The Effect of Bipolar Mood Disorder on Sadegh Hedayat's Letters

This paper studies linguistic characteristics of bipolar mood disorder in Sadegh Hedayat's letters. It attempts to explore the possibility of diagnosing bipolar disorder through qualitative analysis of text. The personal letters of Iranian author Sadegh Hedayat addressed to Shahid Nouraie are studied. The addressee is fixed to reduce effective factors, including linguistic differences among different registers and styles. Therefore, interpersonal variation is also neutralized. Letters are chosen to reduce the potential effects of aesthetic manipulation used in the author's narratives and published works. To analyze the data, semantic fields used in the letters are studied, and to find any instance of pressured speech and poverty of speech, topical shifts and moves are analyzed as well. Linguistic study of each letter reveals that different types of bipolar mood episodes (i.e., hypomanic, depressed, euthymic and mixed) can be diagnosed with this methodology. Other semantic criteria are explored, including themes of humiliation and ridicule.