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Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 43(3), 305–313 Summer 2007
Published online in Wiley Interscience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/jhbs.20241
© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN AND DEMENTIA PRAECOX

ROBERT SOMMER

Both of Thorstein Veblen’s wives and another woman he loved had nervous breakdowns,
while a fourth woman to whom he was emotionally very close committed suicide. Yet when
Veblen published an article entitled “Dementia praecox,” he did not mention his personal
contact with serious mental disorder. This detachment is consistent with Veblen’s approach
to writing. Veblen considered himself to be a detached observer who wrote objectively
about society rather than subjectively about himself. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In 1922, the famed political economist and iconoclast Thorstein Veblen published an
article entitled “Dementia praecox.” Because I had read that Veblen’s first wife Ellen Rolfe
had several nervous breakdowns, as they were called at the time, and his second wife Ann
Bradley had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and died in a psychiatric hospital,
I was eager to learn how this acerbic social critic regarded mental disorder at a time when few
effective treatments were available. I have a long-standing interest in first person narratives
written by mental health clients and family members (Sommer & Osmond, 1960, 1961, 1983;
Sommer, Clifford, & Norcross, 1998). Reading Veblen’s 1922 article and several biographies
revealed a fascinating story of detachment, projection, and intellectualization by a distin-
guished writer whose interests spanned all the social and behavioral sciences. In sequence,
I will discuss Thorstein Veblen, his wives Ellen Rolfe Veblen and Ann Bradley Veblen, and
his essay “Dementia praecox.”

THORSTEIN VEBLEN
Veblen’s parents were Norwegian immigrants who settled and farmed in the American
Midwest. Born in 1857, Thorstein was the fourth son in a family of nine children. He received
his Bachelor’s degree at Carleton College in Minnesota and did graduate work at Johns
Hopkins and later Yale where he received a PhD in philosophy and economics in 1884. As a
result of illness (malaria) and his radicalism, he was unemployed for the next seven years. In
1891, he obtained a junior appointment at Cornell, where he stayed for a year before moving
to another junior position at the University of Chicago. During this time, his book The Theory
of the Leisure Class was published and gained him instant recognition, bringing with it an
associate professorship at Stanford in 1906. His radicalism and rumored liaisons with stu-
dents subsequently forced his resignation. He moved to the University of Missouri where he
remained for seven years. During the First World War, Veblen was employed at the Food
Administration in Washington, DC. After this, he was in New York City as an editor of The
Dial, a radical literary journal, and became a founding faculty member at the New School for
Social Research. In 1926, he retired to California and lived in an isolated cabin in Palo Alto
where he died three years later.

ROBERT SOMMER is Distinguished Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of California,

Davis. He is author of 13 books, most concerned with environment and behavior. At UC Davis, he chaired
the Departments of Psychology, Environmental Design, Rhetoric and Communication, and Art.

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Veblen’s intellectual approach was characterized by “its merciless debunking orientation, its
concentration on economic factors . . . and radical critiques of capitalist society” (Berger, 1963,
pp. 180–181). Because of his antiwar views, he was on official lists of “dangerous radicals”
(Dorfman, 1934). Veblen’s career began at a time when the social sciences were first gaining
recognition, and he was a strong advocate for introducing the “new psychology” of his day
into economics (Diggins, 1978, p. 55). He rejected the hegemony of invariant economic laws
which he saw as products of culture and of psychology. He is best known today for his book
The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and its trenchant phrase “conspicuous consumption.”
Veblen was both pro-technology and anticapitalist, arguing that the making of goods was not
synonymous with the accumulation of wealth. He saw a dichotomy rather than a symbiosis
between productive labor and society’s status distinctions, ceremonies, and rituals, which
inevitably demeaned productive work through invidious distinctions. While praising both
engineers who designed useful products and workers who made them, Veblen criticized the
operations of a business class that accumulated wealth by manipulating demand to keep prices
high and wages low, traded in stocks and currencies, and distorted and demeaned rather than
improved the marketplace.
At a time when a new capitalist class was rising to power, and when psychology, sociol-
ogy, and anthropology were challenging the hegemony of economics in describing human
motivation, Veblen was a very public intellectual who confronted, dissected, and ridiculed the
existing social order. Today it would be difficult to identify a social or behavioral scientist
with a similar stature as social critic. His analysis of the psychological base of cultural and eco-
nomic institutions led biographers to describe him as “a Victorian firebrand” (Jorgenson &
Jorgenson, 1999), “the most profound thinker and one of the best informed men of his gener-
ation” (Ardzrooni, 1934), and “arguably the most original and penetrating economist and
social critic the United States has produced” (Tilman, 1992, p. ix).
No discussion of Veblen would be complete with considering the Great War. Veblen took
an intense personal interest in this conflict, one of the few instances when his views were con-
gruent with those of his government. He supported the Allied cause, and was particularly
inclined toward France, which he believed represented the best of modern culture, as opposed
to Germany, which he viewed as dominated by imperial militarism (Ardzrooni, 1934). He
went to Washington during the war years to help set food policy.
Veblen was not pleased with the timing of the war’s end, arguing that the allied cause was
betrayed by a premature peace treaty. Veblen believed that American intervention tipped the
balance and led to an Allied victory. Had America stayed out of the war, he believed that both
sides would have been exhausted, thus liquidating the old social order and ushering in a new
industrial democracy and the collapse of authoritarian rule throughout Europe. The sudden
end of the war led, he argued, to an inconclusive peace. His analysis proved to be prescient
with the subsequent rise to power in Germany of National Socialism. Veblen attributed the
Versailles Treaty to the Great Powers’ desire to unite against the Soviet Union. It was not that
they loved peace so fervently, he maintained, but that they feared Bolshevism more
(Ardzrooni, 1934).
On a personal level, Veblen was variously described as a cosmic philosopher, a social
satirist, a misfit who was remote and aloof in an Olympian privacy, a detached spectator of
life, a visitor from another planet, a stoic, and an outcast genius. Recent biographers have
emphasized more positive traits including patience, generosity, wit, and intellect (Bartley &
Bartley, 1997). His brother describes Thorstein as never becoming excited or angry (F. Veblen,
1931). He cared little for physical possessions and left most behind when he moved. The same
lack of attachment characterized his relationships with most people (Dorfman, 1934).

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ELLEN ROLFE VEBLEN
Veblen met Ellen Rolfe when both were students at Carleton College. She was the niece
of the college president and came from an influential and affluent family. A classmate describes
her having a “sparkling, if sometimes caustic wit, brilliant in her writings as a student . . . easily
the most intellectual member of the class” (Dorfman, 1934, p. 34). She was editor of the col-
lege newspaper and a poet (Eby, 2001). However, she was no better adjusted to this small
church college than was Veblen. Fellow students regarded her as “dreamy, introspective, dis-
inclined to active physical effort, unable to envisage present duty” (Dorfman, 1934, p. 34).
The two misfits found one another and became inseparable at Carleton. Their courtship lasted
for 10 years, during which time Ellen attempted to teach high school, which led to the first of
several nervous breakdowns (Jorgenson & Jorgenson, 1999). Thorstein and Ellen married in
1888 over objections from both families.
During the seven years when Veblen was unable to find a job, the couple lived in a rural
area and enjoyed each other’s company and the surrounding countryside. Ellen became an
agnostic and a socialist. When Veblen was accepted at Cornell as a fellow in economics, Ellen
started graduate study in botany and a thesis on carnivorous plants, a project she soon aban-
doned (Dorfman, 1934). Ellen did not fit the stereotype of a faculty wife. She did not dress
the part and took periodic absences from the household. After a year at Cornell, the couple
moved to the University of Chicago. Veblen’s relationships with his students Laura Triggs and
Sarah Hardy (who, like Ellen, suffered a nervous breakdown when she started teaching),
and with a married woman, Ann Bradley (Bevans), led Ellen to leave the household, move to
Idaho, and to report Veblen’s indiscretions to University of Chicago administrators.
Veblen and Ellen continued an on-and-off relationship. When she moved out, Veblen
urged her to return, and when she did, she would be angered by Veblen’s relationships with
his students and leave. Veblen did not bring Ellen on his three trips to Europe or to most social
functions. According to a friend of Ellen’s, Veblen would become annoyed when her wit and
imagination attracted attention, and he made fun of her socialism (Dorfman, 1934). She pub-
lished a children’s book, Goosenbury Pilgrims, in 1904. While she was living in her Idaho
cabin, Veblen showed up unexpectedly on her doorstep and asked her to accompany him to
California where he had accepted a position at Stanford.
When Veblen continued his relationship with Ann Bradley (Bevans) in California, Ellen
moved out and built a small cottage nearby where she could keep watch over the illicit affair.
She reluctantly agreed to a divorce in 1914, and wore her wedding dress to the divorce hearing
(Eby, 2001). Ellen was vindictive toward the couple afterward and wrote hostile letters to
universities that considered hiring Veblen. Ellen died in 1926, and donated her body to science.
A postmortem revealed that her physical development was greatly retarded. Stanford psychol-
ogy professor Lewis Terman, who had seen the results of the examination, concluded that “there
was no possibility of her having had, or giving to her husband, a normal sex life” (Bartley &
Bartley, 1997, p. 169). Veblen’s brother Orson remembers Ellen in this way:

Ellen Rolfe was a handsome and brilliant girl . . . a classmate of Thorstein’s at Carleton.
She had become a teacher; but suffered a severe nervous breakdown, from which she
never fully recovered. The marriage was ended in 1909, when Thorstein resigned from
Stanford University, and left Ellen at Palo Alto, after turning over to her all the property
he possessed. Although Thorstein never saw Ellen again after he left her in 1909. . . . It
is known that she retained the greatest admiration for Thorstein as long as she lived. She
occupied her mind with religious cults in later years. . . . [Thorstein’s] younger brother
once asked him if her strange behavior could be accounted for; he replied briefly that he
understood she was abnormal physically and not responsible.” (F. Veblen, 1931, p. 194)

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308 ROBERT SOMMER

ANN BRADLEY VEBLEN

Ann Bradley’s father was a crusading lawyer who had won a landmark case against the
railroads. Her mother was a herbalist and self-described atheist. Ann graduated from a teach-
ers’ college with the hope of preparing children for a new, more egalitarian society, but instead
she married a young architect and bore two daughters. She was fiercely independent, a dedi-
cated suffragette, socialist, and sharpshooter. Her husband scoffed at her radicalism, especially
the idea that marriage should be egalitarian, with child-rearing shared equally. The marriage
collapsed after her husband began an affair.
Ann was 20 years younger than Veblen when they met, and both were married to other
people. Their affair began in Chicago and continued during successive summers camping on
Washington Island in Northern Michigan. Ann’s daughter later wrote that they were “hiding
out on the island” so that Thorstein’s wife Ellen couldn’t track them down (Jorgenson &
Jorgenson, 1999. p. 98).
The rest of each year, Thorstein lived with his wife Ellen in California. To be closer
to Veblen at Stanford, Ann deposited her children with her parents and moved to Berkeley to study
labor economics. As Ann’s relationship with Veblen became more open, she filed for divorce from
her husband and urged Veblen to divorce Ellen. She wrote frequent letters to Veblen’s wife urg-
ing her to give up a loveless marriage, thus allowing Thorstein and herself to marry. Ann felt that
the union between them was divinely inspired. She urged Ellen to renounce Thorstein “for the
greater good of humanity,” as it would allow him to create works of genius (Jorgenson &
Jorgenson, 1999, p. 115). A friend with whom Ellen shared these letters noted later an
“egotism . . . so colossal . . . and selfishness unashamed that I was not surprised when she [Ann]
became insane in later years. She was already abnormal” (Jorgenson & Jorgenson, 1999, p. 115).
During this time, Ellen tried to induce Thorstein to return to her or else face certain ruin.
She circulated Ann’s imploring letters to her to the Stanford president and trustees and
reported Veblen’s liaisons with other students. This led Stanford president David Starr Jordan
to write to a colleague:

I have been able, with the help of Mrs. Veblen, to find out the truth in detail of Professor
Veblen’s relations. He seems unable to resist the femme mécomprisee. . . . [When con-
fronted, Veblen made] no attempt at denial or evasion . . . and tendered his resignation.
(Jorgenson & Jorgenson, 1999, p. 123)

Ellen subsequently sent derogatory letters about Veblen to other universities that were
interested in hiring him.
In 1909, Ann obtained a divorce from her husband, returned to Chicago to retrieve her
children, and moved with them to an isolated cabin in Idaho. After being fired from Stanford,
Veblen took the train to Idaho to join her. During the horse ride from the station to the
cabin, Veblen was caught in an icy gale and developed pneumonia. He was not expected to
live, but Ann nursed him back to health at some personal cost to both. By the time that Veblen
recovered, Ann’s daughter described her mother as looking “ten or twenty years older”
(Jorgenson & Jorgenson, 1999, p. 133).
Following his convalescence, Veblen set about trying to find a teaching or research
position. Because of the previous scandals and the continued vindictiveness of his wife, most
of these efforts were stymied. Ellen declared that she “would get him fired from any place he
worked” (Jorgenson & Jorgenson, 1999, p. 135). With the assistance of his former students,
Veblen obtained a teaching job at the University of Missouri. Rather than jeopardize his new
position with further scandal, the plan was for Veblen to go to Missouri alone but to return to
Ann in California during the summer.

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Finally divorced in 1914, Veblen proposed to Ann. She agreed over strong objections
from her family. Although only 37, Ann’s health had worsened to the point where her daugh-
ter described her as “worn out” and “a ravaged soldier.” Ann, Veblen, and Ann’s two children
moved into a house in Columbia, Missouri, where Ann typed all of Veblen’s manuscripts and
practiced Veblen’s ideas of child-rearing and household work. Making beds was considered
unnecessary, clothing was to be entirely functional, with no adornment or decoration; furni-
ture was made from dry goods boxes covered with burlap; dishes were washed only when all
clean plates were exhausted, and then stacked in a tub and hosed down en masse, and left to
drain (Edgell, 2001, p. 15). When she met other faculty wives, she passionately discussed
socialism. A neighbor described her as “impatient, explosive, and very doctrinaire” (Diggins,
1978, p. 162). In 1917, Ann became pregnant, lost the baby, and learned she could not have
any more children, a terrible blow to her dream of bearing “the great man’s children”
(Jorgenson & Jorgenson, 1999, p. 152). She became distraught and tried to kill herself. Veblen
found her holding a revolver to her chest.
Ann’s health never recovered; her daughters did all shopping and housework. After
World War I, the family moved to New York City, where Veblen became editor of a literary
magazine, The Dial. While preparing dinner for magazine staffers on day in 1918, Ann
became distraught and rushed out of the apartment. She returned late in the evening saying
she had gone for a walk. She disappeared again the next day. Friends telephoned Veblen from
Washington, DC, saying that Ann was not well and was trying to make an appointment to see
President Wilson. She returned home “with palpitations, hallucinations, sleeplessness, and
headaches” (Jorgenson & Jorgenson, 1999, p. 159), spending evenings writing or going on
solitary walks. One of Veblen’s students noted in his journal:
November 17, 1918 Mr. and Mrs. Veblen for midday dinner. Mrs. V. violently radical,
idealistic.
Nov. 19, 1918 Mrs. Veblen joined us at lunch and talked . . . until past one. . . . She has
specific delusions of persecution. [She feels we are] in danger . . . personal weapons
(Jorgenson & Jorgenson, 1999, p. 161).
A few days later, she told her husband she was going on a “secret mission.” She had seen
the kaiser’s son in New York City and believed that he was going to kill Thorstein because of
Veblen’s criticism of Imperial Germany. She felt that Veblen’s students also were at risk. Ann’s
daughter caught up with her mother on the street and brought her to a police station. Veblen
arrived soon after and delivered Ann to Bellevue Hospital. She was transferred to McLean
Hospital. Her brother-in-law Wallace Attwood, president of Clark University, described Ann’s
mental condition during a visit to the hospital:

Her mind of course wanders far afield, but the fact that it doesn’t linger long on any
one particular illusion, but flits about from one to another, is to me quite encourag-
ing. . . . She knows that she gets overexcited and knows what she does at those times.
(Tilman, 1992, p. 6)

Ann died unexpectedly in McLean Hospital of a pulmonary abscess in October 1920,

Veblen by her bedside.

VEBLEN’S CONCEPT OF DEMENTIA PRAECOX

Veblen was a polymath, so it is not surprising that he was knowledgeable about the
psychiatry of his day. He described dementia praecox in his 1922 article as a condition of
late adolescence and early adulthood characterized by delusions of persecution. The most

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310 ROBERT SOMMER

outstanding symptom, he wrote, was a “fearsome credulity” concerning machinations and

plots. The typical cause was said to be prolonged or excessive worry, and the standard treat-
ments were rest, security, and good nutrition. Professional opinion, he wrote, was divided as
to whether the condition was curable.
To support his use of the term dementia praecox, in his 1922 essay Veblen described a
“prevalent imbalance and derangement of mentality . . . a fearsome and feverish credulity
with which a large proportion of the Americans are affected” (Veblen, 1922/1954, p. 429).
This leads the public to suspect “footloose outrages and odious plots and machinations . . .
and imaginary evils” (Veblen, 1922/1954, p. 430). The logical faculty, Veblen maintained,
was prostrated . . . and “all manners of extravagant rumors met with ready belief . . . a period
dominated by illusions of frightfulness and persecution” (Veblen, 1922/1954, p. 431). This
occurred, Veblen wrote, after the “mental poise of the American people had been shattered
by a long run of enervating perplexity and agitation” (Veblen, 1922/1954, p. 431). As men-
tioned earlier, Veblen maintained that American intervention in the First World War “saved
the rule of the kept classes” (Veblen, 1922/1954, p. 426). Neutrality would have spared
America a huge financial burden, the rise of antidemocratic and antilabor forces, the pros-
ecution of pacifists and conscientious objectors, and “the systematized illusions of demen-
tia praecox” (Veblen, 1922/1954, p. 427).
Veblen’s description of dementia praecox is only partially accurate even by the knowl-
edge available in the 1920s. The term had been introduced by the French physician Benedict-
Augustin Morel and included in his 1860 textbook to describe a progressive mental disorder
that begins early in life and continues on to total mental deterioration (Schneck, 1960). It fell
to the German physician Karl Kahlbaum (1866/1973) to group together different forms of this
condition, including the diagnoses later known as paranoia, hebephrenia, and catatonia. Emil
Kraepelin, the great systematizer of psychiatric terminology, retained these terms in his text-
book Psychiatrie (1896–1913) as subtypes of dementia praecox, a progressive intellectual
disorder, to be distinguished from manic-depressive psychosis, which he considered to be
primarily an emotional disorder.
It seems clear from Veblen’s description of dementia praecox that he was describing the
paranoid subtype rather than all subtypes. There is nothing in his usage covering the silly
irrelevant laughter and wordplay in hebephrenia or the postural rigidity and withdrawal in
catatonia. Veblen maintained (incorrectly) that men were more susceptible because of their
heavier responsibilities in society, which could lead to “worry, dissipation, and nervous
exhaustion” (Veblen, 1922/1954, p. 435). Such stresses continued in later life, he believed,
leading to “puerile mentality and boyish temper,” which became institutionalized in male-
dominated organizations and occupations such as the Boy Scouts, the clergy, the military, the
Klan, and, most of all, politicians. Voters, he maintained, are swayed by sentiment more than
logic, leading to “a run of persecutory credulity of the nature of dementia praecox . . . whose
effects should be profound and lasting” (Veblen, 1922/1954, p. 436). As the ratio of men to
women with dementia praecox is roughly equal, it seems likely that Veblen’s description of it
as primarily a male condition can be attributed to a desire to stigmatize the male-dominated
institutions that he disliked.

CONCLUDING PARADOX
Veblen had firsthand acquaintance with serious mental disorder in the four women with
whom he was most involved as an adult: his first and second wives had been confined in psy-
chiatric hospitals, as was his former student Sarah Hardy, with whom he had been desperately

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in love. Another former student, Laura Triggs, about whom there is some question as to
whether the relationship with Veblen was sexual (Bartley & Bartley, 1997), committed suicide.
Yet his essay “Dementia praecox” is about the public’s abandonment of reason in the face of
continuing stress and uncertainty with no mention of his personal situation.
I had originally been surprised by the absence of any reference to Veblen’s direct contact
with serious mental disorder in the 1922 essay. Yet, after reading his writings and numerous
biographies describing his sardonic detachment and Olympian aloofness, a man who wrote as
if he were a visitor from another planet, it was clear that Veblen was not given to public
introspection. His first wife Ellen had commented, “How I wish I could look into his real
mind. But nobody ever will” (Eby, 1999, p. 360). His brother Orson speaks of Thorstein’s
“impenetrable reserve” and predicted that Thorstein’s “intimate personality will never be fully
understood by anyone who is likely to write about him. He was not self-revealing and was
intensely opposed to any attempt to make him personally known to the public.1 In his writings,
Veblen led the opposite of the examined life. It is only through his many biographers that we
know his family situation. Rather than the participant observer role advocated by Harry Stack
Sullivan (1962), Veblen saw himself as a detached observer who wrote objectively about
society rather than subjectively about himself. There is considerable projection in this
approach. His article on the importance of Jewish intellectuals in knowledge creation has
been interpreted as an account of his renegade and marginal status after breaking out of the
Norwegian community (Dorfman, 1934, p. 425). When he attempted to practice what he
preached, in terms of creating an egalitarian household, he did not write about this in its par-
ticularity but described general conditions of women’s oppression. He indicted American
higher education in The Higher Learning in America (1918/1965) without mentioning his
many abrasive interactions with deans and college presidents. Specific administrators hostile
to him can be identified but they were not mentioned by name or place. In a 1904 letter to a
colleague, Veblen described the book as “entirely impersonal” (Eby, 2001, p. 271). He trans-
formed his anger against college presidents into an indictment of universities for mimicking
corporate culture (Eby, 2001). Veblen was not unaware that colleagues and deans viewed neg-
atively his liaisons with students but he did not think this was any of their business. When
Stanford University president Jordan told him that the trustees “found his family life far from
satisfactory,” Veblen responded. “That’s interesting, so do I” (Eby, 201, p. 280).
His books and articles, decidedly hostile to institutions that proved problematic for him,
are not written as autobiography. When Veblen died, he directed that his personal papers and
correspondence should be burned. His will stated that “No tombstone, slab, epitaph, effigy,
tablet, inscription or monument of any name or nature, be set up to my memory or name . . .
that no obituary, memorial, portrait or biography of me, nor any letters written to or by me be
printed or published” (Dorfman, 1934, p. 504). In 1909, at the height of the scandal sur-
rounding Veblen’s open relation with Ann Bradley, Stanford psychology professor Lewis
Terman observed that Veblen never said anything that might have explained the situation (Eby,
2001, p. 283). Although Veblen tried to shield his private life from public view, his first wife,
Ellen Rolfe Veblen, repeatedly brought it into the open, stripping Veblen of “the protective
insulation of impersonality” (Eby, 2001, p. 280).
If I had known earlier of Veblen’s extraordinary powers of detachment and compart-
mentalization, I would not have read his essay on “Dementia praecox” in search of material
on his role as family member of someone with a mental disorder. Veblen did not use this

1. It was only a short time before his death that Veblen gave his brother’s wife Florence permission to write
about him.

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312 ROBERT SOMMER

diagnosis metaphorically; he described dementia praecox, its symptoms, and its treatment
with reasonable although not complete accuracy, but with his habit of “generalizing personal
experience outward” (Eby, 2001, p. 253), the diagnosis was applied to the enervated American
psyche rather than to anything in his personal life.
When Veblen’s essay was published, the diagnosis dementia praecox was being sup-
planted by schizophrenia, a term coined by Eugen Bleuler (1911) to reflect a schism in
psychological functioning in which intellect, emotions, and actions become separated. Justifi-
cation for the new term was the development of the disorder later in life for some patients,
particularly those with the paranoid subtype (hence rejection of praecox, early in life), and the
fact that many patients did not go on to complete deterioration (hence rejection of dementia,
away from the mind, leading inexorably to total intellectual deterioration). It turned out that
much of what had been viewed as total deterioration was a product of the way people with
this condition were treated. In Bleuler’s conception of split psychological faculties, the schiz-
ophrenic person, out of touch with reality, can say one thing, feel another, and act in still a
different way. Splitting of psychological functions was very much a part of Veblen’s charac-
ter. He believed and stated to others that his work was objective and dispassionate, yet his
emotions fueled much of it. Nonetheless Veblen was very much in touch with reality. He knew
social conventions and wrote scathingly about them. He did not agree with these rules and
would not abide by them. His powers of detachment and intellectualization shielded him from
the serious mental disorders that afflicted the women he loved. Veblen could handle the split-
ting of intellect from emotion without removing himself from reality but his partners could
not. They broke down, leaving Veblen to handle conflict through intellectualization, writing
about dementia praecox as something at a distance. Did Veblen consider it a coincidence or
bad luck that all these women so close to him had nervous breakdowns? We don’t know the
answer, as the question is not considered in Veblen’s published writings or the letters cited in
biographies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to thank Clare Eby and Barbara Sommer for their helpful comments.

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