Mad

Mad (pronounced mad)

(1) Mentally disturbed; deranged; insane; demented.

(2) Enraged; greatly provoked or irritated; angry.

(3) As madman or (metaphorically) mad dog, a person abnormally furious; ferocious (and can be applied literally to animals (mad bull etc), especially dogs afflicted with rabies (a rabid dog).

(4) Extremely foolish or unwise; imprudent; irrational.

(5) Wildly excited or confused; frantic (often as “in mad haste”).

(6) Overcome by desire, eagerness, enthusiasm etc; excessively or uncontrollably fond of (usually) someone; infatuated; (often as “madly in love”).

(7) Wildly lively and merry; enjoyably hilarious.

(8) Of extremes in climatic conditions (of wind, storms, etc), furious in violence.

(9) An angry or ill-tempered period, mood, or spell.

(10) As MAD, the acronym for mutually assured destruction: a theory of nuclear warfare deterrence whereby each side in a conflict has the capacity to destroy the other in retaliation for a nuclear attack.

(11) The acronym for the Militärischer Abschirmdienst, a counterintelligence agency of the German military (essentially the successor to the old Abwehr (1920-1944)).

(12) The acronym, in admiralty administration, for the Maritime anomaly detection in Global Maritime Situational Awareness, for avoiding maritime collisions

(13) The acronym, in astronomy, for the Magnetic anomaly detector which detects variations in Earth's magnetic field.

(14) The acronym, in high-energy physics, for the Methodical Accelerator Design, a CERN scripting language used in particle acceleration.

Pre 900: From the Middle English mad (adjective) & madden (an intransitive verb, derived from the adjective), from the Old English gemǣd, past participle of gemǣdan (to make mad), akin to gemād (troubled in mind; demented, insane, foolish).  It was cognate with the Old Saxon gemēd, the Old Norse meitha (to hurt, damage) and the Old High German gimeit (foolish, silly, crazy).  In the Old English, gemǣded was the past participle of gemǣdan (to render insane).  As an adjective, the comparative is madder and the superlative maddest but the strangest adjectival form is probably the very English maddish, suggesting some state between displeased and actually mad.  The ultimate root of the Old English forms was the Germanic adjective gamaidaz (changed for the worse, abnormal), the element “maid” from the primitive Indo-European moi-, a variant of the root mei- & moi- (to change, exchange, go, move), extended with a dental suffix (-d in Germanic; -t elsewhere).  The same suffixed variant moit- appears in the Latin mūtāre (to change, exchange, give and receive in exchange), familiar in COVID-19-era English as mutate.  The Sicilian Greek (a fork by virtue of geography always most likely to be influenced by Latin) has the noun moîtos (thanks, favor, reward), presumably a borrowing from the Old Latin moitus.  Mad is an adjective, verb & adverb; madder & maddeningness are nouns, adjectives & verbs, maddest, maddish & maddening are adjectives, madly & maddeningly are adverbs and madden & maddens are verbs; the noun use of mad is non-standard.

The synonyms for mad exist in its four senses (1) lunatic, maniacal, psychotic, crazed, crazy, nuts, kooky, nutty, insane, (2) furious, exasperated, livid, raging, wrathful, irate, (3) ill-advised; unsafe, dangerous, perilous & (4) absurd, fantastic, delirious, wondrous.  There is much overlap in the synonyms, insane historically meant “not sane, mentally unstable” but is now popular with the Instagram generation as a general expression of approval and "bonkers", while still meaning “not sane, mentally unstable” also (except in the US) has come to be used in an entirely non-pejorative way to suggest something astonishing in the sense of something or someone verging on the irrational but in some way inspiring; absurd works in a similar way.

Bonkers: 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170.

Because it makes Greta Thunberg (b 2003) mad, the likes of the SRT Demon 170 won’t be seen again but an off-the-shelf machine which can generate 1,025 horsepower makes a fine swansong.  To make Ms Thunberg madder still, it’s noted the induction system is capable of providing more fuel flow per minute than the average US showerhead and in a nice touch the purchaser will receive a commemorative Demon 170 decanter set.  Thousand horsepower cars for the street have traditionally been the preserve of madmen but mad women should be encouraged to give one a try.   

The word appears often in idiomatic use including “mad as a March hare” which alluded to hares becoming especially active in spring their mating season; “mad as a meat axe”, an especially evocative piece of Australian slang which is self-explanatory to anyone who has seen an un-skilled operator use a meataxe on a carcass and “barking mad”, the origin of which is mysterious.  The best story links it with the existence of a medieval lunatic asylum in the grounds of the royal monastery Barking Abbey (located in what is now the London borough of Barking and Dagenham) but there’s no evidence of use before the early twentieth century and most etymologists have concluded there’s a link with the idea “mad dogs” incessantly bark.  The London slang use suggesting someone is “three stops past Barking” is thought to have be an opportunistic adoption referencing the “barking” and in the vein of something like “a picnic short of a sandwich” which suggests some degree of mental incapacity.  There was even “shorthand slang” based on this idea: were one to be called “daggers”, it meant one was “three stops past Barking”, Dagenham being three stations beyond Barking on the London Underground.

The original meaning of mad was “insane, demented, disturbed of mind”, a sense inherited with the word from the Germanic forms.  The progression in meaning seems to have begun circa 1300 when the senses (1) “mad dog” (dog afflicted with rabies (rabid)), (2) “foolish or unwise” and (3), “overcome by desire or eagerness” emerged; the meaning “enraged, angry” not recorded until circa 1400.  This sense of mad quickly became the usual colloquial term in the United States whereas “angry” long persisted as the popular form elsewhere in the English-speaking world although the increasing US cultural influence noted since the mid-twentieth century makes these distinctions probably less noticeable.  The sense “wildly lively, merry” is said to be an innovation of African-American English associated with jazz and dating from the 1940s.  For those learning English, “mad” must seem a strange word given the social difficulties engendered if one accidently mixes up being “mad about you” with “mad at you”.  So students should be given practical examples such as: "I am mad about him" (I would like to enjoy intimacy with him); "I am mad at him" (I am angry with him or I would like to kill him); "He is mad" (he appears mentally unstable).

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Another thing for them to learn was that wad was one of those words listed as a class-identifier by Professor Alan Ross (1907-1980), Professor of Linguistics at the University of Birmingham who in 1954 coined "U" (upper-class) and "non-U" (non-Upper-Class) to describe the differences social class makes in their use of English.  While his article included differences in pronunciation and writing styles, it was his list of variations in vocabulary which attracted most interest.  One difference he noted was the upper-class call the obviously unstable “mad” whereas the lower classes tend to label them “mental”.  Professor Ross published his illustrative glossary "U" and "non-U", differentiating the speech patterns in English social classes, in a Finnish academic journal and used extracts from Nancy Mitford’s (1904–1973 and the oldest of the Mitford sisters, all but one of whom society's more conventional types were apt to label "mad") 1945 novel The Pursuit of Love to provide examples of the patterns of speech of the upper class.  This pleased Nancy Mitford who interpolated the professor’s work into an article about the English gentry she was writing for Stephen Spender's (1909-1995) literary magazine Encounter (1953-1990).  Although not best-pleased that her discussion of the Ross thesis was the only part of her piece to attract attention, more amusing was the subsequent re-publication in 1956 in her Noblesse Oblige: an Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy which, augmented with contributions from John Betjeman (1906–1984) and Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966), meant that for decades she was the acknowledged authority on upper-class speech, manners and ways.  Her class-conscious readers had taken it all more seriously than she had intended.

been locked-up for 46 years.

Low’s take on the official German line explaining Hess deserting the German government as “madness”.  This cartoon does represent what was then the prevailing public perception of the typical behaviour expected of those in “lunatic asylums”.  Depicted (left to right) are:

Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945): Committed suicide by by crushing between his teeth an ampule of a potassium cyanide (KCN), smuggled into his cell in circumstances never confirmed, shortly before he was to be hanged after being convicted on all four counts ((1) Conspiracy to wage aggressive war; (2) Waging aggressive war; (3) War crimes and (4) crimes against humanity.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945): With his wife Eva Hitler (née Braun; 1912–1945) of a few hours, committed suicide (he by gunshot and KCN, she by KCN alone) with the tanks of the Red Army only a couple of blocks from the Berlin Führerbunker.

Dr Robert Ley (1890–1945; head of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labour Front) 1933-1945): Committed suicide by hanging (by means of suffocation) himself in his cell in Nuremberg prior to the trial after for some years have made a reasonable attempt to drink himself to death.  He died with his underpants stuffed in his mouth.

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945): Hanged at Nuremberg after being convicted on all four counts.

Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945): With his wife (Magda Goebbels (née Ritschel; 1901-1945), committed suicide (by gunshot) in the courtyard above the Führerbunker, shortly after they’d murdered their six children.

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945): Captured by the British while attempting to escape disguised as a soldier, he committed suicide using an ampule of (KCN) he’d concealed in his mouth.

On 10 May 1941, Hess, a skilled pilot, wholly on his own initiative, undertook a secret flight to Scotland where his plan was to negotiate an end to the hostilities between the UK and Germany.  This was only days before the German invasion of the Soviet Union (something of which Hess made no mention while being interrogated) and his motivation was to avoid what he (correctly) regarded as the major strategic mistake of confronting a two-front war.  The British government, interested only in the eradication of Nazism declined to negotiate and Hess was locked up, including for some two weeks enjoying the rare honor of being held in the tower of London.  News of Hess’s flight had sent shockwaves through the Nazi high command, then about to embark on the greatest invasion in history.

Rudolf Hess (left) and Adolf Hitler (right), Sturmabteilung (the SA (Storm Troopers, the Nazi Party's original paramilitary formation) parade, Nuremberg 11 September 1938; the car is a Mercedes-Benz 770K (W07, 1930–1938).

After for a while clinging to the hope his erstwhile deputy might have crashed into the ocean, Hitler, upon hearing the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) confirm the curious arrival on Scottish soil, made the sudden decision to issue a statement claiming Hess had gone mad, the consequence of injuries suffered during World War I (1914-1918) and falling under the influence of fortune tellers.  This was done without consulting the propaganda minister and Goebbels was aghast the regime had just admitted its deputy leader was a madman; he feared how the British would exploit the revelation, knowing what he’d do in their place.  However, aware through intelligence sources the invasion of Russia was nigh, the British had no wish to convey to Moscow the impression they were seeking to make peace with the Nazis and the bizarre business soon vanished from the news, coming to be known as a “nine day wonder”; the only one upon whom it appeared to leave a lasting impression was comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who to his dying day remained suspicious elements in the UK were associated with the flight of the “motorized Parsifal”.

Hitler on a walk with Helga Goebbels (1932-1945), 1936.  She was Joseph Goebbels' oldest child.

The other immediate effect was the Nazis, in a typical reaction, organized a crackdown on the fortune tellers but in Berlin, the sardonic humor soon surfaced and a joke circulated in which Hess was taken to meet Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who asked: “So you’re the madman?” to which he received the reply: “No, I’m only his deputy.”  Hess died by suicide in Spandau prison in 1987 after 46 years in captivity, outliving Göring (committed suicide in 1946 just before he was to be hanged for war crimes), Hitler (committed suicide in 1945 in the Berlin Führerbunker with the Red Army’s tanks only streets away), Ley (committed suicide in 1945 while under indictment as a war criminal), Himmler (committed suicide in 1945 after being arrested by the British), Goebbels (committed suicide in 1945 (with his wife) after they’d murdered their six children (aged between 4-12)) and von Ribbentrop (hanged in 1946 as a war criminal.

Until probably sometime in the nineteenth century, for all but a few specialists, the condition of madness was relatively simple: people were mad or sane and while it was noted one could become the other, once labeled as mad one was by most, probably always thought mad and the punchy succinctness of the word could produce a memorable phrase such as the one used by Lady Caroline Lamb (1785–1828) to describe her lover, Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron 1788–1824): "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know".  The only widely observed nuances were behavioral and that was because madness was an observational diagnosis; there were those who were mad, slightly mad, quite mad and barking mad, hardly clinically exact descriptors but it’s doubtful many misunderstood what was being conveyed.  Modernity’s advances in neurology and pharmacology allowed the creation of psychiatry which began to gain a grudging acknowledged respectability in the medical profession around the turn of the century and it been a growth industry since.  The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), when first published (DSM-I, 1952) was a slim volume of 130 pages which listed 106 mental disorders but by the time the fifth edition (DSM-5, 2013) was released it had grown to 947 pages although interestingly, the number of specific diagnoses was reduced from 172 in DSM-IV (1987) to 157, something of an achievement given 15 new mental illnesses were added.  It is though bit of a definitional minefield and there are those who suggest that once deconstructed, there are really over 300 identifiable conditions, some of the official 157 categories better thought of as groups or clusters.  However the count is done, nobody is expecting DSM-6 to contain fewer pages, whatever method is used to define the conditions so it seems there must been more to madness than once convenient mad-sane binary.

How much the proliferation of diagnosed madness is mission-creep and how much better understanding is a debate, mostly outside the profession.  Some of it is certainly an attempt to secure market-share for the psychiatrists, some “conditions” once thought normal as part of the spectrum of the human condition now listed as a disorder to be referred for treatment and in some cases this is doubtlessly a good thing although quite how reassuring a diagnosis of “generalized anxiety disorder” (GAD) is for a patient may be questionable.  GAD may also be overkill, the psychoanalyst having long supplanted the priest for those who can afford the hourly-rate, market share seems well secured.

Some of Louis Wain's drawings of cats, all reputed to date from his time of incarceration in a mental hospital during the 1930s.

The English artist Louis Wain (1860–1939) was a noted painter of cats, sometimes naturalistic, sometimes stylized and often anthropomorphic.  In his sixties he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and confined to a series of mental institutions, settling eventually in Napsbury Hospital, north of London.  By the standards of the time it was a convivial place with a park and a colony of cats and while his condition worsened, the frequency of his psychotic episodes decreased but drawings of cats he continued to produce became increasingly abstract, intricate and bizarre.  After 1930, he would never again leave Napsbury and there, in 1939, he died aged 78.  For a long time his paintings of cats have been used to illustrate an artist's descent into madness, a theme popular in those circles in which the notion of the "disturbed genius" is a cult.  However, the thesis has been questioned, notably on the technical ground of chronology; being undated, it can't be guaranteed the sequence of drawings as they're usually assembled are an accurate lineal progression of his work and doubt has been case even on the diagnosis of schizophrenia, some speculating the then not well understood medication used in the era to treat the condition may have contributed to his symptoms.

MADD

MADD, Madd & MaDD (pronounced mad)

(1) The acronym (as MADD) for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a non-profit education and lobbying operation founded in California in 1982 with a remit to campaign against driving while drink or drug-affected.

(2) The acronym (as MADD) for Myoadenylate deaminase deficiency or Adenosine monophosphate deaminase.

(3) The acronym (as MADD) for multiple acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency (known also as the genetic disorder Glutaric acidemia type 2).

(4) In computing (as MADD), the acronym for Multiple-Antenna Differential Decoding (a technique used in wireless comms using multiple antennas for both transmit & receive which improves performance by exploiting spatial diversity & multipath propagation of the wireless channel).

(5) As the gene MADD (or MAP kinase), an activating death domain protein.

(6) As Madd, the fruit of Saba senegalensis (a fruit-producing plant of the Apocynaceae family, native to the Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa).

(7) As madd, a clipping of maddah (from the From Arabic مَدَّة (madda)), the English form of the Arabic diacritic (a distinguishing mark applied to a letter or character) used in both the Arabic & Persian.

(8) The acronym (as MaDD), Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder.

(9) The acronym (as MADD), for mutually assured digital destruction: a theory of cyber-warfare whereby each participant demonstrates to the other their capacity to inflict equal or more severe damage in retaliation, thereby deterring a cyber-attack (based on the earlier MAD (mutually assured destruction), a description of nuclear warfare deterrence).

From AD to MAD, 1962-1965

The period between the addition of nuclear weapons to the US arsenal in 1945 and 1949 when the USSR detonated their first atomic bomb was unique, a brief anomaly in the history of great-power conflict.  It's possible to find periods in history when one power has possessed an overwhelming preponderance of military strength that would have enabled them easily to defeat any enemy or possible coalition but never was the imbalance of force so asymmetric as it was between 1945-1949.   Once both the US and USSR possessed strategic nuclear arsenals, the underlying metric of Cold War became the two sides sitting in their bunkers counting warheads and the centrality of that lasted as long as the bombs were gravity devices delivered by aircraft which needed to get to a point above the target.  At this point, the military’s view was that nuclear war was possible and the only deterrent was to maintain a creditable threat of retaliation and, still in the age of the “bomber will always get through” doctrine, both sides literally kept squadrons of nuclear-armed bombers in the air 24/7.  Once ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and (especially) submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBMs) were deployed, the calculation of nuclear war changed from damage assessment to an acknowledgement that, in the worse case scenarios made possible by the preservation of large-scale second-strike retaliatory capacity, although the "total mutual annihilation" of the popular imagination was never likely, the damage inflicted would have been many times worse and more extensive than in any previous conflict and, although the climatarian implications weren't at the time well-understood, the consequences would have been global and lasted to one degree or another for centuries.

It was thus politically and technologically deterministic that the idea of mutually assured destruction (MAD) would evolve and it was a modification of a deterrence doctrine known as AD (assured destruction) which appeared in Pentagon documents as early as 1962.  AD was intended as a way to deter the USSR from staging a first-strike against the US, the notion being that the engineering and geographical deployment of the US's retaliatory capacity was such that whatever was achieved by a Soviet attack, their territory would suffer something much worse.  To the Pentagon planners in their bunker, the internal logic of AD was compelling and was coined as a description of the prevailing situation rather than a theoretical doctrine.  To the general population, it obviously meant MAD (mutually assured destruction) and while as a doctrine of deterrence, the metrics remained the same, after 1966 when the term gained currency, it began to be used as an argument against the mere possession of nuclear arsenals, the paradox being the same acronym was also used to underpin the standard explanation of the structural reason nuclear warfare was avoided.  Just as paradoxically, while serving to prevent their use, MAD also fueled the arms race because the stalemate created its own inertia and it would be almost a decade before the cost and absurdity of maintaining the huge number of useless warheads was addressed.  MAD probably also contributed to both sides indulging in conflict by proxy, supporting wars and political movements which served as surrogate battles made too dangerous by the implications of MAD to be contested between the two big protagonists.

Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder

There are those who criticize the existence of MADD (Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder) as an example of the trend to “medicalize” aspects of human behaviour which have for millennia been regarded as “normal”, the implication being the sudden creation of a cohort of customers for psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry, the suspicion being MADD is of such interest to the medical-industrial complex because the catchment is of the “worried well”, those with sufficient disposable income to make the condition worthwhile, the poor too busy working to ensure food and shelter for their families for there to be much time to daydream.

Still, the consequences of MADD are known to be real and while daydreaming is a common and untroubling experience for many, in cases where it’s intrusive and frequent, it can cause real problems with everyday activities such as study or employment as well as being genuinely dangerous if associated with tasks such as driving or the use of heavy machinery.  The condition was first defined by Professor Eli Somer (b 1951; a former President of both the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) and the European Society for Trauma and Dissociation (ESTD)) who described one manifestation as possibly an “escape or coping mechanism from trauma or abuse”, noting it may “involve long periods of structured fantasy”.  Specific research into MADD has been limited but small-scale studies have found some similarities to behavioral addictions, the commonality being a compulsion to engage in activities despite negative impacts on a person’s mental or physical health or ability to function various aspects of life. 

Despite the suggestion of similarities to diagnosable conditions, latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR, 2022) did not add an entry for MADD and the debate among those in the profession interested in the matter is between those arguing it represents an unidentified clinical syndrome which demands a specific diagnosis and those who think either it fits within the rubric of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) or is a dissociative condition.  Accordingly, in the absence of formal recognition of MADD, while a psychiatrist may decline to acknowledge the condition as a specific syndrome, some may assess the described symptoms and choose to prescribe the drugs used to treat anxiety or OCD or refer the patient to sessions of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) or the mysterious mindfulness meditation.

Mutually Assured Digital Destruction

Authors in 2021 suggested MADD (mutually assured digital destruction) as the term to describe the strategic stalemate achieved by the major powers infecting each other’s critical (civilian & military) digital infrastructure with crippleware, logic-bombs and other latent tools of control or destruction.  The core the idea was based on old notion of “the bomber always gets through”, a recognition it’s neither possible to protect these systems from infiltration nor clean up what’s likely there and still undiscovered.  So, rather than being entirely covert, MADD instead makes clear to the other side its systems are also infected and there will be retaliation in kind to any cyber attack with consequences perhaps even worse than any suffered in the first strike.  Like the nuclear submarines with their multiple SLBMs silently which cruise the world's oceans, the strategic charm of the latent penetration of digital environments is that detection of all such devices is currently impossible; one knows they (and their SLMBs) are somewhere in firing range but not exactly where.  Oceans are big places but so is analogously is the digital environment and a threat may be in the hardware, software or the mysterious middleware and sometimes a treat can actually be observed yet not understood as such.

For individuals, groups and corporations, there's also the lure of unilateral destruction, something quite common in the social media age.  For a variety of reasons, an individual may choose to "delete" their history of postings and while it's true this means what once was viewable no longer is, it does not mean one's thoughts and images are "forever gone" in the sense one can use the phrase as one watches one's diary burn.  That was possible (with the right techniques or a power drill) when a PC sat on one's desk and was connected to nothing beyond but as soon as a connection with a network (most obviously the internet) is made and data is transferred, whatever is sent is in some sense "in the wild".  That was always true but in the modern age it's now effectively impossible to know where one's data may exist, such are the number of "pass-through" devices which may exist between sender and receiver.  On the internet, even if the path of the data packets can be traced and each device identified, there is no way to know where things have been copied (backup tapes, replica servers etc) and that's even before one wonders what copies one's followers have taken.  There may often be good reasons to curate one's social media presence to the point of deletion but that shouldn't be thought of as destruction.

Alienist

Alienist (pronounced eyl-yuh-nist or ey-lee-uh-nist)

(1) A medical practitioner specializing in the treatment of mental illness (archaic).

(2) In law, an expert witness who specializes in the legal aspects of mental illness and mental competence (now less common).

1864: From the French aliéniste, from aliéné (insane), the construct being alien(ation) + -ist.  Alien was from the Middle English alien, from the Old French alien & aliene, from the Latin aliēnus (belonging to someone else (the sense of that which was “exotic; foreign” came later), from alienare (deprive of reason, drive mad (literally “to make another's, estrange”)) from alius (other), from the primitive Indo-European hélyos (from which English ultimately gained “else”).  The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).  Alienist is a noun; the noun plural is alienists.

In English, the noun alienist was in 1864 adopted from the French to describe “one who scientifically treats or studies mental illness”.  The French aliéniste was a use of “alienation” in the sense of “insanity, loss of mental faculty”, a development in the use which from the fifteenth century had been used to mean “loss or derangement of mental faculties, insanity”, the notion drawn from the Latin alienare (deprive of reason, drive mad).  The use in English sounds strange to modern ears but was probably an improvement on the earlier “mad doctor” (ie a physician dealing with the mad although doubtless there were a few doctors who were madmen), noted since the early eighteenth century.  Although psychiatry really didn’t come to be accepted as part of mainstream medicine until the late nineteenth century, there had since antiquity been those (not always physicians) in many cultures who specialized in the care of those thought mad although institutionalized professionalism (as opposed to their employment in institutions known often as “lunatic asylums”) waited centuries to be formalized.

The word psychiatry dates from 1808 and was coined by Prussian physician Johann Christian Reil (1759–1813) as the German Psychiatrie (literally “medical treatment of the soul”, the construct being the Ancient Greek psykhē (soul) + -iatry (medical treatment) from the Greek iātrikos (medical) from iāsthai (to heal).  From this evolved the idea of physician specializing in psychiatry being a psychiatrist.  Dr Reil’s word caught on but wasn’t wholly without linguistic competition, psychiater (expert in mental diseases) in the literature since at least 1852.  Although Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) seems assumed by some almost to have “invented” psychiatry, his work in the late nineteen century was but one thread in a discipline both well established (if not wholly accepted by the medical establishment) and becoming increasingly used as the first generation of drug treatments became available.  What Freud did however in his systemised method of treatment (psychoanalysis) was define in the popular imagination just what a psychiatrist was.  The profession however had been around for a while and it was in 1841 the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane was founded; receiving a royal charter in 1926, it became the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Patient and alienist: Lindsay Lohan on Sigmund Freud’s couch.

In English, the word alienation had a varied history.  It began in the late fourteenth century in the law of real property (ie real estate) with the sense of “transfer of ownership, action of estranging”, from the Old French alienacion and directly from the Latin alienationem (nominative alienatio) (a transfer, surrender, separation), the noun of action from the past-participle stem of alienare (to make another's, part with; estrange, set at variance), from alienus (of or belonging to another person or place), from alius (another, other, different), from the primitive Indo-European root al- (beyond).  Early in the fifteenth century, the word was borrowed from the notaries and land conveyancers to mean “deprivation of mental faculties, insanity”, this time from a secondary sense of the Latin alienare (deprive of reason, drive mad) and for decades the word seems to appear as frequently in court records as medical journals, decisions on matters of madness very often the province of the magistracy.  A nice blending of the original idea in land ownership with the divorce courts saw “alienation of affection” (falling in love with another) adopted in the US as legal jargon in 1861.  In politics, the theorist most famously associated with alienation was Karl Marx (1818-1883) who in Das Kapital’s (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867-1894) three (very long) volumes explored, inter alia, the idea of the worker being alienated from the fruits of his labor by the employer extracting from the process the surplus value.  That has turned out to be an ongoing process.

In law, although terms like forensic psychiatrist are now preferred, an Alienist was a mental health professional who evaluated individuals in some way involved with a case before a court.  The most publicized of the alienists were those who appeared in notorious criminal trials where typically they were called upon to determine a defendant’s (and less commonly a victim’s or witness’s) state of mind at time of the alleged offense or since and thus their competency to stand trial, be cross-examined or give evidence.  Alienists almost always had a background in psychiatry or psychology and, in recent decades, also specialised training in the techniques of forensic evaluation.  Depending on the jurisdiction, alienists were sometimes asked to comment on recommendations for treatment and offer opinions on issues such as the potential for reform or likelihood of recidivism.

The idea of medical experts offering opinions on mental health matters is now so unexceptional as not usually to attract comment but in the nineteenth century when the first alienists began to be called as expert witnesses, it was novel.  Then, psychology (the clinical study of mental pathologies) was not only embryonic but subject to much criticism by doctors who insisted that diagnosis without empirical evidence was an absurdity and echos of the attitude persist in the views some have of the very existence of conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome (myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)).  Then, the mentally ill tended to be confined rather than treated and the psychology of the nineteenth century alienists was very much a laboratory discipline, the clinical or behavioral work today familiar as an orthodoxy mostly still decades away.  Instead, alienists analysed aspects of learning, perception and memory and their craft would now be understood as a kind of study of cognition.  As a profession, the alienists really advanced their discipline in the first three quarters of the twentieth century as understanding improved of the influence of the unconscious mind on individual actions.  Additionally, the consequences of the two world wars provided vast numbers of the mentally damaged to study and in the 1950s and 1960s, it came to be appreciated just how significant could be contextually such as poverty and racism.  All this happened while there were enormous advances in neurology and the physical brain itself came better to be understood, the idea of neuropsychological research coming to be accepted as a valid scientific method to explain the behaviour of individuals.  So much has changed including the nomenclature, the term alienist now rarely used in courts and if asked, most folk would likely assume an alienist is "one who studies aliens".

Hatter

Hatter (pronounced hat-er)

(1) A maker or seller of hats.

(2) In Australian slang (1) a person who has become eccentric from living alone in a remote area or (2) a person who lives alone in the bush, as a herder or prospector (now archaic and dating from the 1850s, a synecdoche of “mad as a hatter”).

(3) A student or member of the athletic program at Stetson University in Florida.

(4) In dialectical South Scots, to bother; to get someone worked up (and thus related to the modern “to hassle”).

1350–1400: From the Middle English hatter, the construct being hat + -er.  Hat was from the Middle English hat (head covering), from the Old English hæt (head-covering, hat), from the Proto-Germanic hattuz (hat), from the primitive Indo-European kadh (to guard, cover, care for, protect).  It was cognate with the North Frisian hat (hat), the Danish hat (hat), the Swedish hatt (hat), the Icelandic hattur (hat), the Latin cassis (helmet), the Lithuanian kudas (bird's crest or tuft), the Avestan xaoda (hat), the Persian خود‎ (xud) (helmet) and the Welsh cadw (to provide for, ensure).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  The –er suffix was added to verbs to create a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb; used to form an agent noun.  If added to a noun it usually denoted an occupation.  Hatter is a noun and the rare hattering & hattered are verbs; the noun plural is hatters.

Lindsay Lohan wearing hats.

The synonyms are hatmaker (or hat-maker) & milliner.  As makers of hats, the difference between a hatter and a milliner is that a milliner is a hat-maker specializing (historically bespoke headpieces) in women's headwear (and works at a millinery shop), while a hatter makes hats for men (and works at a hattery).  In the business of selling hats the distinction blurred, especially in the case of operations which dealt with hats for both men and women.  As a retailer, a hatter could deal either exclusively in hats for men for those for both sexes whereas what was sold by a millinery was (at least intended) only for women.  Milliner was from the Middle English Milener (native of Milan), the construct an irregular form of Milan + -er, the link explained by the northern Italian city being the source of many of the fine garments for women imported into England in the late Medieval age.

Depiction of the mad hatter’s tea party.  Created by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), The Hatter appears in both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) and though nowhere in the text does the author make reference to a "mad hatter", that is the popular form and not an unreasonable one, given the madness of both The Hatter and the March Hare is confirmed by the Cheshire Cat.  Lewis Carroll was said to be familiar with the traits of madness and the condition suffered by hatters was well known but some literary historians have speculated The Hatter may have been based on an eccentric shop-keeper.  There’s no documentary evidence to support the claim.

Role model JR Ewing (Larry Hagman, 1931–2012) in Stetson hat.

The use of Hatter (usually in the collective Hatters) to describe students or members of the athletic program at Florida’s Stetson University comes from John B Stetson (1830-1906), otherwise famous as the hatter known for his eponymous hats.  The school was in 1883 founded as the DeLand Academy but was in 1889 renamed Stetson after the Mr Hatter joined the Board of Trustees, the change acknowledging his financial largess.  Thus were born the Hatters and the name (informally) extends to the school’s mascot (who is correctly named John B) which wears a Stetson hat, green bandana, and alligator skin boots.  The mascot is considered equal in status to all other members of the school family.

Lindsay Lohan wearing more hats.

The phrase “mad as a hatter” was first recorded in 1829 and is usually attributed to the correlation noted between those engaged in the profession of hat-making and instances of Korsakoff's syndrome induced by the frequency of them handling mercury-contaminated felt.  The nineteenth century speculation of a link with the Old English ātor (poison) or its descendant the Middle English atter (poison, venom,) lacks evidence has long been discredited.  Korsakoff's syndrome was named after the Russian neuropsychiatrist Sergei Sergeievich Korsakoff (1854-1900 (his work on alcoholic psychosis still influential)) who identified the syndrome which is induced by both exposure to mercury and chronic alcohol use.  A neurological disorder of the central nervous system caused by a deficiency of thiamine, the symptoms include amnesia, deficits in explicit memory, tremors and general confabulation.  The fourteenth century variant “mad as a March hare” alludes to the crazy behavior of hares during rutting season, mistakenly thought to be only in March.

In 1888, a hydrochloride-based process which obviated the need to use mercury when processing felt was patented and in France and the UK, just before the turn of the century, laws were passed banning the use of substance in the making of hats but, as an illustration of the way things have changed, in the US, the risk was ignored by hatters and their employers alike, even trade unions making no attempt to end its use.  Only with the onset of World War II when all available mercury was needed for military production did US hat makers voluntarily agree to adopt the long available alternative process which used hydrogen peroxide.

Mercury

Mercury (pronounced mur-kyuh-ree)

(1) In chemistry, a heavy, silver-white, highly toxic metallic element (uniquely liquid at room temperature), once widely used in barometers & thermometers and still a component of pesticides & pharmaceutical preparations.  In industrial use it provides the reflecting surface of mirrors, can still be a part of dental amalgams and is used in some switches, mercury-vapor lamps, and other electric apparatus.  It’s also used as a catalyst in laboratories.  Symbol: Hg; atomic weight: 200.59; atomic number: 80; specific gravity: 13.546 at 20°C; freezing point: −38.9°C; boiling point: 357°C.  It’s known also as quicksilver or hydrargyrum.

(2) In clinical pharmacology, the metal as used in various organic and inorganic compounds, used usually to treat infections of the skin.

(3) In mythology, the Roman god who served as messenger of the gods and was also the god of commerce, thievery, eloquence, and science, identified with the Greek god Hermes (initial capital letter).

(4) In astronomy, the planet nearest the sun, having a diameter of 3,031 miles (4,878 km), a mean distance from the sun of 36 million miles (57.9 million km), and a period of revolution of 87.96 days, and having no satellites; the smallest planet in the solar system (diameter and mass: respectively 38 and 5.4% that of earth) (initial capital letter).

(5) Borrowing from mythology, a messenger, especially a carrier of news (largely archaic).

(6) In botany, any plant belonging to the genus Mercurialis, of the spurge family, especially the poisonous, weedy M. perennis of Europe.  Historically, it was most associated with the annual mercury (Mercurialis annua), once cultivated for medicinal properties (the fourteenth century French mercury or herb mercury).

(7) In botany, a similar edible plant (Blitum bonus-henricus), otherwise known since the fifteenth century as English mercury or allgood.

(8) In botany, in eighteenth century US regional use, the poison oak or poison ivy.

(9) In the history of US aerospace, one of a series of U.S. spacecraft, carrying one astronaut and the first US vehicle to achieve suborbital and orbital manned spaceflights (initial capital letter).

(10) Liveliness, volatility (obsolete since the mid-nineteenth century).

1300–1350: From the Middle English Mercurie, from the Medieval Latin, from the Classical Latin Mercurius (messenger of Jupiter, god of commerce) and related to merx (merchandise),  Mercury, mercuriality & mercurialist are nouns, mercurial is a noun & adjective, mercurous, intramercurial & mercuric are adjectives and mercurially is an adverb; the noun plural is mercuries.

The late fourteenth century adjective mercurial (pertaining to or under the influence of the planet Mercury) evolved by the 1590s to include the sense “pertaining to the god Mercury, having the form or qualities attributed to Mercury (a reference to his role as god of trade or as herald and guide)”.  The meaning “light-hearted, sprightly, volatile, changeable, quick” was in use by the 1640s and was intended to suggest the qualities supposed to characterize those born under the planet Mercury, these based on the conduct of the god Mercury (which seems a generous interpretation given some of his antics), probably also partly by association with the qualities of quicksilver. A variant in this sense was the now rare noun mercurious, in use by the 1590s.  The adjective mercuric (relating to or containing mercury) dates from 1828 and in chemistry applied specifically applied to compounds in which each atom of mercury was regarded as bivalent.  Mercurous was by the 1840s applied to those in which two atoms of mercury are regarded as forming a bivalent radical. 

In the mythology of Antiquity, the Roman Mercury (or Mercurius) was identified with the Greek Hermes, protecting travelers in general and merchants in particular.  He was depicted as the messenger of Jupiter and in some tales even as his agent in some of Jupiter’s amorous ventures (famously in Amphytrion (circa 188 BC) by the playwright Titus Maccius Plautus (circa 254–184 BC)).  The location of Rome’s first Temple of Mercury was chosen because it was so close to both the port and the commercial precinct, the god of commerce thus well-placed.  Although it’s not entirely certain, the structure was thought to date from 496 BC and historians note the sanctuary was built outside the pomerium (the city’s religious boundary), leading to speculation the cult may have been of foreign origin.  Mercury’s attributes included the caduceus (the wand), a variety of very fetching broad-brimmed hats, winged sandals (essential for one so “fleet of foot” and the purse (symbolizing the profits merchants gained from their trade).  The tales from Antiquity are not consistent (and in some cases contradictory but Mercury in some traditions was the father of Evander or of Lares (charged with the supervision of crossroads and prosperity); Lares was born after Mercury raped Lara, the water Nymph in the kingdom of the dead.  The identification of Mercury with the Greek Hermes was ancient but in the early medieval period he was linked also with the Germanic Woden and noting his role as a messenger and conveyor of information, since the mid-seventeenth century Mercury was often used as a name for newspapers although has been a common name for a newspaper and some critics have adapted it for their own purposes: In Australia the newspaper the Hobart Mercury was in the 1980s sometimes derisively called the “Hobart Mockery”.

The phrase “mad as a hatter” came from idiomatic English use and was applied to someone thought “insane or crazy”; it’s thus a companion to “barking mad” and “mad as a meat axe”.  It’s believed the origin lay in observation of those employed on the hat-making industry in the nineteenth century; they were prone to mercury poisoning from the chemicals used to make felt.  The manifestations of the condition (known as erethism) included neurological symptoms such as confusion, an inability to maintain concentration, trembling & twitching, irritability and bouts of sustained irrational behaviour, the cognative decline usually severe and sustained.  In the vernacular of the age, the unfortunate occupation hazard in industrial millinery was known as the “hatters' shakes”.  “Mad as a hatter” was in use by the early 1800s and was picked up by Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898)) for the memorable character of the Mad Hatter in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

Auto castrato: Hat maker Boston Corbett (born Thomas Corbett (1832-circa 1890).

London-born Mr Corbett’s family emigrated to the US when he was young and, settling in the north-east, he established himself as a hat-maker, then a major industry.  His life appears to have been settled until in 1858 he suffered the tragic loss of his wife and first born during childbirth, his grief leading to chronic alcoholism and his downward spiral continued until a Boston street evangelist converted him to Christianity, the consequence of which he became something like what would come to be called a “born again”.  So intense was his newfound faith he forswore alcohol, grew his hair and beard long to resemble Jesus, adopted the name Boston Corbett in honor of the city of his spiritual rebirth and was baptised by a Methodist minister.

Whether it was the presence of the Lord or the result of his derangement from a combination of mercury poisoning and alcohol abuse, his religious zeal can’t be denied because in 1858 while preaching in the street, he was propositioned by a brace of prostitutes who must have be quite demonstrative because immediately be became aroused and, disgusted by his moral weakness, repaired to his home where, using a pair of milliners scissors, he cut an incision in his scrotum, then removed his testicles.  He may have had in mind a passage from Scripture: “For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” (Matthew 19:12, King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611)).  The theological assurance must have been bracing because after his impromptu act of self-castration, not until he’s completed his prayers, enjoyed his dinner and taken his evening stroll through the city did he admit himself to Massachusetts General Hospital.

Service in the Union Army during the US Civil War (1861-1965) followed and he distinguished himself in that bloody slaughter by displaying bravery to the point of being wholly indifferent to the prospect of death, presumably on the basis whatever happened would be God’s will although he may have approached combat in the spirit of one passage in Joseph Heller’s (1923-1999) Catch-22 (1961): “They’re not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?”  “Who else will go?”  Mr Corbett was still with his unit when, ten days after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; US president 1861-1865), he was part of a detachment tasked with hunting don the gunman, actor John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865); midway during the pursuit he led a church service in which he included the blessing: “O Lord, lay not innocent blood to our charge, but bring the guilty speedily to punishment.”

Depiction of the mad hatter’s tea party by Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) in an edition called Nursery Alice (1890), an abridged version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland intended for children under five (the original drawing now held by the British Museum).  The book contained 20 illustrations by Sir John who also provided the artwork for the full-length publication.  A fine craftsman, Sir John was noted also for his moustache which “out-Nietzsched” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900).  Despite much later speculation, no evidence has ever emerged to suggest Lewis Carroll was under the influence of drugs when writing the “Alice” books.   

Booth eventually was traced to a tobacco barn in Virginia and, allegedly, after negotiations for his surrender proved fruitless, the structure was set ablaze and it was at this point Mr Corbett shot Booth who died shortly afterwards.  That didn’t please the authorities which, suspicious a wider conspiracy (orchestrated by forces “in the South” might be afoot, wished to have the suspect alive to be interrogated.  Mr Corban’s assertion “God Almighty directed me to” was thought not a great deal of help.  Although he escaped punishment for his act, his subsequent life was unhappy and struggling to find gainful employment, he worked as an itinerant preacher but was haunted by the belief he was being pursued by those seeking revenge for Booth's death.  Institutionalised in 1886, after two years he escaped the lunatic asylum and vanished and although there are accounts of him drowning, being murdered by ex-Confederate soldiers and dying in a fire, the rest of his life remains a mystery. 

Vintage wall thermometer: As the temperature increased, the mercury expanded in volume and rose (hence "mercury rising").  The red colour was achieved with the addition of a dye.

The origin of the chemical name of mercury (Hg) reflects the influence of Scientific Latin on early-modern chemistry; Hg is an abbreviation of the Latin name of the element: hydrargium (literally “water-silver”), from the Ancient Greek hydrargyros (liquid silver), an allusion to its unique quality of being a silvery liquid when at room temperature (all other metals being solid).  The older English name was quicksilver (still prevalent in literary & poetic circles) which was coined in the sense of “living silver”, a reference to the liquid tending to move “like a living thing” when provoked with the slight provocation.  The “quick” referred not to speed but “alive” in the sense of the Biblical phrase “the quick and the dead”.  Alchemists called it azoth and in medical and sometimes chemical use that’s still occasionally seen.  As late as the fifteenth century, in mainstream Western science the orthodox view was that mercury was one of the elemental principles thought present in all metals.  In Antiquity, it was prepared from cinnabar and was then one of the seven known metals (bodies terrestrial), coupled in astrology and alchemy with the seven known heavenly bodies (the others: Sun/gold, Moon/silver, Mars/iron, Saturn/lead, Jupiter/tin, Venus/copper.  In idiomatic use, (with a definite article), because of the use in barometers & thermometers, “the mercury” was a reference to temperature thus “mercury rising” meant “warmer”, the use dating from the seventeenth century and it has persisted even as the devices have moved to digital technology.  The name mercury was adopted because the stuff flows quickly about, recalling the Roman god who was the “swift-footed messenger of the gods”.

The same rationale appealed to the astronomers of Antiquity who noted the swift movement of the planet which required only 88 days for each solar orbit.  Mercury is sometimes visible from the Earth as a morning or evening star and in our solar system and is the both the smallest and the closest planet to the Sun.  Second in density only to Earth, it’s a lifeless (as far as is known or seems possible) place with a cratered surface which makes it not dissimilar in appearance to Earth's Moon.  It behaves differently from Earth in that the rotational period of 58.6 days is two-thirds of its 88-day annual orbit, thus it makes three full axial rotations every two years.  The atmosphere is close to non-existent, something which, combined with the rotational & orbital dynamics and the proximity to the Sun produces rapid radiational cooling on its dark side, meaning the temperature range is greater than any other planet in our solar system (466°-184°C (870°-300°F)).  Being so close to the Sun, Mercury is visible only shortly before sunrise or after sunset, observation further hindered by Earth’s dust & pollution, this distorting the planet’s light which obliquely must pass through the lower atmosphere.  It wasn’t until circa 1300 that the Classical Latin name for the planet was adopted in English while a (presumably hypothetical) resident of the place was by 1755 a Mercurian or a century later as Mercurean.  The novel adjective intramercurial (being within the orbit of the planet Mercury) was coined in 1859 to describe a hypothetical planet orbiting between Mercury and the Sun.  The idea had existed among French astronomers since the 1840s but became a matter of some debate between 1860-1869 until observations of solar eclipses finally debunked the notion.  The origin of the noun amalgamation (act of compounding mercury with another metal), dating from the 1610s, was a noun of action from archaic verb amalgam (to alloy with mercury), the figurative, non-chemical sense of “a combining of different things into one uniform whole” in use by 1775.

Genuinely different and obvious a cut above a Ford: 1939 Mercury 8 Coupe.

Reflecting the philosophy of Henry Ford which put a premium on engineering and price, concepts like product differentiation & multi-brand market segmentation came late to the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo).  Unlike General Motors (GM) which in the 1920s fielded as many as nine brand-names (and even by 1940 still had six), it wasn’t until 1938 that Ford added a third, using until then just Ford and Lincoln and even they operated as separate companies whereas GM maintained a divisional structure and an originally strictly defined hierarchy.  The debut in 1938 of the Mercury label, sitting on the pricing scale between Ford and Lincoln made sense in a way that, twenty years on, Edsel never did and, until internal cannibalization began in the 1960s, the Mercury brand worked well enough.  Even after that, the marketing momentum accrued over decades maintained Mercury’s viability and it wasn’t shuttered until 2011, a victim of the industry’s restructuring after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC 2008-2012).  Debatably, the Mercury brand may yet prove useful and, should a niche emerge, there may be a resurrection, Ford maintaining registration of the trademark.

A (slightly) better Ford LTD: 1969 Mercury Marquis Brougham four-door hardtop.

Perhaps it was the experience of GM which had discouraged FoMoCo.  Although Harvard had begun awarding MBAs since 1908, history unfortunately doesn’t record whether any of them were involved in the brand-name proliferation decision of the mid 1920s which saw the introduction of companion offerings to four of GM’s five existing divisions, only the entry-level Chevrolet not augmented.  The new brands, slotted above or below depending on where the perceived price-gap existed, mean GM suddenly was marketing nine products (rungs on the "Sloan ladder") in competition with Ford offering two and one probably didn’t need a MBA to conclude only one approach was at least tending towards being correct.  As things turned out, GM’s approach was never given the chance fully to explore the possibilities, the effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s suppressing demand in the economy to an extent then not in living memory, necessitating downsizing in just about every industrial sector.  Axed by GM in 1931 was Viking (Oldsmobile’s companion), Marquette (added to Buick) and Oakland (actually usurped by its nominal companion, Pontiac).  LaSalle (a lower-priced Cadillac) survived the cull… for a while.

The so-called “Sloan ladder of success” was conceived by Alfred P Sloan (1875–1966; president of General Motors (GM) 1923-1937 and chairman of the board 1937-1946)) and the idea was that as a customer’s wealth increased, they would take the “next step on the ladder”; by 1930 that ladder had nine rungs with Chevrolet at the bottom and Cadillac the top.  That meant the “middle class” had seven GM brands to choose from, all positioned at ascending “price points” and a customer could advertise their increasing wealth and upward social mobility by moving up a rung, trading in their car for one a rung (or more) up in the hierarchy.  For the system to work, it was important the products of one division not trespass into the bailiwick of another and in Mr Sloan's time, there was the intra-corporate discipline to see this was enforced.

Of course, while one can climb a ladder, one can also climb down and a former Cadillac buyer finding themselves in circumstances so reduced as to have to visit the Chevrolet dealer might have been said to be on the “Sloan ladder of failure”.  Nor was it socially obligatory for the rich to ascend to the top rung.  Before her first husband became president, Jacqueline Kennedy (1929-1994; US First Lady 1961-1963) went to old Joe Kennedy (1888–1969) and told him she’d like to buy a Ford Thunderbird on the basis: “What could be More American than that?”  Promptly she was told: “The Kennedys drive Buicks!”  Actually even that wasn’t always true because the car Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) drove off a bridge in the “Chappaquiddick Incident” was a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 (not even the most expensive Oldsmobile) which belonged to his mother.  The crash happened shortly before midnight on 18 July 1969, after the then senator had left a cocktail party in the company of Mary Jo Kopechne (1940-1969) who had worked on Robert F Kennedy’s (RFK, 1925–1968; US attorney general 1961-1964) presidential campaign in 1968.  Ms Kopechne died in the crash, Senator Kennedy not reporting the matter for more than ten hours after he left the scene.  The ladder was fully evolved by 1929, the rungs tagged thus:

Chevrolet: The entry-level range with the lowest price; a high volume “value for money” pitch using the concept perfected by Ford's Model T (1908-1927).

Pontiac: Introduced in 1926, the Pontiac would once perhaps have been called the “Chevrolet Deluxe” but it was in the 1920s the ages of mass-consumerism and modern marketing began; the creation of a separate nameplate was an indication of how the techniques of capitalism were evolving.

Oldsmobile: Before the brand-name proliferation, Oldsmobile was GM’s classic “middle-class” car, sitting between Chevrolet and Buick.

Marquette: Marquette existed only between 1929–1930 and was a product of a gap existing in Mr Sloan’s price-point structure between Oldsmobile and Buick.  Again, the view was it was better to have a defined range in the segment rather than an “Oldsmobile Deluxe” or dilute the appeal of the next rung with a lower-cost Buick.

Oakland: Oakland was unusual in that it pre-existed Pontiac, the latter introduced as Oakland’s more expensive companion but, because Pontiac proved much more successful, it would survive the later cull while Oakland would be axed.

Buick: The classic upper-middle-class brand, offering luxury and performance but without the exclusivity of a Cadillac.

Viking: Another short-lived (1929–1930) venture, Viking was the premium companion to Oldsmobile and slotted between Buick and LaSalle.

LaSalle: Best thought of as cheaper Cadillac, it was another of the brands there to avoid diluting things with an “entry level Cadillac” which of course it was in all but name.

Cadillac: The top rung, competing not only high-end domestic brands like Packard, Duesenberg and Lincoln but also the best of the Europeans.

The effects of the Great Depression meant the experiment didn’t last and GM would soon to revert to six divisions, the newcomers Viking and Marquette axed while Pontiac, which had proved both more successful and profitable than the shuttered Oakland, survived, joining LaSalle which lingered until 1940 and then there were five.  Even then five was debatably at least one too many but the ladder survived into the post-war years when economic conditions suited the structure and by the mid-1950s both Ford and Chrysler were emulating the model although for both it proved a brief fling.  By the twenty-first century, GM was down to three (Chevrolet, Buick & Cadillac), Ford two (Ford & Lincoln) and Chrysler two (Dodge & Chrysler (although they separated the pickup business as RAM)).

Ford in the late 1930s had clearly been thinking about how to cover the widely understood "price-points" in the market, most of which existed between the mass-market Fords and the big Lincolns, the latter a very expensive range.  One toe in the water of brand-proliferation was the creation in 1937 of "De Luxe Ford" which, despite some of the hints in the advertising, was neither a separate company nor even a division; it was described by historians of the industry as "a marque within a marque" which, organizationally, was generous.  Structurally, this seems little different to the approach the company had been using since 1930 when it introduced a “Deluxe” trim option for certain models which could be ordered to make the “standard” Ford a little better appointed but the 1937 De Luxe Fords were more plausibly different because some relative minor changes to panels and detailing did make the two “marques” visually distinct.  The Deluxe vs De Luxe spelling was perhaps a touch too subtle to be noticed by many.     

The De Luxe Ford line was deliberately positioned between Ford and Lincoln but intriguingly, at the same time, Ford introduced both a new, lower priced V12 Lincoln called the Lincoln-Zephyr and the Mercury range, all three of these ventures contesting the same, already crowded, space.  The De Luxe Ford “marque” would last only until 1940 although Ford’s Deluxe option remained on the books; it’s doubtful many outside Ford’s advertising agency noticed and to make things murkier still, in the late 1940s Ford also sold a "Super Deluxe".  It would seem Ford was hedging its bets and may have decided to persist with whichever of Mercury and De Luxe Ford proved most successful and as things transpired, that was Mercury so as the 1941 model year dawned, in the dealers’ brochures there were Fords, Mercurys, Lincoln-Zephyrs & Lincolns.  World War II of course intervened and when production resumed after the end of hostilities, that was simplified to Fords, Mercury & Lincoln, remaining that way until the mid-1950s when in a booming economy, the temptation to proliferate proved irresistible and the exclusive Continental division was created, followed by the infamous Edsel, the model spread of which over-lapped the pricing of both Ford and Mercury, an approach which seems to go beyond hedging.  The Continental experiment lasted barely two seasons and the Edsel just three, the latter a debacle which remains a case study in marketing departments.

A natural Mercury: 1955 Ford Thunderbird.

So by 1960 the corporation again offered just Fords, Mercurys & Lincolns but it was a troubled time for the latter, the huge Lincolns of the late 1950s, although technically quite an achievement in body engineering, had proved so unsuccessful that Ford’s new management seriously considered closing it down as well but it was saved when handed a prototype Ford Thunderbird coupé which was developed into the famous Lincolns of 1961-1969, remembered chiefly for the romantic four-door convertibles and being the cabriolet in which John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated.  That was one of the Thunderbird’s footnotes in corporate history, the other being that when introduced in 1955 it was the first Ford blatantly to intrude on what, according to marketing theory, should have been the domain of Mercury, home of the up-market offerings.

Cannibalizing the corporation: 1965 Ford LTD.

The Thunderbird though was just the first act of trespass and fancier Fords continued to appear, the landmark being the LTD, which began in 1965 as a luxury trim-package for the Galaxie, something which proved so popular it soon became model in its own right, encouraging a host of imitators from the mass-market competition, the most successful of which was Chevrolet’s Caprice (that innovation in retrospect the first nail in the coffins of the now shuttered Pontiac & Oldsmobile).  However, like Pontiac & Oldsmobile, Mercury would endure for decades, all three surviving before being sacrificed in the wake of the GFC and between the debut of the LTD and the end of the line, there were many successful years but the rationale for the existence of Mercury which had been so well defined in 1938 when there was genuine product differentiation and a strict maintenance of price points, gradually was dissipated to the point that with the odd exception (such as the wildly successfully Mercury Cougars of the late 1960s), Fords and Lincolns were allowed to become little more than competitors in the same space and the brand never developed the sort of devoted following which might have transcended the sameness.  By the twenty-first century, there were few reasons to buy a Mercury because a Ford could be ordered in essentially identical form, usually for a little less money.

1968 Mercury Cougar GT-E 427: The tennis court hints at the target market, the GT-E very much a car for a gentleman who wanted the Mustang's performance without the blue-collar association.  A long wheelbase Food Mustang with a higher specification, the original Mercury Cougar (1967-1970) was the brand's great success story; not only over eight generations and 35-odd seasons was it the division's biggest-selling nameplate, it was also the last genuinely successful Mercury.  With only 357 made, the 1968 GT-E 427 was a tiny part of that (there were also 37 with the less desirable 428 V8, four of which were ordered with a four-speed manual transmission) but is remembered as the last use of the Le Mans winning 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 and the corporation's only 427 pony-car.  Civilized with hydraulic valve lifters and an automatic transmission, it was a glimpse of what might have been had Ford, as it once planned, put the 427 in a Mustang.

Another big, dangerous cat: Advertisement for the 1976 Mercury Cougar.  Despite the apparent implications, not until early in the twenty-first century would “cougar” pick up the informal meaning: “an older woman who seeks sexual relationships with much younger men”; Mercury truly was ahead of the linguistic curve.

The big cats have provided names for manufacturers to use for cars; there have been Tigers, Lions, Jaguars, Cheetahs and Leopards (there is even a Leopard tank, in production since 1965 and now in its third generation) and there was also the Mercury Cougar some three million of which were sold although the more forgettable models produced after the late 1970s bore scant resemblance, physically or conceptually to the classic original.  The press reports in 1967 made much of Ford’s admission the Mercury was an attempt to “build a Jaguar”, noting the statement was intended not to be read literally but rather an indication of a wish to build the sort of car which would appeal to someone who would buy a Jaguar.  The consensus at the time was Mercury had succeeded in building a fine car although whether many Jaguar customers were convinced isn’t known.  Some of the Cougars produced in the first four seasons of its long life were legitimate parts of the muscle car ecosystem but by 1976 when the above advertisement appeared, built on the intermediate Ford Torino’s platform, the Cougar it was little more than a slightly smaller Ford Thunderbird; that was bad enough but things would get worse.     

Xylo-punk band Crazy and the Brains performing Lindsay Lohan, recorded live, Mercury Lounge, New York City, 2013.  Punk bands are said still not widely to have adopted the xylophone.