This paper explores the topic of religious melancholia as a culture-bound illness in which one feels forsaken by God. It next examines writings by W. E. B. DuBois for evidence that he suffered from this condition. Finally, it examines DuBoisÆ concept of ôdouble consciousness,ö in order to present an argument that it arose from his psychological state of religious melancholia.
Religious melancholy is explored in depth by Rubin. In his Preface, Rubin explains and defines religious melancholia as follows:
Melancholy here refers to an affect, a distinctive stance toward life, a grieving over the loss of GodÆs love, and an obsession and psychopathology associated with the spiritual itinerary of conversion. The religious melancholiac desired, above all, else, to foster . . . an inward devotional life marked by a warm, personal relationship with God. Yet, those who would know God in moments of rapture and contemplation so frequently found themselves forsaken by God (vii).
Rubin goes on to explain that he had encountered cases of religious melancholia during his doctoral research in sociology, when he read the records and correspondence of mental patients during the era of the religious revival called the Second Great Awakening, in 1820s to 1840s. His investigation of this phenomenon led him to realize that the concept of religious melancholia, first coined by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), had been ôcommonplace among Americans but by the early twentieth century had become relegated to the status of a delusion associated with an underlying mental diseaseö (vii). He explains that the purpose of his book is to recover, as an archaeologist might, ôthe spiritual sickness once known as religious melancholyö (vii-viii).
Much of the book is a travel guide to the interior landscape where the age-old battle between intuition and reason, Plato and Aristotle, faith and skepticism, ôFundamentalistsö and ôH...