Characters on the couch

What observations might a therapist make about a prominent character from history? Lord Nelson is the first of several historical figures to undergo a non-too serious posthumous analysis

Characters on the couch - Lord Nelson

by Hindsight

Now that my client is virtually deified - with his bullet in one museum and a lock of hair in another, a blood-splattered uniform here and a statue or two over there - it's hard to remember the hours we spent working on his chronic sea-sickness.

It was, of course, psychosomatic. Probably down to ambivalence about his naval career, but very real, nonetheless. It needed much CBT to manage, disrupted as we were by his sojourns at sea - the letters DNA wandered down my records like waves in the Atlantic. But relating at depth was his thing, he told me with a wink, and we did.

At first, I was seduced by his charisma. The ratings loved him; the officers admired him for his strategy and tactics. But I worried about his yearning for an external locus of evaluation. The British Government had denied him the highest honours, and he attributed this to his lowly birth. Each time he set sail again, we agreed he'd look for evidence that people thought of him as 'not good enough'. He found none, but still agonised over being a 'mere baron'.

We tried reframing the situation as unspoken criticism of his naughty carry-on with Lady Hamilton, but the man of battle seemed strangely detached from his sexual self. As if he'd acquired a metaphorical blind eye. And so the sea-sickness continued unabated, a bodily representation of his vacillation between self-esteem and non-validation by those on high.

This wobbly sense of worth surely contributed to his final protestation that he, at least, had done his duty. Various parties still claim that he added, 'Kiss me, Hardy.' And well he may have done, granted male bonding at sea. But he'd confessed his love of the flask to me, and that misheard phrase would certainly have been 'Is my flask handy?'. You see, despite his longing for acknowledgement, he'd completely self-actuated as a commander. What was left for him but his flask?

Outcome: slightly unsatisfactory.