As we turn the corner into the week of August 12, I want to focus this #Castlereagh200 🧵 on a final area of #MentalHealth risk connected to the workplace: job insecurity.
If you've been following these #Castlereagh200 threads, you may call that I'm drawing from a risk framework that forms the basis for my upcoming article on Castlereagh and mental health. See the attached table, adapted from Boini, 2020 and Gollac et al, 2011.
2/14
Job insecurity has long been recognized as a mental health risk. But was Castlereagh's job insecure? No.
Electorally he was in safe seats, only losing his home seat briefly in 1805. His position in Cabinet after 1812 was arguably more secure than Liverpool's.
3/14
However, more recent research has suggested that feeling trapped in a stressful job can be as bad for one’s health as being unemployed.
Perhaps, then, the more interesting question is why Castlereagh stayed in a job that was so stressful.
4/14
Certainly by c1820, the number of anecdotal instances where he indicated he might resign seems to increase. The simple answer, esp for this period, is that he felt honour- and duty-bound to stay.
Let's dig into this a bit more by looking at sociocultural expectations...
5/14
The workplace is one of the most important environments in which men define their masculinity through contest. This is particularly true in traditionally male-dominated professions (politics) where the culture has internalised contests--known as masculinity contest cultures.
6/14
Politics was connected to an ideal masculinity. Gisborne (1797) and Ensor (1806), both writing about the duties of Englishmen, indicated that a parliamentary career was one of the principle ways that a man should prove himself if given the opportunity.
7/14
Masculinity contest cultures in the workplace have been found to value and encourage four broad behaviours:
(1) Show no weakness; (2) Strength and stamina; (3) Put work first; and (4) Dog-eat-dog.
How these behaviours are valued/embedded depends on the workplace.
8/14
Castlereagh’s professional manner shows evidence of all four behaviours.
He showed little emotion in the professional realm, and contemporary observers frequently commented on his sang froid in the face of political hostility and personal danger (‘show no weakness’).
9/14
He regularly worked long hours and travelled frequently for professional duties (‘strength and stamina’).
He brought work home as a matter of course, worked from his personal spaces, and conducted business while in social settings (‘Put work first’).
10/14
Lastly, the nature of parliamentary politics couched ‘dog-eat-dog’ behaviour in subtle rules and patterns, but did not eliminate it. There was always a winning side and a losing side, and Castlereagh’s official roles placed him in the centre of this competition.
11/14
In exhibiting these behaviours, Castlereagh was responding to the dominant expectations of his workplace. This explains why family and close friends record a different, warmer Castlereagh at home--he was no longer in the competition space.
12/14
So, why didn't Castlereagh quit in the face of crushing professional burdens? Consider the significant sociocultural cost. In a highly gendered society, Castlereagh’s political success defined his masculinity--even more so for a man that never fathered children.
13/14
Leaving his profession for any reason that could be construed as weakness would have carried significant risks to Castlereagh's identity, and particularly his masculinity.
Far from being insecure in his job, Castlereagh was psychologically handcuffed to it.
Image: Richard Dighton, @britishmuseum (BM), 1852,1116.559
Between roughly 1818-1828, Richard Dighton did a series of profile portraits of men in Regency London's high society. Most were etchings, and the BM has digitized many prints held in its collection--they are worth your time if you're interested in Regency society, style, and art.
The earlier prints of this particular portrait, published individually by Dighton himself, are clearly dated to July 1821. Copies show up in the collections of the @britishmuseum, @NPGLondon, and @RCT.
(details shown here are from prints in the BM and RCT collections)
The late-Renaissance building with an inner courtyard surrounded by arcades was multi-functional: it housed the royal stables, guest apartments, the royal art collection, and an armoury. In fact, the ground floor is still used as the stables for the vaunted Lipizzaner Stallions.
Around 1711 the Stallburg also became the home of the Ziffernkanzlei--the 'Number Office.'
A name both suggestive and vague (and one of many used throughout the organization's existence), it was really the secret office for mail interception and decryption.
Castlereagh Creeping the House of Lords, or the Story of a Misidentified Portrait.
A 🧵
2 artists captured the proceedings against Queen Caroline in the #HouseofLords in 1820, and both include #ViscountCastlereagh. Let's start with James Stephanoff.
Stephanoff shows Castlereagh perched on a staircase, watching from a small window. The 1823 key for Stephanoff's work identifies this figure as "The Marquis of Londonderry [Castlereagh], who usually took his station on the stairs leading to the gallery during the investigation."
The other portrayal of the trial is, of course, George Hayter's monumental painting. Hayter, however, shows Castlereagh positioned in the box of the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, on the bottom right corner.
I was at a loss for how to mark the day after spending the last 2 years writing the research article on which all these tweets are based.
Maybe something more reflective is fitting.
I had always been interested in Castlereagh from a diplomatic and political standpoint...
2/
...and became increasingly interested in exploring the mental health aspect of his story because it was a challenging area that would combine history, politics, psychology, medicine, and other disciplines.
In the last few months of #Castlereagh200 threads we've covered a lot of ground, looking at many stressors that put Castlereagh's #MentalHealth at risk.
Now that we're only days from the bicentenary of his death, let's look at some conclusions.
First, the stress on Castlereagh was cumulative and pervasive. The downward spiral that he experienced in the weeks preceding his suicide was only the final chapter in a story that had been developing for yrs. The overlap between the professional and the social made it worse.
2/
Castlereagh was arguably a successful policymaker. But what did that require? He had to be a strategist, a tactician, a courtier, a whip, an orator, a master of protocol, an ambassador, a traveller, a negotiator, a socialite, and a political campaigner.
3/
Value conflicts can be internal (e.g. an individual having to choose between competing values at a personal level) or external (e.g. an individual's personal values conflicting with a competing value system in their professional or social environment).
2/
In the workplace, value conflicts can create the perception that a competing value system is keeping a person from achieving good or just outcomes, or can lead to ethical dilemmas. The tension can be difficult to identify, but pervasive and demoralizing.