What's with all the sound and fury, Robert?

It's back to the nineteenth century with a vengeance, in the dangerously imbalanced world of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. It's a world that could well bring to mind Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), which was originated by Marsha Linehan to treat Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), a disorder characterized by identity disturbance, impulsivity, suicidality, and anger (characteristics indubitably evinced by Jekyll/Hyde!). In DBT, the desired outcome is integration of Reasonable Mind ("Vulcan" logic) with Emotion Mind (passionate reaction) bringing about Wise Mind (serene intuition). In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one might say that Emotion Mind overwhelms and destroys Reasonable Mind, consequently destroying any possible emergence of a Wise Mind.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde begins not with Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde but with the lawyer Mr. Utterson, assuredly the novel's representative of reason who no doubt drinks that transformative drug, wine, in moderation. But why do I mention wine? Let me count the reasons. 1) The second sentence of the first chapter tells us--"...when the wine was to Utterson's taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye." (Stevenson 37) 2) When Utterson has to make a difficult decision, he summons his head clerk and "a bottle of a particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house." (68) And this is no incidental bottle of wine but rather--

...the acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. (69)

3) When Dr. Jekyll's butler Poole visits Utterson in a state of terror, Utterson gives him a seat and a glass of wine that, Utterson observes with astonishment, "was still untasted when [Poole] set it down to follow [Utterson back to Jekyll's house]." (79-80) Very apparently, Utterson has learned to turn that transformative drug, wine, to his own satisfying ends, while staying in the realm of Reasonable Mind. In clear contrast, Dr. Jekyll creates a transformative drug that turns against his Reasonable Mind while driving him into his Emotion Mind.

Near the start of the story, Jekyll's "fanciful" will offends the conservative Utterson (46), while Jekyll's "fanciful" ideas offend the scientific Dr. Lanyon (47). Then, somewhere between that night and the early morning, after conversing with Lanyon about Hyde, Utterson finds himself besieged by the very fancifulness that he despises and distrusts, specifically, "...now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved." (48, italics mine) Unquestionably the imagination is a danger to be avoided, as opposed to a framework of system and logic, which is to be carefully constructed and maintained. And so, Utterson sets out to remove the danger of imagination, an aspect of Emotion Mind, by examining the mystery, an activity of Reasonable Mind--"From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops...by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post...And at last his patience was rewarded." (49) Similarly, from that point in the book forward, Utterson's methodicalness of investigation contrasts sharply with both Dr. Jekyll's loss of control over his own experiment and Mr. Hyde's impulsive, aggressive, and criminally violent behavior.

In a letter to Lanyon, Jekyll uses the word "reason" several times, twice, dramatically, in the first short paragraph:

There was never a day when, if you had said to me, "Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason depend upon you," I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy...." (94, italics mine)

Then, at the end of the letter's third paragraph, Jekyll refers to the potential "shipwreck of my reason." (95) Reason is an essential commodity for Jekyll (and Lanyon and Utterson, et al. and so on). So is--as Jekyll himself puts it, in "Henry Jekyll's First Statement of the Case"--"the balance of my nature" (113) or "those balancing instincts" (116) or "the balance of my soul" (118). Dialectical Behavior Therapy is surely concerned with balance, specifically, tempering extremes of Emotion Mind with consistent application of Reasonable Mind (for instance, noticing the experience but not evaluating it).

Certainly, Emotion Mind is not necessarily a dangerous, poisonous thing. Without Emotion Mind, there would be no romance, no art, literature, or music--for a start. Rather, there isn't much place for Emotion Mind in the Victorian world of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or--let's not kid ourselves--in the technocratic, bureaucratic world of 2010...and Hell hath no fury like Emotion Mind scorned!