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Impressions119-101
119. On July 7, 2011 at 4:52pm -0400, [name deleted] wrote: ok mike thanks i would let you know if i needed someone to talk to . I have some questions i would like to ask and one of them is how come im still paranoid even though im with a transsexual now we live together for 2 years and im still the same way i like women for sure ,,,but something happened to me when i was really young and that is sexual abuse by my older brother and i sexually abused my sister who was two years younger than me and this is like 11 years ago and she is married now ..but i never got over what happened not so much for myself but to her i felt so guilty for what happened i was 13 years old at the time i think but i still blame myself i wanted to know if that guilt has anything to do with my paranoia . I say i like women but there is a part of me that dosent like women and the reason i think is what happened to me and my sister what do you think is there a connection there ? and i wanna tell you what happened to me when i was around 17 years old i let you know latter thank you mike for your time . [ Please also refer to Impressions # 116.] 118. "This may be the act of a lone, mad, paranoid [ schizophrenic ] individual," said Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin who studies rightist extremism, referring to the right-wing fundamentalist Christian charged in connection with the killings, "but the far-right milieu creates an atmosphere that can lead such people down that path of violence." [ Norway Attacks Put Spotlight on Rise of Right-Wing Sentiment in Europe, by Nicholas Kulish, "The New York Times INTERNATIONAL," Sunday, July 4, 2011, p. 9. ] 117. A. [.......] I got on the plane back to New York knowing my friend was "bone-tired and very beat-up," but thinking he simply needed rest and would soon be his old dominating self again. In November I went out West for our annual pheasant shoot and realized how wrong I was. When Ernest and our friend Duke MacMullen met my train at Shoshone, Idaho, for the drive to Ketchum, we did not stop at the bar opposite the train station as we usually did because Ernest was anxious to get on the road. I asked why the hurry. "The feds." "What?" "They tailed us all the way. Ask Duke." "Well...there was a car back of us out of Hailey," "Why are the F.B.I. agents pursuing you?" I asked "It's the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They've bugged everything. That's why we're using Duke's car. Mine's bugged. Can't use the phone. Mail intercepted." We rode for miles in silence. As we turned into Ketchum, Ernest said quietly: "Duke, pull over. Cut your lights." He peered across the street at a bank. Two men were working inside. "What is it?" I asked. "Auditors. The F.B.I.'s got them going over my account." "But how do you know?" "Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it's my account." All his friends were worried: he had changed; he was depressed; he wouldn't hunt; he looked bad. Ernest, Mary and I went to dinner the night before I left. Halfway through the meal Ernest said we had to leave immediately. Mary asked what was wrong. "Those two F.B.I. agents at the bar, that's what's wrong." The next day Mary had a private talk with me. She was terribly distraught. Ernest spent hours every day with the manuscript of his Paris sketches -- published as a "Moveable Feast" after his death -- trying to write but unable to do more than turn its pages. He often spoke of destroying himself and would sometimes stand at the gun rack, holding one of the guns, staring out the window. On Nov. 30 he was registered under an assumed name in the psychiatric section of St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester, Minn., where, during December, he was given 11 electric shock treatments. In January he called me from outside his room. He sounded in control, but his voice held a heartiness that didn't belong there and his delusions had not changed or diminished. His room was bugged, and the phone was tapped. He suspected that one of the interns was a fed. During a short release he twice attempted suicide with a gun from the vestibule rack. And on a flight to the Mayo clinic, though heavily sedated, he tried to jump from the plane. When it stopped in Casper, Wyo., for repairs, he tried to walk into the moving propeller. I visited him in June. He had been given a new series of shock treatments, but it was as before: the car bugged, his room bugged. I said it very gently: "Papa, why do you want to kill yourself?" "What do you think happens to a man going on 62 when he realizes that he can never write the books and stories he promised himself? Or do any of the other things he promised himself in the good days?" [.......] [ A. E. Hotchner, in The New York Times OP-ED Saturday July 2, 2011, describing the final paranoia-suffused chapter in the life of his good friend -- the writer Ernest Hemingway. ] B. Mr. Carlile is at pains to reconcile the many actual sexual anomalies in Hemingway's life, among them his mother's having tried to 'pass him off as a girl' for the first four years of his life, as Mr. Carlile puts it, 'keeping him in dresses and long curly hair and bonnets'; his penchant for switching sexual roles with his wives, and the double standard he held in his acceptance of lesbians and his hatred of male homosexuals. [ Quotation / Comment # 571, in "Schizophrenia - The Bearded Lady Disease," J. Michael Mahoney, 1stBooks, 2003, p. 429. ] C. Responding to some of Hemingway's more extreme behavior near the end of the 'Paris Pilgrims,' Robert McAlmon, his friend and publisher, speculates that 'Hemingway might someday realize that the qualities he found so despicable, so unacceptable and hateful in other men, might be the very qualities he was trying to deny in himself.' The character McAlmon continues. 'But if Hemingway was to escape insanity or suicide, those repressed qualities would someday have to come out'... (Ibid.) [ Quotation / Comment # 572, in "Schizophrenia - The Bearded Lady Disease," J. Michael Mahoney, 1stBooks, 2003, p. 430. Note: Hemingway never allowed those "repressed qualities.... to come out" far enough, except in his opposite-sex role-playing with his wife towards the very end of his life -- reference his posthumously-published book "The Garden of Eden" -- nor did he ever "come out" in the current homosexual sense of that phrase. Instead, he used his favorite shotgun with which to destroy himself when the overwhelming paranoid schizophrenic symptoms of his "bearded lady" disease, finally became unendurable. --- JMM ] 116. On July 4, 2011 at 5:15am -0400, you wrote: Dear Sir, Many thanks for your email. I am so sorry to hear about the extreme psychological stress you are now experiencing with regard to your ongoing "paranoid" feelings, etc. If you are near a good library, go to it and take out Volume 12 of the "Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud." (Hogarth Press, London, 1958, reprinted 1962 and 1964.) Then read the section titled "III - On the Mechanism of Paranoia," pp. 59-79. This should help you to understand paranoia better. Also, Refer to Quotation/Comment 528 in my book "Schizophrenia - The Bearded Lady Disease," Vol. 1, which you can access in its separate link on my website. Furthermore, It would be a very good idea for you to contact either a psychiatrist or a psychologist with whom you could discuss your present feelings. Please feel free to email any time you wish, and many thanks for taking the time to write. I certainly hope you will be able to take the necessary steps to enable you to free yourself from your present painful psychological turmoil. Best of luck and take good care, Mike (J. Michael) Mahoney 115. A. Why I am humble enough to get to be public ass. Mt MTF transition went AWOL late September of last year . I had begun menstruation ; but did not have uteral drainage . I went to the emergency room 3 times over 3 months - asking for a gynecologist - and sent directly to the psych ward . I even got shock treatments at kino . Whats more , my feminine odor began attracting certain 'men ' ( if a Philistine can be a man ) , and I was gang raped twice . The third time I was due I got into a hellishly combative situation and miscarried a fetus . I spent Christmas in the psych ward , and moved for the next five months to a "trans friendly' shelter . I met some other trans there who changed my life , and my perspective . B. As you may recall ( lol) , I was aparthieded within the State of [deleted] most of 2010. It culminated in a mass homocide over the Christmas weekend . I went to a psychiatric unit , then into convalescence for five months . Once the homocides took place , the authorities showed the appropriate concern . The investigation has demonstrated that a drug rehabilitation program within the state had been severely compromised ; by a conglomerate of religious fanatics and 8 ball cripps from the inland northwest . The sheriffs departments in several counties has confirmed these individuals are responsible for well over a third of the violent crimes taking place in the state : that , in a state where gang violence has been subdued and arms have been laid down , an outside cadre has invaded and declared all out war - all , of course , under the guise of christian missionary work . [ A. and B. above are two "blog" entries posted June 11, 2011 (A.) and June 9, 2011 (B.), from a middle-aged man suffering severely from paranoid schizophrenia, the "bearded lady"disease. ] 114. A. I got paid , replaced my hygeine products and cosmetics ; took some money and went to the nearby laundromat .
The first thing I noticed was that all of the machines were very expensive side loaders . I opened the spout on top to pour in the liquid soap I use . One side had a hieroglyph of a snowflake , the other of a pouring bottle . Could snowflake side be soap ? If so , is the bottle side conditioner ? So , I asked an elderly gentleman to show mw which hole the soap goes in . He smiled , nodded , came over , and carefully examined the glyphs . He nudged me , pressed close , and passed his side against me , smiling , showing much concer , and interest . Then , he stooped way over and sniffed my ass . Mildly offended , I suggested that the soap does NOT go up my butthole . His friend dragged him away and said " You hate us because you think were fags . We are men ! B. [Female name] left [deleted] and moved to the Indian Reservation because he says he married an Indian man. He's done that before (said that). So he's in [deleted] on his own with nothing but his clothes again. I have no idea if he takes his psyc meds. Yes, I took that info from the blog. No, he never had an enema as a child. I asked him recently why he suddenly has become so interested in sex when he never was before. He said because he's a woman and women have more orgasms, etc. Totally nuts (well, yes we can have more orgasms in a session but that has nothing to do with him). Did I tell you he had me take a picture of him in the nude bending over? I showed him the picture on my computer and he pointed to his anus and said it was his vagina and then pointed to an indentation above the anus and said it was his "asshole". Crude, sorry. anyway, there weren't two holes but for him there was. I give up. [ Sections A. and B. above have been contributed by the mother of this middle-aged man who is suffering from a very severe case of paranoid schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease. He has been in and out of many psychiatric hospitals and is presently once again (June, 2011) out on his own. He is firmly convinced he is a woman, has acquired a female name, and dresses accordingly in "appropriate" feminine attire. As that noted paranoid schizophrenic German judge, Senatsprasident Dr. Daniel Paul Schreber, once wrote: "I would like to meet the man who, faced with the choice of either becoming a demented human being in male habitus or a spirited woman, would not prefer the latter. Such and only such is the issue for me." Now we know for certain that, in the insightful opinion of Dr. Guido Weber, superintendant of the mental asylum in Sonnenstein, Germany, where Dr. Schreber was held as a patient for many years in the late 1800's and early 1900's, "Schreber's name is legion." Witness here the words of the author of section A. above, and the frank description of him by his mother in section B. He is indisputably a member of Schreber's mad "legion." ] 113. Between his earlier state of being occupied by tremendous hypochondriacal delusional ideas, of severe hallucinatory stupor, of markedly negativistic behavior, characterized by refusal of food and turning away from every contact and occupation, and the present picture of sensible and social approachability, no longer shut off from the demands and interests of the day, there is a vast difference, a difference which is of importance naturally for appraising the total state. How much his condition has changed is also shown by the changes in his hallucinations. Whereas previously in form and content they were of a powerful nature accompanied by lively affect and therefore had a strong, direct influence on him, they have gradually become weaker and at present according to the patient's own graphic account (compare p. 166 ff.) are only a soft lisping noise, a hissing comparable to the sound of sand running out of an hour-glass, while their content also is poorer and more scurrilous, the hallucinated words follow each other more slowly, the "voices" are drowned out by an ordinary conversation and, though a nuisance and a burden to the patient, do not influence his feelings and thoughts to any great extent. This is, as I have said before because the acute stage of the psychosis with its vivid changes of feeling passed into a chronic state long ago; out of the stormy turbid flood of the acute stage of the illness the well-known complicated delusional system has crystallized out and become fixed and the patient has come to terms with it in the manner described above, so that to a certain extent it now leads a separate existence in his mental life, and although it represents a very important part of it, being less affect-laden it only acts and reacts little on the rest of his mind, particularly on that part concerned with daily life, and does not influence his actions significantly.
[ Dr. Guido Weber, Superintendant of Sonnenstein Asylum, in his "Expert Report" to the Superior Country Court, Civil Division, Dresden, Germany, on 5th April 1902, "on the mental state of President Dr. Schreber," in MEMOIRS OF MY NERVOUS ILLNESS, by DANIEL PAUL SCHREBER / Translated, Edited, with Introduction, Notes and Discussion by IDA MACALPINE, M.D. and RICHARD A. HUNTER, M.D., M.R.C.P., D.P.M. / WM. DAWSON & SONS LTD. London 1955, pp. 321-2. ] 112. In paranoia more than in any other form of illness the original personality of the patient is of decisive importance for determining the manifestations of insanity, and as long as secondary dementia (a rare occurrence in
paranoia) has not set in, the pathological products of an intellectually significant man with far-reaching knowledge, lively interest in scientific and philosophical problems, rich in fantasy and of well-trained judgment, will bear the stamp of the original intellectual endowments; but on the whole in the formation and systematization of the delusional ideas, the disease will show the same character as that of another person whose range of ideas does not rise above the most trivial events of daily life.
[ Dr. Guido Weber, Superintendant of Sonnenstein Asylum, in his "Expert Report" to the Superior Country Court, Civil Division, Dresden, Germany, on 5th April 1902, "on the mental state of President Dr. Schreber," in MEMOIRS OF MY NERVOUS ILLNESS, by DANIEL PAUL SCHREBER / Translated, Edited, with Introduction, Notes and Discussion by IDA MACALPINE, M.D. and RICHARD A. HUNTER, M.D., M.R.C.P., D.P.M. / WM. DAWSON & SONS LTD. London 1955, pp. 317-19. ] 111. People grew up in church, so a lot of us lived in shame. What did we do? We wandered around lost. We married men, and then couldn't understand why every night we had a headache. [ Darlene Maffett, who had two children in eight years of marriage before "coming out" in 2002. -- "The New York Times / Quotation of the Day," January 19, 2011, p. A2. ] 110. The psychological profile presented in the New York Times Op-Ed column on March 25, 2011, of Libya's ruling dictator Colonel Muammar el-Qadaffi, by noted Times' columnist David Brooks, is a striking example of how severe mental illness, i.e., paranoid schizophrenia -- the "bearded lady" disease, can wreak havoc upon both a country's own ruled inhabitants and upon the citizens of other countries as well. Colonel Qadaffi's name can now be added to the long list of other such mentally ill leaders whose lives have had similar disastrous effects on the world, such as Josepf Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong -- the latter three being the most markedly egregious examples of such persons afflicted with this devastating mental illness. The severe bisexual conflict and gender confusion which invariably underlies paranoid schizophrenia is starkly illustrated in the case of Mr. Qadaffi by Mr. Brooks' account of him as appearing "in foreign countries in odd dress, with odd make-up and hair-gel preferences...." This description would be an apt one for any typical male/female "cross-dresser," in any country. Other common and well-known symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia are: megalomania, delusions of persecution, grandiose thinking, faulty reasoning and various obsessions, all of which symptoms are accurately attributed to Mr. Qadaffi and carefully enumerated by Mr. Brooks in his psychologically insightful and astutely-presented column. Furthermore, the fact that Mr. Qadaffi "has an all-female bodyguard contingent" highlights his unconscious self-identification as a female and his consequent uneasiness when around other men, as well as a deeply paranoid distrust of them. ("No, I don't love them, I hate them.") In summary, Mr. Qadaffi is definitely not "one of the boys," preferring instead to be surrounded, "mothered" and protected by strong, masculine women. This fact must, of course, say something about the manner in which he was raised, the direct result of which led to the development of the always ominous psychological condition known as "sex-role alienation in early childhood." This particular outcome inevitably leads to a state of severe bisexual conflict and gender confusion at puberty, and at that critical juncture in psychosexual maturation the young man (or woman) would either become overtly homosexual or else, by the denial and repression of their homosexuality, set the stage for the later development of paranoid schizophrenia. This is invariably the course this extremely malignant illness follows, in all cases, without exception, when the overwhelmingly powerful homosexual impulses are denied and repressed. Thus paranoid schizophrenia -- the "bearded lady" disease, has claimed another victim, and as the direct consequence of Colonel Muammar el-Qadaffi's severe mental illness, thousands of innocent and uncomprehending Libyan citizens are now being tragically, and sometimes fatally, harmed. As the brilliant Bulgarian psycho-analyst Julia Kristeva has so succinctly stated, "Sexual identity guarantees our psychic unity." Colonel Qadaffi's present "sexual identity" must therefore consist of warring bisexual impulses and confused and conflicted male/female gender identities -- the sum of which conflicts has driven him mad. [ a J. Michael Mahoney Impressions entry. See also New Quotation/Comment 772. ] 109. A. I must say, it's hard to argue with many of the comments and speculations about Lincoln. I think your own are particularly good, and about 95% convincing. [See New Quotation/Comment 770.] In one sense it seems cruel for Lincoln to have put up with so much of Mary's behavior w/o any reaction to her. But then, I have to remember this is very close to what my father did for yrs when my crazy mother went on her rampages. I remember one time coming home from school and finding her cutting up many of his clothes with scissors, including good suits. When I 'mentioned this to him downstairs as he sat quietly reading the paper, he said, 'she's just a little upset'. On this, and other occasions, I had come to the conclusion that he had either to take this attitude, or kill or divorce her - there were no other options. B. I could go on, about her zero to 60 mi/hr outbursts of hatred, often hours or even days after she took offence at something (so you would have no idea what the outburst was about, yet gradually became conditioned to expect something at any time.) No wonder I adopted the neurotic 'solution' of Detachment and my own little internal iron curtain against any emotion from the outside or even from within. On the other side of the ledger, I have to note that, as I look around at my 2,000 and more books, I must note her responsibility for igniting the love of books and learning (even if in the early yrs it may have been largely because I noticed she left me alone when I was reading - once at the age of 10, In read a 400 pg bk in one day, and can actually remember thinking, 'this is a little unusual for a 10-yr old!'). C. While I think "counseling" might be helpful for some types of problems and for some individuals not amenable to the 'real thing', I'm certain I would never have had the slightest benefit from it. With a quite lucky choice of therapist, I did benefit considerably from psychoanalysis in at least three ways. 1) perhaps most of all the therapist (who was also, appallingly, Sylvia Plath's therapist), recommended several key books to me, especially of Harry Sullivan and Karen Horney, which were of inestimable intellectual help. (If they didn't directly cure my 'condition', they did give me what I though was a very full understanding of what had happened - indeed they were more help than the therapy itself) 2. the mere fact of a place to go, and the idea that "something was happening" is these, to outsiders, mysterious sessions, was immensely helpful as a 'cover' while I was, for 13 mos, not only emotionally, but actually physically incapacitated. 3) the way it ended was also helpful, in a perverse way - I could tell that after two years the doctor had become more or less exasperated, and, with another outside factor, I was able to 'move on' in the form of moving 200 mi to NYC and finding myself, to my own surprise, able to function. [ Name deleted for privacy reasons. ] 108. They f-ck you up, your mum and dad, they may not mean to, but they do--they fill you with the faults they had, and add some extra, just for you. --- Poet Philip Larkin, "This Be the Verse" [ "When I married I was only half a man, and could only marry half a woman." --- the father of a schizophrenic patient, gender not stated, as told to the patient's psychotherapist. ] 107. Michael - I just saw [Name deleted] Monday. Now it's Saturday and all of this has happened! I think I told you he had me take pictures of him in the nude (front and back) and he looks no different than any other man that I've ever seen. His imagination and sickness seems to be going out of control. What must the people there think? If you use this please delete the new name he created [Name deleted]. I'm just astounded and sat here with my hand over my mouth while reading it. [Mother of patient] [patient's new female Name deleted] part 2 Last thanksgiving was a huge turning point in my life . I lost a friend , gained a lover ; and was raped by a few other men . It took me until morning to be able to call 911. I went to emergency surgery . I was given a subductive operation , using my minor female vestigals to sew up my torn up butt. The sugery left me terribly confused and disoriented , as I am a transitioning MTF ; had only been experimenting with men , found one good one I liked and a bunch of others closer to homocidal about it . Also , unbeknownst to me , I became pregnant . Three weeks after this horror I vaginally extruded , my girl thing "popped out " . I spent the night of hell at odds with my neighbors , who were partying and laughing at me next door . It was a time in my life when I was harboring gangsters , not because I wanted to , but because the State considered them part of my 'rehabilitation ' team . I ended up , after 6 months in the program after having been EXPOSED to meth , long enough to make me feel ill , to willfully taking morphylates . The entire program was in my best estimate , the greatest tragedy of my life . I soom found that I could not locate my clitoris ; I stopped menstruating , had mood swings , flashes , my ptsd was off the wall . I understood that I am washed up as far as coningulus ; still had a male vestigal that is next to worthless , ( I refer to it as a cowbell as I wear it for I am an idiot ) , and had locakky become a gay icon - except that I have little or no prior experience with men . I have been completely gendered by the state of [Deleted], it has left me almost insane . Most gay men expect reciprocity , that is , to give and take anal . The subduct operation makes taking it fun enough ; but giving has proven to be a virtual impossibility . Testo , viagra ; all very toxic to me . There is a psychological barrier as well. In mid december I was raped again , miscarried my fetus , and spent christmas in a psych wing . The many men literally went ape and killed each other ; I had been expecting my boyfriend who arrived particularly late . I was told that the fetus was a female sired by the only one involved that I actually loved and admired . He is from a different culture and I don't believe he understood what was going on any better than I did . I went to a trans safe house , DV shelter , in the fear that I had again lost everyone and everything I loved again . Friday the 14th of march my boyfriend called inon me at last . I had not even known what had become of him . He was granted conjugal rights and we loved each other as I never had known love before . At 51 years old , he was the first in my vagina . We took vows of marraige in the Navaho way and I am now part of the Navaho nation . He has my love and my medicine ; and has never done me harm . I love him so much I would be glad to take a slow junk to Cambodia and be properly gooked with bamboo if he wished it . My new vagina has no labia , my clitoris is deeper iside nearer my anus ; but vaginal sex is 1000 times as yowl as anal for me . He penetrated me and I subbed for 45 minutes ... that place where only women go . My coital speech ( monosyllabic phonemic sounds made during sex ) are in Navaho ! Yet I do not speak a word of it with my consious mind . I still feel terrible that I have been mutilated in this fashion , but thrilled that there is yet a MAN enough to love me . My vagina looks like a tiny , second butthole . with scars . He often asks how far or what I would do for him ; anything at all is too commercially vague . He has asked me to keep my penis - which I loathe , and he has no need for it ; he claims it makes me unique , or special . Trisexual . Phoo , I think , but I will keep the idiot bell as long as he wants me to wear it . Please note that its removal is the only way to reconstruct a normal looking puss - which I would love but would make me an ordinary woman in his eyes . Of course I will obey my husbands wishes because I love him and for no other reason , despite the fact we both agree it is extraneous . I want to try again to have his baby . I was too underdeveloped to carry the first child properly . I hope to soon join him on the Res and be known by a different name and identity . I wait for him as I convalesce at a trans safe house in [Deleted]. It has been a hard , murderous transition . As a man , I thought I could do anything (cringe ) ; now I only want to lie at his feet and know his love . I am complaiant with rehab and shoud be okay soon ... soo- then I go home to a new world I've never known before , for a rebirth , a new life , like reincarnation . I am [patient's new female Name deleted]. 106. [Female Name] Boomer & I were shipmates ; then I hated her , long since forgave her , learned to love her , would have married him , now I've lost him... [ A recent ( March, 2011 ) Internet "blurb" by a non-surgical, transgendered middle-aged man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease. ] 105. He often talks about his ovaries, uterus and having a period. As far as his story about 5 men raping him Thanksgiving.... he asked me to take a picture of him in the nude - front and back all bent over. It wasn't fun but I did it. He said the hospital took 6 hours to repair the damage to his anus but when I look at the pix I see no sign of any damage, surgery or anything unusual and I told him so. He doesn't "hear" me. He claims the other people at [Deleted] in [Deleted] are going through the same thing. I wonder how long they will let him stay there because I'm sure they know he's not like they are. [ Contributed by the mother of a delusional, paranoid schizophrenic, middle-aged man. ] 104. I had my first menses since my [fantasied] thanksgiving rape. I am now ducting small quantities from both breasts. [ A middle-aged transgendered male (not surgically altered) who is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease. He is presently (2/21/2011) hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. ] 103. I have come to believe that in peacetime no one [male or female] becomes schizophrenic who has achieved a really satisfactory sexual integration with another person of comparable status. If the individual achieves, even once, an interpersonal intimacy primarily sexual in motivation, in which there is neither a gross discrepancy in social status of the persons concerned, nor a body of complex "extra" processes of the shape of hysterical dissociations, projection of blame, feelings of guilt, or the like, then in the ensuing satisfaction of the sexual impulses, the individual, it seems to me, achieves both a long step towards adulthood, and a great measure of safety from the sort of processes that go to make up the schizophrenic illnesses. He has convincingly demonstrated to himself his competence at the technics [sic] of interpersonal intimacy necessary for comparative mental health, and will, in all likelihood, be able to handle most of the problems that life brings him with a sufficient measure of self-respect. [ Schizophrenia as a Human Process, by Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., with Introduction and Commentaries by Helen Swick Perry, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1962, (Copyright by the William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation), p. 251. ] 102. The very history of the theory of schizophrenia, or dementia praecox, epitomizes the situation. The whole tendency of modern psychiatric method is colored by an appreciation of the peculiar futility of ordinary methods of investigation when applied to the field of mental disorder. Observation is inadequate and interrogation woefully ineffective in elucidating the mental process actually making up the content of the graver mental disorders. Five different investigators can easily arrive at five strikingly different conceptions of any one patient. It behooves one to scrutinize closely each intellectual step by which he progresses towards his conclusions about any patient in this field -- or for that matter about any personality that may be the subject of his investigation. It is traditional that sexual manifestations, and for that matter the less conventional and more abnormal sexual manifestations, are an outstanding factor in the picture of schizophrenia. It is common belief among the group of psychopathologists most probably really acquainted with schizophrenic phenomena that homosexual manifestations are almost all but invariably conspicuous in some stages of this illness. [ Schizophrenia as a Human Process, by Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., with Introduction and Commentaries by Helen Swick Perry, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1962, (Copyright by the the William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation), pp. 206-7. ] 101. Nicola, 26 years old, had had first a period of severe insomnia, during which, if she slept, she had nightmares which had the directness of a child's dreams. She dreamt her home was on fire, and her mother and her brother Jeremy were burned up. Another dream would be of her father and Jeremy being killed in a car crash. After several weeks of day-time over-activity, bad dreams and insomnia, her behavior became incoherent. She showed the symptoms of acute excited catatonic schizophrenia, appeared to be unable to relate to those around, laughed inappropriately, and wept at times in a way equally unconnected with any real external events. She could no longer work and was admitted to a mental hospital. Nicola's 'thought disorder' showed itself by 'blocking' -- by her stopping suddenly as she was speaking. Her speech otherwise never made a point, yet it could now and then have a quality that made one particularly listen, as though she was about to tell you why she had broken down. The pressure of speech, the neologisms, the word-salads that mostly characterized her talking, however, prevented much two-way communication with her. After the first visit of her parents she became silent. At this time, for a few days, Nicola cut off all links, and remained almost stuporose. [.......] Interviews with Nicola during this time showed her to be preoccupied with three particular 'delusional' ideas. She thought she was changing sex. She believd her parents were not her parents. She felt she herself was very old, but had just been reborn. While these ideas were delusional in one sense, in another they could be understood. Her father, for all his religious notions, had always been a seductive figure to his daughter. He kissed and cuddled her and swung her on his knee when she was a child. He had little sexual intercourse with his wife and was often sexually frustrated. This showed itself in his eroticized relationship with his daughter. Yet if Nicola showed any erotic responsiveness, this was punished by both parents. They tolerated a tomboy daughter, however, or a passive asexual identity, such as the one Jeremy had had as a boy. Neither of these parents had a child-raising technique that gave a clear idea to a child what being a boy or a girl meant. And so in her adolescence, with the physical changes of the stage completely unexplained at home, Nicola always experienced full sexual feelings guiltily. There could never be affection withour sex, and never sex without guilt. A series of affairs in her teens always ended in intercourse, to her bewilderment. While each parent claimed the family was a close one, Nicola had never felt understood. Each parent said she was a happy child, yet she looked back at an anxious, fearful childhood, in which her brave tomboyishness had been no mere expression of her envy of maleness, but nearer to a search for herself, a self from her point of view, rejected as female. Just as her mother could not identify properly with her own aggressive mother, so Nicola failed. The family had a clear view of what kind of family they were. The father prided himself on being someone the children could turn to when troubled. Yet Nicola feared him in fact, and found he had never seemed to believe in the feelings she had tried to express to him. He was proud of her tomboy act in her girlhood -- 'There's confidence,' he would say. Yet she had gone through agonies of uncertainty in an inner self, never in touch with her mother or father. It was indeed, for her, as though her parents were not her parents. She could, in a mad way, only please by changing sex. Now in her psychosis she was trying to be born again. [ THE PSYCHOTIC / Understanding Madness, by Andrew Crowcroft, M.D., Penguin Books Ltd., Great Britain, 1967, pp. 90-2. ]
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