Since I came up, I have begun to acquire a composed genteel character very different from a rattling uncultivated one which for some time past I have been fond of. I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose.[20]

The reflective self can even reflect with satisfaction on its existence within the reflective medium, on its own facility with language:

How easily and cleverly do I write just now! I am really pleased with myself; words come skipping to me like lambs upon Moffat Hill; and I turn my periods smoothly and imperceptibly like a skilful wheelwright turning tops in a turning-loom.[21]

But more often the reflective self is forced to respond with distress, shame, censure at what it is obliged to record. So, in Scotland in March 1777, he ‘drank outrageously at Whitburn and at Livingstone and at some low ale-house, and arrived at Edinburgh very drunk. It was shocking in me to come home to my dear wife in such a state.’[22] Or in London in March 1776 he finds my ‘moral principle as to chastity was absolutely eclipsed.... I was in the miserable state of those whom the apostle represents as working all uncleanness with greediness.... This is an exact state of my mind at the time. It shocks me to review it.’[23] Even in the generally buoyant record that is the London Journal, Boswell has to observe: ‘I now see the sickly suggestions of inconsistent fancy with regard to the Scotch bar in their proper colours. Good heaven!... I shudder when I think of it. I am vexed at such a distempered suggestion’s being inserted in my journal....’[24]

Part of this tension is to do with his desire to preserve ‘good’ in the journal, to make a genuine harvest of his life. More deep-seated, though, is Boswell’s confusion over the relation between two dimensions of reality - between action and reflection, between the world as lived and the world as confessed. Where, in particular, is there any security in identity when the recording self is constantly to be appalled by the active self, is obliged, in fact, to set down actions and moods that would be better, safer, though less truthful, if let go into oblivion? This confusion is particularly acute for the hypochondriac who, as Boswell writes in The Hypochondriack, is perpetually in need of reassurance about his own stability:

Nothing is more disagreeable than for a man to find himself unstable and changeful. An Hypochondriack is very liable to this uneasy imperfection, in so much that sometimes there remains only a mere consciousness of identity. His inclinations, his tastes, his friendships, even his principles, he with regret feels, or imagines he feels are all shifted, he knows not how. This is owing to a want of firmness of mind.[25]

When there are two realities, for the hypochondriac the question that most acutely demands answering, and which never can be answered, is not which is the more real, but which is the more sane.

These uncertainties make the journalistic confession of hypochondria particularly distressing. Early in his life, Boswell looked optimistically even on this aspect of keeping a journal. Not only will he ‘preserve many things that would otherwise be lost in oblivion’ but he will ‘find daily employment for myself, which will save me from indolence and help to keep off the spleen’.[26] Elsewhere, he speculates as to whether writing might not actually transplant depression from his mind to the page: ‘Lord Monboddo said on Saturday that writing down hurt the memory. Could I extract the hypochondria from my mind, and deposit it in my journal, writing down would be very valuable.’[27] More often, though, Boswell resents the constant, and increasingly frequent, presence of depression in his journal, not least because recording, he feels, gives validity to what should not be acknowledged: ‘I really believe’, he writes from Holland in 1764, ‘that these grievous complaints should not be vented; they should be considered as absurd chimeras, whose reality should not be allowed in words.’[28]

The relation between depression and writing is acutely problematic. Hypochondria was a condition that was for Boswell an undeniably real feature of his life, yet to be always recording it was perhaps to offer it an endorsement that it did not deserve. But the urge to tell was itself a powerful factor within the hypochondriac temperament. Moreover, if confession of so major a part of his existence was to be denied, then where was the truth of the journal to be found?