says:
“He successfully kept possession of the ring for decades, and nearly recovered it ...”
He did recover it, and kept it for the rest of his life.
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February 20, 2010, 10:41 amButternut says:
From Tolkien’s words we do not know, but only assume, that Smeagol perished with the ring. Maybe there was a little more to Frodo vacating Middle Earth than Tolkien felt comfortable telling the reader. Additionally, we only assume the ring was devoured.
Hmmm...makes PersonFromPorlock’s observation a little more sinister. I had always assumed James Carville was simply Cruella De Vil’s nephew. Also, doesn’t George Soros look kinda “stretched?” Ginsburg could pass for a Nazgul, ya know.
Where did I leave those meds?
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February 20, 2010, 12:10 pmJohnF says:
As to your analysis, there is a story:
A law professor was driving by an insane asylum and got a flat tire. He got out, jacked up the car, unscrewed the bolts and carefully put them in the hubcap. As he was bringing the spare around, he stepped on the hubcap and all the bolts went flying down a hill. “Now what will I do?” he wondered aloud. An inmate, who’d been watching, said, “just take one bolt from each of the other wheels. That will do until you can get to a service station.”
The professor said, “that’s a good idea! How odd that you’re in an insane asylum.”
The inmate said, “look, I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.”
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February 20, 2010, 12:30 pmGW says:
Smeagol/Gollum was an Objectivist.
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February 20, 2010, 2:03 pmMark Buehner says:
Everybody knows pipe-weed was discovered by Tobold Hornblower circa TA 2670 in the South Farthing. Gollum stole the ring from Deagol in TA 2463. This is yet another example of Saruman’s fascist propaganda trying to keep pipeweed from the people for his own twisted ends.
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February 20, 2010, 4:55 pmAn Interesting Case Study « The Republican Heretic says:
[...] Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy offers a second opinion: [...]
archetypex says:
This entry reminds me of a paper I read years back (and may try to find) in which some Ab Psych students had to do an analysis on a disturbed fictional character. The writer did a detailed, very plausible analysis of the X-Men villain Magneto. I’ll look for it, and amend this posting with a link if I find it.
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February 20, 2010, 7:42 pmarchetypex says:
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February 20, 2010, 7:48 pmbyomtov says:
I think Gollum is absolutely the best evidence available for Caplan’s thesis.
That’s not a compliment (for Caplan).
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February 20, 2010, 8:32 pmButternut says:
The meds kicked in but...who really can dispute the rumor that Ron Paul wears a size 22 KK shoe?
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February 20, 2010, 9:52 pmYitzhak says:
I can’t believe that no one has yet mentioned the classic analysis of this kind:
Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne
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February 20, 2010, 10:07 pmGollum: A Psychiatric Diagnosis « Random Musings of a Deranged Mind says:
[...] (HT Discoblog via Volokh Conspiracy) [...]
Mikee says:
Gollum’s history is incorrect regarding his diet while living underground. He ate the occasional goblin, as well as fish. Not particularly discriminating in his diet, that old Gollum.
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February 20, 2010, 11:00 pmAvatar says:
It might be odd to describe as “perfectly rational” someone who regularly has conversations with an inanimate object, even when that object isn’t present.
Sure, Gollum enjoyed an unnaturally prolonged life. But he spent the majority of it in a dank cave, eating raw fish and hiding from goblins. Quite literally, hundreds of years of a life of complete boredom interrupted by moments of terror, with nothing to bring joy except inexpertly prepared sushi and the occasional murder of a savage. I dunno, not a good trade in MY book. The life of a law professor must be REALLY terrible to make that seem attractive!
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February 21, 2010, 2:32 amrmd says:
After reading the Orin/Oren thread, I wonder if a certain other G. W. gets objections from his colleagues for your comments.
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February 21, 2010, 10:59 amJoe Blow says:
Avatar, I guess you’ve never been an associate at a large firm. I thought something about Tolkien seemed familiar...
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February 21, 2010, 11:01 am~FR says:
I suppose lawyers are no more likely to ‘get this’ that psychologists...
Gollum was not “preoccupied” with the One Ring. He was existentially obsessed with it. This is because the Ring was evil– and sentient. Sméagol without the Ring was a quirky, slightly unsocial hobbit-like creature. With it he became Gollum.
I would recommend against trying to cope with evil by using medications or therapy. Or laws, for that matter.
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February 21, 2010, 11:22 ammlebauer says:
” Nasty psychiatrissstss! Hates them, my precious! They locks uss up in padded cell! They makes uss look at inkblotsss! Tricksy, sly inkblotsss! Nasty Elvish pills burnsss our throat!
...
Yesss We Hatesss themsss Evil oness yess my preciousss we hatess themsss
But They Helpsss us!
No they hurtsss usss, hurtsss usss sore!”
At least the Gollum personality appears to have been a Scientologist.
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February 21, 2010, 11:45 amBarry Dauphin says:
Viggo Mortensen was asked what he thought Lord of the Rings was about. He said it was about how war is not the answer. Discuss amongst yourselves.
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February 21, 2010, 11:48 amisaac says:
That addictive aspect was the motivation that Andy Serkis used to play the character of Gollum.
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February 21, 2010, 12:22 pmM. Report says:
Gollum, meet Narcissus :)
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February 21, 2010, 12:25 pmMCM says:
He’s completely right. It’s about how the answer is throwing a magical ring into a volcano. The war was a sideshow.
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February 21, 2010, 12:31 pmcomatus says:
I don’t suppose there are any Wagnerites around these parts?
Because we’ve got a world of revelations for you kids. When you’re ready.
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February 21, 2010, 12:49 pmTBlakely says:
I think the comic strip “Dork Tower” first suggested that better planning would have negated the suffering depicted in the books. All the Fellowship had to do was plant Frodo’s butt on a great eagle, have the eagle fly over Mount Doom and then Frodo just tosses the ring in. Funny how the obvious solution evaded the elites in Middle Earth. :P
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February 21, 2010, 1:01 pmrbj says:
Spending centuries hiding away from others of your own species, in a dark cave, is definitely going to negatively impact your mental health.
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February 21, 2010, 1:04 pmMiriam says:
Yay! I read the headline and did the diagnosis myself before reading the article. I came up with Schizoid personality disorder with marked paranoid features and accompanying obsessive compulsive disorder. Yay again!! (It’s the small joys that keep us going...)
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February 21, 2010, 1:08 pmDuffy Pratt says:
Gollum succeeded where Frodo failed.
And I’m surprised at Prof. Somin. Gollum wasn’t after power or wealth. He was simply trying to protect his property rights. (Sauron was also interested in preserving his property, but for him the ring was a means to an end. For Gollum, it was more of an end in itself.)
I’m also a bit concerned that someone would try to do a psychological profile of Gollum without taking into account the extensive torture he went through at Mordor.
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February 21, 2010, 1:31 pmzippypinhead says:
But enough about the woes of junior associates in large law firms, eh?
Hey, with the right training and mentoring Gollum could have grown up to be a splendid back office of-counsel patent lawyer (specializing in metallurgy, ‘natch).
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February 21, 2010, 1:43 pmEd Brenegar says:
I hear Gollum is starring in Wall Street 3: My Precious is Mine.
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February 21, 2010, 3:04 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » PSYCHOLOGY: Diagnosing Gollum. says:
[...] PSYCHOLOGY: Diagnosing Gollum. [...]
Sarnac says:
Regarding Gollum’s diet: he ate rabbits also, thus presumably other small land-based wild game, especially in those centuries when he could sneak up on things invisibly.
Regarding the eagle-flight-solution to ring-destruction: any incoming airstrike by the forces-of-light would have been detected by Sauron’s “eye” and the Nazgul airpower available to the forces of darkness could have dispatched the incoming eagles.
Separately, the OneRing could not simply be thrown in to the lava because there was a cave to walk through to get to the interior of Mount Doom. Given a highly-visible incoming airstrike, Mount Doom would have been swarmed by Orcs etc on foot.
The various battles etc were a necessary solution to the problem of distracting a nearly-all-powerful pseudo-deity from trivially blocking the slow-end-run-by-the-pipsqueak.
Sometimes war IS the answer to an otherwise unsolvable problem.
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February 21, 2010, 7:50 pmMike O'Malley says:
I was only able to access a portion of the original piece, which seems to me to be significantly flawed.
Gollem’s forensic history is far from limited to Deagol’s murder and the attempted murder of Samwise Gamgee. I don’t have time to check for LoTR page references but I recall that Sméagol was expelled from his native clan of Storrs on suspicion of serial infanticide. Not long after Sméagol stole the Ring from Deagol, Sméagol acquired the practice of using the Ring to kidnap infant children of his own clan of Storrs. These children were taken from their cradles. If memory serves, Sméagol would then strangle and eat the kidnapped infants. This particular behavior would seem to place Gollum beyond the extremes of pedophilia and/or a serial mass murderer. The only historic figure that comes to mind who would seem to be comparable was the predetary homosexual pedophiliac and serial mass murdered of Jewish children (and perhaps significantly) Nobel Peace Prize winner Yassar Arafat.
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February 21, 2010, 10:59 pmMike O'Malley says:
I was only able to access a portion of the original piece, which seems to me to be significantly flawed.
Gollem’s forensic history is far from limited to Deagol’s murder and the attempted murder of Samwise Gamgee. I don’t have time to check for LoTR page references but I recall that Sméagol was expelled from his native clan of Storrs on suspicion of serial infanticide. Not long after Sméagol stole the Ring from Deagol, Sméagol acquired the practice of using the Ring to kidnap infant children of his own clan of Storrs. These children were taken from their cradles. If memory serves, Sméagol would then strangle and eat the kidnapped infants. This particular behavior would seem to place Gollum beyond the extremes of pedophilia and/or a serial mass murderer. The only historic figure that comes to mind who would seem to be comparable was the predetary homosexual pedophiliac and serial mass murdered of Jewish children (and perhaps significantly) Nobel Peace Prize winner Yassar Arafat.
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February 21, 2010, 11:02 pmAndyM says:
While I did laugh at that comic, to Tolkien’s credit, that would likely not have worked. Recall that the Nazgul were mounted on flying “fell beasts” after the little incident at the Ford of Bruinen. The eye of Sauron could probably have spotted an eagle flying in at some distance, and send up the Nazgul with sharp pointy things to deal with it (or for that matter, depending on how high the eagles fly, they could have had orc archers deal with them).
Edit: and apparently Sarnac already pointed this out. Good to know I’m not the only LotR geek to think this way.
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February 22, 2010, 9:36 amAaron Davies says:
Also, the eagles are Maiar, like the wizards, and at extreme risk of being corrupted by the ring.
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February 22, 2010, 11:00 amDiagnosing Gollum « GeorgePWood.com says:
[...] Was Gollum a paranoid schizophrenic or a rational calculator? We report, you [...]
Duffy Pratt says:
Also, keep in mind that Frodo couldn’t just drop the ring into the volcano. There’s no reason to think he would have had an easier job of it from the back of an eagle.
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February 22, 2010, 12:32 pmAndyM says:
That’s why Frodo doesn’t ride on the back of the Eagle, he gets carried in its claws. If Frodo won’t drop the ring, the Eagle drops Frodo and the ring into the volcano.
And if the Eagle hesitates, Gandalf is standing on the tallest tower of Minas Tirith, ready with a lightning bolt to ensure that if necessary, the Eagle falls into the volcano too. Because Gandalf at that point isn’t realistically going to get the ring if he hesitates, he at least is likely to not be tempted :)
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February 22, 2010, 1:44 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
It depends on the question.
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February 22, 2010, 6:07 pmI Think Gollum Had a Ring Problem, Myself. | Little Miss Attila says:
[...] certainly reasonable people can differ. If we assume that Gollum valued long life, power, and wealth above companionship, socializing, and [...]
In More Important News « Random Neural Synapses says:
[...] February 2010 by hamerdinger Now we know what is wrong with Gollem: Gollum displays pervasive maladaptive behaviour that has been present since childhood with a [...]
A PSYCHIATRIST AND AN ECONOMIST LOOK AT GOLLUM. | Pater Familias says:
[...] PSYCHIATRIST AND AN ECONOMIST LOOK AT GOLLUM. Ilya Somin on the Volokh Conspiracy blog discusses here this analysis of Gollum’s mental health. The analysis points out that an internet search [...]
ohwilleke says:
ITA! Substance addiction is precisely the problem here, it simply isn’t an ingested substance that is being addiction.
Then again, an alternate diagnosis of mental illness due to demon possession also has a lot of merit to it and is well established in literature and scripture, if not in the DSM-IV. The facts may be insufficient to distinguish between these two forms of causation, or demon possession may be a mechanism by which the substance addiction acts.
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February 24, 2010, 6:40 pmohwilleke says:
FWIW, Popular Science’s most current issue determines that dropping the ring in a volcano wouldn’t actually have worked, as magma isn’t actually hot enough to melt a ring (only about 2600 degrees F give or take), and because volcanos tend to eject things that are dropped into them.
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February 24, 2010, 6:43 pmPubliusFL says:
Yeah, but did they measure Mount Doom? Anyways, the melting point of gold is less than 2000 degrees F, and it seems like the tendency to eject can be overcome if the volcano is deep enough.
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February 24, 2010, 7:14 pmMike O'Malley says:
PROPERTIES OF GOLD
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April 28, 2010, 10:37 pm