Dickens’ Christmas Carol: A Psychiatric Primer of Character and Redemption

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Forty-three years before Freud arrived on the scene with The Interpretation of Dreams, Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. He taught us all we need to know about character formation, the effects of trauma, and the healing process of mourning. This most illuminating story prefigures the Psychotherapy of Character and is an exemplar of psychotherapy. Each of us has his own unique story. We adapt to trauma through our temperament as we write the plot of our play of consciousness. This story-plot crystallizes into our adult character. Dickens had the wisdom to write all of this into a profound understanding of Scrooge’s character. He then takes him through a transformational journey to the recovery of his authentic being.

Dickens employs the visitations of the three ghosts as his vehicle: Christmas past, present, and future. The ghosts take Scrooge back to the future, through a kind of a time travel, by which he comes face to face with his life. As such he mourns the trauma of his life, which allows him to emerge as a truly changed man. The ghosts are the analog of the processes of psychotherapy, which we are familiar with 160 years later.

What do we know of Scrooge’s character? Dickens writes, “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.”1

On Christmas Eve, Scrooge’s deceased business partner Marley appears as an apparition warning Scrooge that if he does not change his ways, he will live an afterlife of ongoing torment, just like him. Marley is a horror show of dirty gauze, ugliness, chains, moans, physical and emotional pain. Although Scrooge’s character is a carbon copy of Marley’s, he argues and says that Marley was a successful businessman, a great man. Marley answers, “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

He tells Scrooge that he still has a chance to escape his fate through the visitation of the three Christmas ghosts. Scrooge of course does not listen and dismisses him as an undigested piece of meat. He pays no heed to Marley’s warning, although it leaves him a bit unnerved.

Scrooge is very set in his ways and has been for a long, long time. How in the world would such a man as he ever change? Is it possible for him to reverse his hostile and judgmental attitudes? Can he rejoin the human race and feel and care about his fellow man? Can he reach out and engage in a loving way instead of with nastiness? Can he use his intelligence and gifts in the service of humanity rather than in the service of selfishness and pitilessness?

Ghost of Christmas Past

The ghost of Christmas Past did just as Marley had prophesized. He takes Scrooge back to his old school where he finds himself alone, a solitary child neglected by his friends. All the other boys had gone home, while he is the only one left at school at Christmas time. He sits in a melancholy room reading near a small fire. He “wept to see his poor forgotten self as he had used to be.” He wept again when “there he was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.” In point of fact, Ebenezer was an abandoned child. He had been totally rejected by his father and sent off to school, never to come home again. His younger sister remained at home with the father. Parental love and guidance is the source of our inner sustenance. It nourishes us and serves as the foundation that carries us through the trials of life. Ebenezer was a sweet little boy who became damaged by the deprivation of a home and love.

His sister surprised him and arrived at his school to bring him home. She had begged her father once again to bring Ebenezer home. Father finally softened and agreed that he could come home. She tells him you will never come back to this school and we’ll be together all Christmas long and be merry. The memory of his sister was the only source of love in his life. There certainly wasn’t any from his father. There’s no mention of a mother. Nonetheless, it was too late. As an abandoned child, the pain informs the writing of his inner story. The hurt, the anger, the lack of self worth, and the shame it generated would leave its indelible mark later.

The next scene was Christmas Eve at the office of Old Fezziwig, with whom Ebenezer was apprenticed. His mentor was a kind, warm, generous and loving man. Old Fezziwig treated his employees like family. He was loved by everybody including Ebenezer. He rejoiced at the memories of the old Christmas party, where he was a happy participant. Scrooge had two models, his father and Fezziwig. But because of the abandonments and emotional deprivation, he, predictably, would reject the model of his mentor. He didn’t have a real choice. He lacked the foundation of internal love from which to build a loving life. He was too angry. He turned bitter, and teamed up with the older Marley as the empty promises of gold and egotism became his false idols. He would eventually settle into his ways of hardness, mendacity and judgmental anger.

As it turned out, the next loss was the last straw. His beloved sister died in childbirth, from the birth of his nephew. Scrooge blamed his nephew for her death. This is the same nephew who invited scrooge to Christmas every year and was rejected by the famous “Bah Humbug.” In the context of the Christmas Past, his old self began to remember about real giving. In the course of mourning the pain of these memories, Scrooge began to soften. He acknowledged and genuinely regretted not being kind to his clerk, Bob Cratchet, Tiny Tim’s father.

The final crystallization of his character solidified when his fiancée released him from his vow to marry. She said, “Another idol has displaced me… A golden one. You are changed. When your vow was made, you were another man… I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.” She had realized the old Ebenezer was gone. His character jelled into one that she no longer recognized nor loved. It was too late. Scrooge would play out his character story of hardness, cruelty, and the inability to love.

Indeed, with the ghost of Christmas Past, Scrooge visited his ex-fiancée and her family. He realized that he missed out on love, and being a father with a happy home. He saw that he would die like Marley, all alone. He saw her daughter and “He thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have called him father.” This brought out such regret and pain.

Scrooge was deeply affected by the past. He wept and mourned his pain. He began to feel genuine regret for his life decisions. He regretted hardening his heart to love. He regretted how he conducted himself with a meanness of spirit. He had lost all the pleasures of life that the innocent little Ebenezer had once relished. He missed out on the warmth and comfort of a family and children. He was lost and empty. Mourning the trauma began to allow him to reopen his heart.

Ghost of Christmas Present

With the second ghost, who also appeared early Christmas morning, Scrooge visits Tiny Tim’s house, his nephew’s, and many of the poor and bereft homes throughout the world. There is Christmas joy and giving in all of them, in contrast to his alone and joyless state of misery. Scrooge is a miser both in money matters as well as in spirit. They are, in fact, one thing and inseparable. Psychotherapy is not only about mourning and facing the formative past, but also our relationships in our present life. We need to mourn the pain that we give and receive in the present. Facing the truth is what sets us free.

As Scrooge starts to feel, he begins to care about Tiny Tim, and learns that he will die. The ghost quotes Scrooge from his earlier disposition, “If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” The real mensch is this story is Bob Cratchet. He never complains, he will not criticize Scrooge. Even at Christmas, the family is so poor (due to Scrooge) that they wear threadbare clothes and make do with a tiny Christmas goose. Bob Cratchet’s tender devotion to his family and Tiny Tim shows Scrooge a richness he never dreamed of.

Cratchet suffers the unbearable pain of Tiny Tim’s death, the loss of his cherished child because he couldn’t afford medical care. And yet he still takes the blow with such grace and a generosity of feeling for others. The model of Bob Cratchet stands in contrast to Scrooge’s response to the death of his sister. He couldn’t mourn and was filled with bitterness as he blamed and rejected his innocent nephew.

With the visitation to the nephew’s house, Scrooge sees that he is viewed as the ogre of the family. Even so, his nephew, his dear sister’s son, still loves him. Scrooge had cut him off in his unforgiving anger. His niece looked exactly like Scrooge’s sister and awakened memories of the feeling of loving her. Likewise, he wanted to participate in the celebrations, the loving games that he so recently considered “Humbug.”

Finally Scrooge has to confront the two evils of the world — two gaunt, neglected, and starved children hidden under the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present: the girl is Want and the boy is Ignorance. Most of all, the boy represents his own doom. The ghost again quotes Scrooge’s old heartless attitude: “Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

Starvation is not just real. It is also a metaphor of the absence of loving nurturance. It’s worth noting that Scrooge didn’t live well off his own wealth. He continued to eat gruel in the dungeon of his rundown home. He horded his money. He accumulated the gold, and deprived others of it, but he didn’t actually enjoy it or spend it. He lived a dark, empty, unhappy and mean life.

Ghost of Christmas Future

With the arrival of the final ghost, Scrooge now sees the future. One cannot really predict the specifics of the future for sure. But on the other hand, the future is very predictable. Character always plays true, unless it is mourned and dealt with. Wisdom understands that character is destiny. Of course, Dickens understood this.

Nobody came to mourn Scrooge’s death. Three low-life robbers steal his belongings and sell them to some bottom of the barrel broker. Scrooge does not yet know that the loathsome man who died was him. “If this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!… If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man’s death,” said Scrooge, quite agonized, “Show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!”

The upshot of our Dickensian psychotherapy is:

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

Finally, in desperation, Scrooge begs,

“Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!” The kind hand trembled. “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”

Back to the Land of the Living

The therapy worked. Scrooge recovers his lost and authentic self. This joyless, judgmental, hateful man now walks around transformed back into the sweet and innocent boy he actually always was, but couldn’t be. He laughs, he cries, he feels, he cares, he loves, he gives. His laughing is almost embarrassing, because the lightness of his being is so new. He’s come back from the dead. He makes up for lost time by giving a large sum of money to the men he had browbeaten for wanting to help the poor. He buys the Cratchet family the biggest goose in town. He plays a joke on Bob Cratchet, pretending that he was mad that Cratchet had come into work late and he was going to dock his pay. Instead, he raises his salary, ending the joke quickly because he didn’t want Bob to suffer. Ebenezer hadn’t joked in decades. He supplies the funds to give medical care to Tiny Tim, which allows Tiny Tim to live and thrive and walk again. Although it was too late for Scrooge to have children, he becomes a second father to Tiny Tim, and loves him as his own. One cannot undo the past, it’s too late, but one can live and love well now. Scrooge forgives his nephew and reunites with his family. He joins them in celebrating Christmas with cheer and kindness. He gets to be with his niece who looks exactly like his deceased sister, her mother. He laughs and joins into the games and fun he had as a child. Scrooge now participates fully in life, and leaves the world of the walking dead. His old life was empty, now he is alive.

Scrooge’s character was forged from his own emotional pain. Indeed, we can change the course of our lives through facing and mourning that pain. Want, deprivation and cruelty create the evils of the world. Mourning and trust, in the context of love, are its antidotes. Dickens teaches us that we must rediscover this truth over and over again, as he helps us all to find our way. There is a reason why so many people of all ages read and watch A Christmas Carol every year. It is a sacrament of the renewal of the human spirit.

Show 1 footnote

  1. All quotations are from the DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS, editor: Stanley Appelbaum. This Dover edition, first published in 1991, reprints the text of the original edition (Chapman and Hall, London, 1843).

26 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t know, Robert – In light of today’s “amazing scientific breakthroughs” in biopsychiatric research, I have a different take on Scrooge: He “suffered from a chemical imbalance caused by his untreated bipolar disorder”. He exhibited the classic “symptoms”, vacillating from episodes of grumpiness, lack of interest in activities beyond work, social isolation, trouble sleeping, and preoccupation with death, to episodes of euphoria, excitement, racing thoughts, excessive talking/socializing, lavish spending, and impulsive/reckless business decisions. Clearly a cocktail of prozac, seroquel, xanax, lithium, and ambien (with maybe some suboxone added to “treat” his addiction to working and money-counting) was ‘medically indicated for his brain illness’.

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      • “Society’s ogres,” according to the psychiatric and psychologic literature itself, are primarily child abuse victims. Since the vast majority of those defamed and drugged by the psychiatric industry are actually child abuse victims.

        https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/

        ‘Kill all the believers in God’ is psychiatry’s motto. A dream query regarding my belief in the Holy Spirit, was claimed to be a “voice” proving “psychosis,” according to medical records of today’s “mental health professionals.”

        Maybe a little joy, enlightenment, mutual respect of all, peace, and love are better ways to treat one and all? … just a theory, DSM deluded, who chose to drug up those who stood against these never ending unjust wars, since 9/11/2001.

        Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all on MiA.

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    • Don’t forget the neuroleptics for his hallucinations! Science has proven that ghosts and spirits do not exist–therefore they were all merely neurochemicals misfiring in Scrooge’s brain.

      Scrooge thought he was seeing Marley due to indigestion, but he was actually having a psychotic break from too much dopamine in his brain. Or too little. Or whatever sells pills on TV. 🙂

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  2. A Christmas Carol is wonderful. Everyone also ought to know that Dickens wrote a brief summary of the life of Christ that was not meant to be published. It was meant only for his children, but it is a delightful work. He wrote it while completing his work on David Copperfield: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Our-Lord-Written-Children/dp/0684865378

    Nevertheless, I was disappointed to discover that Dickens was a notorious philanderer, and a heavy drinker and smoker (perhaps Freud did learn something from Dickens). This disappointment doesn’t change the delight one may derive from reading A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, or other works by this great writer.

    Mr. Berezin’s reading of Dickens’ wonderful tale is creative, though ultimately unpersuasive. A more accurate analogy, and one more appropriate for MIA, would be to compare Scrooge with a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist. The role of the three Christmas ghosts ought to signify the conscience, which, if psychiatrists and psychotherapists will heed, will lead them to the kind of repentance that Scrooge sought after the revelations of his ethereal visitors. Like Scrooge, psychiatrists are very well paid. Psychotherapists make less than psychiatrists, on average, but it still does not make sense to compare innocent victims of psychiatry, or those who get sucked into psychotherapy, to Scrooge. These latter innocent victims are more like the Tiny Tims and the Bob Cratchets of the world. As these Tiny Tims and Bob Cratchets struggle and strive valiantly to emerge victorious from the labyrinthine systems of psychiatry and psychotherapy, the Scrooge-doctors and Scrooge-therapists would do well to heed the voice of their conscience. In fact, the ghosts of psychiatry’s past, present, and future may come to visit them, whether in the form of one of Robert Whitaker’s, Peter Breggin’s, or Thomas Szasz’s books, or in some other form. As these Scrooge-doctors and Scrooge-therapists come to recognize the great harm that has been caused to the Tiny Tim patients and the Bob Cratchet psychiatric survivors, and as they come to recognize how those who have been harmed physically, emotionally, and in every conceivable way, have also been forced to pay for the abuse that they have received, perhaps some Jacob Marley in their life will remind them that there is still time to break free of the fetters that they are forming for themselves.

    Scrooge, like many psychiatrists and psychotherapists, was very set in his ways. But perhaps also like Scrooge, there are problems in the past of a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist that have been unresolved. Fortunately, as Dickens’ tale reveals, there is hope even for these Scrooge-doctors and Scrooge-therapists. They, like Scrooge, can repent and help to undo the damage that is being done in the name of “medicine,” “psychiatry,” or “psychotherapy.” In fact, to give the metaphorical biggest goose, or a wage raise, would be to enlist in the cause of the abolition of psychiatry. Such Scrooge-doctors and Scrooge-therapists may then rejoice with their formerly tortured Tiny Tims or crushed Bob Cratchets.

    Of course I am not suggesting that some people may not find genuine solace in working out their problems together with someone who calls himself a therapist and gets paid for it. I am simply suggesting that Mr. Berezin’s creative reading of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is not quite accurate. Mr. Berezin is right, however, that character is destiny. Thus, in the spirit of Tiny Tim, I wish you a merry Christmas, and God bless us, everyone.

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    • I think this is a wonderful analogy. The lack of empathy that is at the core of Scrooge’s rapciousness and heartlessness is very similar to the lack of empathy displayed by “the system” towards those it tries to “help.” The main difference is that Scrooge at least admits he is out for money, whereas the psychiatrists would feel very comfortable institutionalizing Tiny Tim and putting both of his parents on SSRIs to deal with their “distress in excess of what would normally be expected” from having your kid taken away.

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    • I agree, “Like Scrooge, psychiatrists are very well paid. Psychotherapists make less than psychiatrists, on average, but it still does not make sense to compare innocent victims of psychiatry, or those who get sucked into psychotherapy, to Scrooge.

      “These latter innocent victims are more like the Tiny Tims and the Bob Cratchets of the world. As these Tiny Tims and Bob Cratchets struggle and strive valiantly to emerge victorious from the labyrinthine systems of psychiatry and psychotherapy, the Scrooge-doctors and Scrooge-therapists would do well to heed the voice of their conscience.

      “In fact, the ghosts of psychiatry’s past, present, and future may come to visit them, whether in the form of one of Robert Whitaker’s, Peter Breggin’s, or Thomas Szasz’s books, or in some other form.” Like, for example, also pointing out the similar staggering in scope crimes committed against humanity by the Nazi psychiatrists and Bolshevik Russian psychiatrists.

      “As these Scrooge-doctors and Scrooge-therapists come to recognize the great harm that has been caused to the Tiny Tim patients and the Bob Cratchet psychiatric survivors, and as they come to recognize how those who have been harmed physically, emotionally, and in every conceivable way … ” by them.

      I personally had a hard time reading and relating to Robert’s take on Dickens’ “Christmas Carol,” because I agree with you, slaying the dragon. The almost complete and total lack of repentance, lack of immediate and meaningful, reform by today’s scientifically invalid American “mental health professionals” is unacceptable. Especially since they’ve been defrauding all within our country out of money, by way of huge treatment fees, so they could pay for their malpractice insurance. Their largely unrepentant behavior is unconscionable.

      I do appreciate Robert’s attempts at pointing out the staggering in scope and continuing crimes against humanity by his industry, however. Thanks, Robert. But I doubt many within your largely unrepentant, Holy Spirit denying, field will survive God’s judgement, if such a needed judgement does ever occur, which I hope and believe it will. “Don’t say I didn’t, say I didn’t warn you,” and your colleagues. I did.

      And do you really believe your completely iatrogenic, “childhood bipolar epidemic” creating colleague, Biederman, is “second only to God”? I don’t.I believe God loves the children instead.

      Thus, I do recommend quick repentance and appropriate atonement be made for the staggering sins that have been committed against humanity, on a multibillion dollar scale, by today’s scientifically invalid psychiatric industry, in recent decades.

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      • The big threat to Psychiatry is not the Anti-psychiatry movement but the Truth. The only real threat we Anti-psychiatry activists pose is that Truth is on our side.

        No doubt liars always consider truth tellers nefarious. 🙂

        Biederman is second to the Father of Lies. Not God at all!

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  3. That “A Christmas Carol” is STILL so popular in Britain & America, speaks volumes to how really SICK our society STILL is…. Gee, it’s almost as if psychiatry, psych drugs, and psychology haven’t been helping us so much for well over a century now….

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  4. I keep hoping that the people I perceive as “evil” (those whose love of money misguides them and makes them harm others) in this world will have Scrooge-like revelations while still here on Earth. Think what a changed world it would be.
    Thank you for your re-telling of this Christmas parable.

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  5. Dear Robert,
    I love the story of Scrooge and his transformation. Thank you for looking at the story as one of trauma and need for processing and grieving, forgiveness, humility and kindness. Human resilience and the power of transformation are what gives me hope in a world certainly full of suffering but also one of compassion and kindness. I wish you and all MIA a wonderful holiday season.

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  6. TF, did you read the article? That was not the point Robert was trying to make at all. Scrooge had moral–not mental problems. He needed to realize what a rotten stinker he was. No doctor could help him there.

    Because of his financial success and political clout (probably) I doubt Scrooge would have gotten a psych label. Till the end of the story where he gives lots of money away and becomes happy for no outward reason. 🙂

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    • Hmm. No psychotherapy I have experienced ever involved time traveling ghosts and spirits. Maybe your experience differs.

      A lot of what you say doesn’t make sense. I have never defended psychiatry or even forced “therapy” which is an oxymoron. Wasting time arguing with you.

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  7. Scrooge is psychiatry. It’s not a joyful business and I wonder how a psychiatrist celebrates Christmas, when he is responsible for ruining many a Christmas and other days for many.
    Where is the conscious within psychiatry. At some point when what you do, does not alleviate suffering, what do you do? Keep doing it, or say, “I don’t want to heap misery upon misery”…..

    My son works at an alternative school where there is also a psychologist whom he likes. The psychologist has 2 kids who both believe in Santa. They got to talking about beliefs in Santa and my son jokingly said, “as a psychologist, how can you tell your kids that something non existent exists?”
    They had fun with this, because the psychologist was surprised that my son can’t remember a time where he truly believed in santa, but does believe in Christmas as a fun and exciting time.
    My kids are more than aware of my stance about psychiatry, and also the “idea” of Christmas, which I discussed with them a few weeks back.
    I told them not to feel sorry for those who celebrate Christmas alone, which perpetuates the idea that everyone should not be alone at Christmas and can cause people to feel like losers. And so I said, if at some point in your lives, say at Christmas, you find yourself truly alone, never dive into the idea that it proves you to be apart from an ideal, since the ideal is always created by a man.

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