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New Quotations/Comments730-716730 QUOTATION A. Greyhound has scrapped an advertising campaign that extolled the relaxing effects of bus travel, above [There's A Reason You've Never Heard Of "BUS RAGE" / over a picture of a Greyhound bus], after a passenger was accused of repeatedly stabbing and then beheading a traveler in the next seat while their bus was on a desolate stretch of highway in Manitoba last week. Canada: Greyhound Pulls Ad Campaign, Associated Press, in The New York Times, 8/7/08, p. A 9 QUOTATION B. Toronto - The animal rights group PETA has tried unsuccessfully to run a newspaper ad comparing the beheading and cannibalizing of a passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada last week to the treatment of animals by the meat industry. Newspaper won't run PETA's Greyhound ad, The San Francisco Chronicle, 8/9/08 This ghastly case once again demonstrates the horrifying consequences which can result from the actions of a person driven berserk by schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease. Tim McLean, 19, the innocent and unsuspecting victim of his seat-mate and fellow bus traveler Vince Weiguang Li's sudden outburst of frenzied, lethal madness, had been sleeping peacefully in his seat with his headphones on - according to news reports - when his life was brutally and quickly ended by the crazed actions of Mr. Li. Somehow this sight of Tim McLean in the seat next to him must have precipitated in Mr. Li an overwhelmingly powerful surge of homosexual feelings, feelings which Mr. Li had long dealt with by total denial and repression until this fateful moment when finally he could no longer hold them back, converting them in his unconscious mind - in the typical paranoid schizophrenic projective pattern - from intense homo-erotic love into furious hate. "No, I don't love him, I HATE him," followed immediately by "No, I don't hate him, HE HATES me and is tempting me homosexually, so I have to KILL him in order to protect myself from his satanic, perverted designs on me." The insane ferocity of the attack on Tim McLean clearly demonstrates the strength, depth and passion of Mr. Li's homosexual attraction to him, and it was this sudden, fateful eruption of long-repressed homosexual cravings which drove him to attempt to obliterate completely any vestiges of this person who had so maddened him with homosexual temptation - even to the point of cannibalizing parts of his body. Furthermore, lurking directly beneath this cannibalization there must have existed very powerful, paranoically repudiated oral-erotic drives focused on the body of his victim, drives which could have served as the specific "trigger” initiating Mr. Li’s frenzied assault on Tim McLean, whose hapless body Mr. Li could so easily observe lying vulnerable and unprotected - and homosexually tempting - close beside him in the adjacent seat. The above theorizing about the cause of Mr. Li's sudden homicidal attack on his sleeping seat-mate on the Greyhound bus might seem difficult to comprehend, but in reality it is just one more of countless tragic examples of the devastating consequences which can ensue when an unfortunate person afflicted with schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease, "runs amok." [See also preceding Quotations/Comments # 728 and # 727.] To reference one of Sigmund Freud's favorite quotations, There are more things in heaven and earth, [Hamlet, I,v,166] 729 QUOTATION A. The Incident On a snowy winter day in 1991, Lu Gang, a slightly built Chinese scholar who had recently received his Ph.D. in plasma physics, walked into a seminar room at the University of Iowa's Van Allen Hall, raised a snub-nose .38-caliber Taurus pistol, and killed Professor Christoph Goertz, his thesis adviser; Robert A. Smith, a member of his dissertation committee; and Shan Linhua, a fellow graduate student and rival. [from the film Dark Matter] But he gradually becomes persuaded that his professors are conspiring to delay his degree and deny him his rightful recognition as a scholar. His growing paranoia is only heightened when his Ph.D. orals committee refuses to sign off on his thesis until he redoes some of his computations, making it impossible for him to win the top dissertation prize he feels he deserves. By the end of the film, his acute sense of humiliation has led to a psychotic state, and in a fit of murderous rage he kills the professors he once idealized. Dark Matter, a film directed by Chen Shi-Zheng; in China: Humiliation & the Olympics, by Orville Schell, The New York Review of Books, August 14, 2008, p. 30. QUOTATION B. Paranoia is precisely a disorder in which a sexual aetiology is by no means obvious; far from this, the strikingly prominent features in the causation of paranoia, especially among males, are social humiliations and slights. But if we go into the matter only a little more deeply, we shall be able to see that the really operative factor in these social injuries lies in the part played in them by the homosexual components of emotional life. So long as the individual is functioning normally and it is consequently impossible to see into the depths of his mental life, we may doubt whether his emotional relations to his neighbors in society have anything to do with sexuality, either actually or in their genesis. But delusions never fail to uncover these relations and to trace back the social feelings to their roots in a directly sensual erotic wish. So long as he was healthy, Dr. Schreber, too, whose delusions culminated in a wishful fantasy of an unmistakably homosexual nature, had, by all accounts, shown no signs of homosexuality in the ordinary sense of the word. The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII, (1911-13), The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, p. 60. Once again Schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease, had taken its deadly toll. And it answers the question posed above by the writer Orville Schell as to "Why a brilliant, hard-working young Chinese physicist, who had come to the US six years earlier filled with pride and hope, had come to such a bitter end..." As Mr. Schell reports, citing biographical information gleaned from the movie, Dark Matter, the crazed killer Lu Chang "gradually becomes persuaded that his professors are conspiring to delay his degree and deny him his rightful recognition as a scholar." His "growing paranoia" slowly intensifies to the point he loses all control of his emotions and, in a typical "homosexual panic", erupts in a spasm of lethal fury, with all its horrifying consequences. It was not Lu Gang's "acute sense of humiliation" which led to his psychotic state but the overpowering pressure exerted upon his beleaguered psyche by his repressed homosexual passions. "By the end of the film," Mr. Schell writes, "his acute sense of humiliation has led to a psychotic state, and in a fit of murderous rage he kills the professors he had once idealized." The substitution here of the word "idolized" for "idealized" would have been more psychologically perceptive, for it was upon these "idolized" male professors, or at least upon one of them, that Lu Gang's unconscious homosexual passions had become fixated. Sigmund Freud has brilliantly unraveled for us the psychic "mechanics" of paranoia: "The mechanism of symptom-formation in paranoia requires that internal perceptions - feelings - shall be replaced by external perceptions. Consequently the proposition 'I hate him' becomes transformed by PROJECTION into another one: 'HE HATES (persecutes) ME, which will justify me in hating him.' And thus the impelling unconscious feeling makes its appearance as though it were the consequence of an external perception: In this tragic case, Lu Gang, "the slightly built Chinese scholar", massively resisted any conscious acknowledgement of homosexual feelings towards any one of his professors, instead making the typical "paranoid shift", as outlined above by Dr. Freud, wherein his repressed feelings of love were transformed by unconscious denial into their exact opposite: "No, I don't love Professor X, I hate him," followed immediately by "No, I don't hate him, he hates me and is persecuting me, and thus I have to kill him to protect myself from harm." By this end stage in the malignant paranoid process, total insanity has finally overtaken its victim, with often disastrous consequences such as those which have been so shockingly described in this case. [See also the preceding Quotation/Comment # 728.] In summary, the pathogenic etiology underlying every case of paranoid schizophrenia, and likewise the primary operative factor in all cases of functional mental illness - in both men and women - resides invariably in the repression and denial of exceedingly powerful homosexual passions, combined with compelling opposite-sex feelings and identifications. Bisexual conflict and gender confusion have always ruled the world of madness - and always will. 728 QUOTATION A. Jessica was Steve's confessor. He told her everything - his long mental health history, his anxiety, his family turmoil, his recent hunger for sex with women he met through the internet, with a male professor. STEVE GREW UP WATCHING horror movies with his mother. Fleshy, enormous, laid out beside him on the couch. Middle of the day, and all shades are drawn. Dark. She's protective, doesn't want Steve to go outside. Won't let him play much with other children. She's not mentally right, according to Steve's godfather, but what can he do? A family feud. [.......] Whenever he focuses on work, the back of his wrist against his forehead, hand hanging out limply. Kids call him fag because of the hand. He and Adam get notes to leave class as often as possible, especially gym class, whenever a concert or performance of any kind is on the schedule. [.......] He takes fifty Depakote, goes to sleep. He's surprised to wake up. Goes to school. "I want to die," he tells the nurse. "Life sucks." [......] On colder nights, they hang out in one of the bathrooms. Twenty by twenty feet, stand-alone cinder-block huts in the wilderness. Their own concrete chalets. They're used, also, by gay cruisers. If you back into a parking space here, you're asking for a visit. Portrait of the School Shooter as a Young Man, by David Vann, Esquire magazine, August 2008, pp. 114-126. QUOTATION B. These considerations therefore lend an added weight to the circumstance that we are in point of fact driven by experience to attribute to homosexual wishful fantasies an intimate (perhaps an invariable) relation to this particular form of disease. Distrusting my own experience on the subject, I have during the last few years joined with my friends C.G. Jung of Zurich and Sándor Ferenczi of Budapest in investigating upon this single point a number of cases of paranoid disorder which have come under observation. The patients whose histories provided the material for this enquiry included both men and women, and varied in race, occupation, and social standing. Yet we were astonished to find that in all of these cases a defense against a homosexual wish was clearly recognizable at the very centre of the conflict which underlay the disease and that it was in an attempt to master an unconsciously reinforced current of homosexuality that they had all of them come to grief.1 This was certainly not what we had expected. On The Mechanism of Paranoia, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-13), London, The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1958, p. 59. In the above-quoted excerpts from David Vann's brilliantly-reported story in Esquire magazine, a stunningly clear picture emerges of the horrifying consequences which can occur as the direct result of the actions taken by a young man suffering from the malignant effects of schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease. The story of Steve Mierczak, running amok, is a story as old as history. It has been told countless times in the past and will be told countless times in the future, or at least until the root cause of such paranoid (schizophrenic) madness is finally universally recognized as being what Sigmund Freud first discovered and then explained it was in 1911 - in his penetrating and insightful analysis of the case of Daniel Paul Schreber - namely, severe bisexual conflict and gender confusion. And it will only be when a general recognition of this profound truth belatedly occurs that persons suffering from this havoc-wreaking disease will finally be treated in an appropriate manner, and if no alleviation of their symptoms can be effected by the most intensive psychological efforts, then henceforth be confined in a secure but civilized manner so that running amok, with its oft-disastrous outcomes, will no longer be a crazed option for them. It has strikingly been demonstrated here by the Steve Mierczak case that the myriad number of psychotropic drugs often prescribed for the emotionally disturbed person are definitely not the answer to "managing", or "curing", their mental illness, and that in fact these highly toxic drugs often exacerbate the symptoms of the mental illness while simultaneously masking its underlying and often potentially lethal pathology, thereby placing everyone within the social orbit of the disturbed person in physical danger, as has been so graphically described in this particular case by the writer David Vann. Steve Mierczak was doomed from the very the beginning of his life. Fate dealt him an unplayable hand by saddling him with a mother who was mentally ill, over-protective and verbally abusive, while concurrently establishing a crippling, castrative, emotionally symbiotic relationship with him. To quote the famed psychiatrist Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan, "From my material, in which negative instances are conspicuously lacking, I am forced to the conclusion that schizophrenic illnesses in the male are intimately related as a sequel to unfortunate prolongation of the attachment of the son and the mother." (Dr. Sullivan, who dealt almost exclusively with male schizophrenic patients, could correctly have added similar symbiotic mother/daughter relationships into his schizophrenia-engendering formulation.) Mr. Mierczak unavoidably experienced sex-role alienation in early childhood due to his toxic relationship with his schizophrenogenic mother, and his consequent underlying effeminacy was quickly intuited by his male classmates, some of whom began calling him a "fag" and generally ridiculing him. As his bisexual conflict and gender confusion grew more severe, fueling the varied symptoms of his mental illness, he was treated by psychiatrists with multiple hospitalizations and myriad toxic psychotropic drugs, none of which interventions addressed the true cause of his schizophrenic symptomatology. He was finally able to gain a modicum of self-insight into his severe bisexual conflict, prompting him to visit his sister Susan to inform her he thought he might be "gay." Unfortunately, this painful admission was quickly overshadowed by a massive new self-denial of his powerful and insistent homo-erotic feelings, ones which had previously been inflamed by actual homosexual experiences with various men. "He tries to hook up with 'Katie,' with her 44 D's, but that doesn't work out, so he moves on. Meets a male biochemistry professor from U. of I. They give each other blow jobs." His psychological defense against these ever-increasing, urgent homosexual cravings was to embark upon an obviously sexually-unsatisfying orgy of pseudo-heterosexual relationships, with many girls, leading him finally to declare to his best-friend "girlfriend", Jessica, whom he was now living with in a purely platonic relationship, that he was not "gay." But by this time he had already begun his inexorable descent into a classic schizophrenic "homosexual panic," fueled as it invariably is by frustrated, overpowering homosexual cravings, thus precipitating his final bloody episode of murderous frenzy - the same frenzy which in many other societies is commonly referred to as "running amok", with its identical schizophrenic "homosexual panic" etiology. Schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease, had struck once more, leaving horrendous personal devastation in its wake. 727 Hi Mike, Well, believe it or not, we could find no one qualified to treat schizophrenia in [city deleted]. No psychotherapist. People who would talk as counselors but that is it. In [name deleted] latest episode he said that everyone at the place he is staying at had raped him. Pretty obvious but no one with insight. It is a sad state of affairs. Wish me luck in the ongoing search for someone qualified. Thanks for the brochure on Menninger. [name deleted] Source: a personal communication. The schizophrenic person referred to in the above quotation has existed in a paranoid schizophrenic delusional state for some time, despite all efforts to help him. The person closest to him, his mother, adamantly rejects the theory that his illness could in any way be related to severe bisexual conflict and gender confusion, the "bearded lady" disease, despite such obvious evidence of its truth as his paranoid belief he had been homosexually raped by all the other male members of the group-home where he has been living. His unshakable belief in the reality of these multiple homosexual rapes is nothing more than the paranoid expression of an unconscious wish-fulfillment of his severely repressed, overwhelmingly powerful sexual cravings to experience exactly this type of passive, feminine, anal-erotic sexual activity with other men. (As Dr. Sigmund Freud has so insightfully stated, What man represses at the deepest level are his passive pederastic instincts.) In this case, as in all cases of schizophrenia in males [and females], the schizophrenia-engendering symbiotic relationship between mother and son [or daughter] is palpably evident. In the words of the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan, speaking here only of male schizophrenics, but applying equally to female schizophrenics: From my material, in which negative instances are conspicuously absent, I am forced to the conclusion that schizophrenic illnesses in the male [and female] are intimately related as a sequel to unfortunate prolongation of the attachment of the son [daughter] and the mother. That schizophrenic disorders are but one of the possible outcomes of persisting immature attitudes subtending the mother and son [daughter] relationship must be evident. The failure of growth of heterosexual interests, with persistence of autoerotic or homosexual interests in adolescence, is the general formula. The factors that determine a schizophrenic outcome may be clarified by a discussion on the one hand of the situations to which I shall refer as homosexual cravings and acute masturbation conflict - often immediate precursors of grave psychosis - and of the various homoerotic and autoerotic procedures, on the other. 726 As an example of the developed schizophrenic, let us consider a former patient of mine who often sat for hours in a corner staring vacantly into space, his lips moving and silly, grimacing smiles flitting across his face. Sometimes this man would not answer questions, apparently not even hearing them, so absorbed was he in subjective contemplation. Again he would grin glassily and wink his eye or occasionally speak with passion about strange machinery in a distant city which enemies whom he referred to merely as "they" were using to inject queer colors into his thoughts and sometimes to make him ejaculate. This man at times suddenly attacked others. It was eminently necessary to keep him on a closed ward and under close supervision. The Mask of Sanity, Fourth Edition, Hervey Cleckley, M.D., The C.V. Mosby Company, Saint Louis, 1964, p. 197. This desperately ill schizophrenic man is blaming "they" for putting strange thoughts into his mind and at times causing him to have involuntary orgasms. Of course the "they" in his paranoid mind are undoubtedly a group of unknown male figures conspiring against him in some far-off location to bring him to orgasmic release, although Dr. Cleckley never specifically states the gender of his patient's hallucinated tormentors. Here the patient's severe bisexual, "bearded lady" conflict is brought into sharp focus by the content of his most pathogenic delusion, that of becoming sufficiently sexually excited by other males to the point of his reaching sexual climax. And his psychological defense against, and denial of, his homosexuality would be that he was not a willing participant in these sexual escapades but had been forced to partake in them by these unknown, hostile forces. Thus his only chance to recover from his severe psychosis would be for him finally to consciously admit that these homosexual feelings and cravings were his very own and not ones which had been forced upon him by hallucinated strangers. He would then be able to claim a "social recovery with insight," the holy grail of all psychotherapy but also the most arduous one to achieve and consequently the least often accomplished. Lastly, He was extremely dangerous because he would suddenly physically attack other men to whom he was homosexually attracted, utilizing the "paranoid shift" (Freud) wherein he projected onto these other male figures the homosexual feelings which were really his own. "No, it is not I who am sexually attracted to these other men, they are the ones who are attracted to me and thus I have to defend myself violently against their anticipated homosexual advances." Countless tragedies have occurred down through the ages due exactly to the above-described "paranoid shift" mechanism in mentally ill persons, of both sexes, and will continue to occur far into the future, unfortunately, or at least until the "bearded lady" cause of all functional mental illness is recognized and treated as such by all. 725 Many more come to mind whose delusions are less extreme but who for decades have manifested autistic withdrawal, oddities, emotional distortions, and impairments consistent only with a schizoid reaction. We also see manifestations identical with those of full-blown schizophrenia in every respect except their transience. A 30-year-old man who, after taking a small dose of testosterone, experienced not only hallucinatory sexual and spiritual sensations within himself but also in others will serve as an excellent example. Vivid delusions were very prominent for approximately a week. These included an absolute conviction that all virtuous women at the mere sight of him caught the impact of magic, glowed with a fire both erotic and holy, and were visibly transformed. It was also his belief that this caused harlots who might sense his powers a block off to run up alleyways in shame. For several days, through false perceptions, he specifically "felt" men and women some miles away responding viscerally, intellectually, and spiritually, and in diverse ways, to what had miraculously become incarnate in his person. After being psychotic for a week and without specific treatment, he regained insight, lost his schizophrenic symptoms, and has for a number of years remained entirely free of them. The Mask of Sanity, Fourth Edition, Hervey Cleckley, M.D., The C.V. Mosby Company, Saint Louis, 1964, pp. 348-9. The importance of this case lies in its demonstration of how a sudden increase of libido in a person with an underlying psychosis - triggered in this instance by a "small dose of testosterone" - can overwhelm long-repressed "bearded lady" bisexual fantasies and desires and lead to florid schizophrenic symptomatology, directly due to the toxic effect of this newly undischarged libido. This man had been able to keep these fantasies repressed, along with the intense sexual excitation cathected to them, until the sudden addition of the sexual hormonal upsurge provided by the testosterone. Still unable, or psychically unwilling, to discharge this long-repressed sexual excitation in a "normal" manner through genital orgasmic discharge, the frustrated sexual excitement took the only route left open to discharge itself and that was through the process of physiological "conversion" into the "fuel" which energized all the various psychotic symptoms he experienced during the week or so he was ill. After the upsurge in his libido subsided as the effect of the extra testosterone naturally diminished, he was able to resume his previous precarious balance of mental health, although still menaced by a return-of-the-repressed which could occur at any time in the future, and with the same deleterious psychotic consequences. Only through long-term psycho-analytic therapy would he be able to gain the necessary conscious insight into his repressed "bearded lady" sexual fantasies and cravings and consequently become inoculated against any future schizophrenic breakdowns. Finally, Note should be taken of the fact that during his brief psychotic episode he felt that both men as well as women were responding "viscerally, intellectually and spiritually" to his belief that he "glowed with a fire both erotic and holy" and to that which had "miraculously become incarnate in his person." His repressed bisexual conflict, the root cause of all functional mental illness, quite obviously reveals itself in the content of these grandiose, paranoid delusions. 724 Quotation A. A 39-year old man who blamed a Manhattan psychiatrist for having him institutionalized 17 years ago was charged Saturday with killing a female therapist in a furious knife attack and then slashing the psychiatrist when he had come to the woman's aid. [......] Mr. Tarloff told investigators he went to the doctors' offices with plans to rob Dr. Shinbach. Mr. Tarloff then planned to take his ailing mother, Beatrice, either out of the country or to Hawaii. [......] As Mr. Tarloff waited at the 19th Precinct station house, where he was questioned, a portrait emerged of a quiet, eccentric person who had shared a second-floor apartment in Corona, Queens with his mother until she recently moved to a nursing home. A balding, 5-foot-10 man, he was sometimes seen walking on his block dressed in slippers and a corduroy blazer. He was prone to bursts of anger, those who knew him said, and had agitated some of his neighbors by knocking on their doors and asking for money. [......] Growing up, Mr. Tarloff seemed popular with his friends, said one neighbor, Phyllis Zicherman, who said she had know the Tarloffs for decades. She said he had attended college but left under unknown circumstances - around the time she and other neighbors said they noticed he began to change. And his mother's absence profoundly affected him, several neighbors said. "He was depressed because of his mom," Ms. Zicherman said. [......] In August 2007, officers responded to his father's Staten Island address and treated him as an emotionally disturbed person. At that time, his father, Leonard, told officers he was "off his medications," the police said. Queens Man Is Arrested In the Killing of a Psychologist in Manhattan, by Al Baker, The New York Times, Sunday, February 17, 2008, p. 23. Quotation B. This week, Mr. Tarloff's father, Leonard, said his son did not seem to realize he had killed anyone. He quoted Mr. Tarloff saying, "Dad, they say I killed some lady," and then adding, "What are they talking about?" 2 Experts Find Suspect Fit to Stand Trial in Fatal Stabbing of Therapist, by Anemona Hartocollis, The New York Times, February 23, 2008, p. B12. Quotation C. Detectives have found two suitcases the assailant left behind in the office. One held women's fluffy slippers and a blouse, as well as disposable diapers for adults; the other had eight knives, three lengths of rope and duct tape. The crime scene provided a trove of forensic evidence: blood at the scene was being collected and analyzed, traces of the attacker's DNA were being sought and detectives were trying to gather fingerprints and fibers. In Killing of Therapist, Police Question Pennsylvania Man Linked in E-mail, by Al Baker, The New York Times, February 15, 2008, p. C10. Quotation D. From my material, in which negative instances are conspicuously absent, I am forced to the conclusion that schizophrenic illnesses in the male are intimately related as a sequent to unfortunate prolongation of the attachment of the son and the mother. That schizophrenic disorders are but one of the possible outcomes of persisting immature attitudes subtending the mother and son relationship must be evident. The failure of growth of heterosexual interests with persistence of autoerotic or homosexual interests in adolescence, is the general formula. The factors that determine a schizophrenic outcome may be clarified by a discussion on the one hand of the situations to which I shall refer as homosexual cravings and acute masturbation conflict - often immediate precursors of grave psychosis - and of the various homoerotic and autoerotic procedures on the other. Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., Personal Psychopathology (Early Formulations), W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1965, 1972, p. 211. This is the tragic story of a schizophrenic man driven to a murderous rage by the sexual and emotional frustrations arising from his severe bisexual conflict and gender confusion. Mr. Tarloff's case fits the classic picture of the emotional background of a person who develops schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease. Beginning at a young age (the original name for this devastating illness was "dementia praecox", or precocious dementia, because it was noted that its symptoms first became operative early in a person's life, around the age of puberty or shortly thereafter), Mr. Tarloff's neighbors first reported that he "began to change" after he had dropped out of college, for reasons unknown to them. From that point on his life followed a predictable schizophrenic pattern, becoming ever more eccentric and bizarre, with paranoid suspicions insidiously beginning to predominate in his psyche. He had apparently very early in life developed what has often been been referred to by certain pycho-analytic investigators as a "close-binding-intimate", or "CBI", relationship with his mother, a psychically very intense, castrative, symbiotic attachment which is extremely difficult to overcome and which is also frequently to be observed in the background of men (and women) who later in life become homosexual. This fact adds further proof to the theory that schizophrenia invariably springs from the repression of a person's homosexual, or opposite-sex tendencies and identifications. Homosexuality and schizophrenia are in reality the opposite sides of the same coin, both conditions springing from the pathological symbiotic mother-child relationsip which is described above. Homosexuality repressed becomes schizophrenia. The fact that on the night Mr. Tarloff's long-simmering, repressed bisexual conflict and gender confusion triggered his violent episode of "running amok", with tragically fatal consequences for an innocent female victim, it was discovered that in the two suitcases he was carrying with him were knives, ropes and other paraphernalia in one and "women's fluffy slippers and a blouse, as well as disposable diapers for adults" in the other. Since his original intent had been to rob the male psychiatrist and not violently to assault the female psychologist, these female items of wear must definitely have been meant for his own use and gratification in some type of cross-dressing behavior which partially satisfied his repressed homosexual, opposite-sex tendencies and longings. It was further reported by his neighbors that he was often seen out "walking on his block in slippers and corduroy blazer." It could arguably be surmised that these were the same "women's fluffy slippers" that he had in the one suitcase on the night of his psychotic rampage, and perhaps also that he was wearing the same feminine "blouse" under his "corduroy blazer". Mr. Tarloff was a "mama's boy" of the most extreme type and this inevitably schizophrenia/homosexuality-engendering condition eventually culminated in his explosive paranoid schizophrenic breakdown with its accompanying fit of lethal madness. "Dad, they say I killed some lady....What are they talking about?", the delusional Mr. Tarloff is reported to have told his father. This case is but one more example of the countless human tragedies which have been caused by schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease, throughout the history of mankind. Mr. Tarloff's madness caused the suffering and death of one person. The madness of Hitler and Stalin caused the suffering and death of many millions. Of course not all such cases of schizophrenia, the "bearded lady" disease, lead to such violent death and destructon, but nonetheless they all do lead to immense emotional and physical suffering, not only for the individual schizophrenic himself (or herself) but also for all other persons who are, or become, in any way involved in that unfortunate person's life, thereby becoming directly impacted by his or her paranoid thinking and "crazy" behavior. 723 Continuing, she said the bedspread in the master bedroom had been damp from Mike sitting on it after his bubble bath. She'd tossed it in the trash. Mike had forgotten to turn off the spigots, and water had overflowed onto the hardwood floors. Their insurance agent had already inspected the damage and issued them a check to replace - not clean, but replace - all their upstairs carpet and to remove and replace the hardwood floors. It seemed extreme to me, but I kept silent. I couldn't answer most of her "whys." My son had been psychotic. How do you explain the actions of a mentally ill person? But I apologized again, and then again. But she wasn't finished. What if Mike came back? She said she was frightened for her teenage daughter. Mike had taken his bubble bath in the bathroom that the girl used. Her daughter was scared, too. The woman said her family had loved this house. It had been their dream home. Now none of them felt safe in it. Whenever she heard a noise, she wondered: Is someone breaking in? Is it a crazed person? Crazy, A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness/ Pete Earley, Berkley Books, New York, April 2007, p. 30. The fact that this young man, in the overpowering grip of a schizophrenic breakdown, would smash his way into a stranger's home, rummage throughout it, ending up in a teenage girl's bedroom and bathroom where he stripped naked and then proceeded to take a leisurely bubble bath, points inexorably to deep-seated bisexual conflict and gender confusion on his part. He was obviously unconsciously identifying himself as a female in an area where he was surrounded by feminine trinkets and accesories, while indulging himself in that most feminine of all bathing rituals - the bubble bath. So there was definitely "method to his madness," i.e., the fulfillment of very powerful opposite-sex urges and desires which had long been repressed and had finally broken through to gain some semblance of symbolic satisfaction by means of his schizophrenic "bearded lady" psychosis. 722 Quotation A. The Fantasy Principle / Psychoanalysis of the imagination, by Michael Vannoy Adams, Brunner-Routledge, New York, 2004, pp. 109-110. Quotation B. 721 Studies that evaluate only sex differences offer few clues as to how recovery interventions might be customized for men and women with schizophrenia. Nasser and associates (4) recently noted the critical need for future research initiatives in schizophrenia that expand beyond the dichotomous compariosn of male and female differences. Cultural expectations for men and women with schizophrenia may differ, and it has been reported that men with schizophrenia may be less able to carry out normative gender role activities than their female counterparts (4). A limited body of literature on gender identity and schizophrenia suggests that men and women with schizophrenia may experience disturbed sex role identification (5). Perhaps in relation to deep and pervasive stigmatization of mental illness, men and women with schizophrenia often appear "genderless" insofar as mental illness itself is perceived to eclipse other factors in identity. In the study reported here we evaluate gender identity among men and women with schizophrenia by characterizing level of self-identification with traditionally masculine and feminine role concepts. We hypothesized that gender identity among persons with schizophrenia is likely to differ from normative gender orientations amng men and women. Specifically, we hypothesized that men with schizophrenia would have less identification with characteristics associated with male gender than would men who did not have schizophrenia. 720 Mike I didn't go to the mountains today. It was snowing. If the weather is good I will go tomorrow. I had a dream today which I have never had before. I dreamt that I made love to a woman who had breasts and penis. I had to tell you this. I feel free by telling you. I think that it points to my bisexual conflict. I am going to start rereading your book today. You are the most intelligent man I know. Please tell me what you think about the dream. Mike I think that a basis for a successful relationship is to have the same point of view on things. I love you. Lately, there has been a marked diminution in her paranoid symptoms as she begins to come to grips with her severe bisexual conflict and gender confusion, the pathogenic core of her mental illness, as it invariably is in all such cases. Her first breakthrough in this regard was a recent dream wherein she had no breasts. The next such dream is the one quoted above where she dreams she has made love to another woman who has breasts and a penis. Both these dreams obviously refer to her repressed bisexual conflict and gender confusion. Slowly but surely, however, she is allowing these long-represssed, wishful homoerotic and gender-confused fantasies to emerge from her unconscious mind where they have long festered and grown toxic due to their heretofore total psychic and physiological denial. And it is the libido attached to these repressed fantasies which has provided the "fuel" which has been energizing her paranoid symptomatology. Thus, no repressed libido - no paranoid symptoms. (Actually, no repressed libido - no mental illness of any kind, for functional mental illness is but one disease, with one invariable cause - repressed bisexual conflict/gender confusion, as we have now learned by examining countless similar cases. This is an universal truth, an immutable law of nature.) Thus as this young woman, at first cautiously and presently mainly with the aid of her dreams, courageously begins a conscious evaluation and analysis of her formerly repressed, thus unconscious, homoerotic and transvestite desires and feelings, she is in effect slowly curing herself of her malignant mental illness - paranoid schizophrenia. She is well on the road to achieving that best of all possible outcomes in her battle against mental illness - a social recovery with insight - thereby providing herself with the means and the potential for experiencing a happy and fulfilling future, regardless of whatever sexual orientation she eventually adopts as being the most compatible with her maturing psycho-physiological needs. Again, the principal reason these drugs can sometimes be useful in curbing the more florid manifestations of psychosis is due to their libido-inhibiting affect, consequently diminishing the "fuel" supply which energizes the symptoms. Or, as so perfectly expressed by the above correspondent (sender) in a separate communication, "My libido is small now due to the drugs." 719 Even modern young people might find it difficult to understand that one could doubt one's physical sex. Cases of a contrary feeling of sex identity are rare, but they exist, and they are, in a marginal way, relevant to my theory of lesbianism. There are homosexual women and men who suffer from psychosis, and with them contrary sex identity is not uncommon. The illusion of being a member of the opposite sex occurs more frequently in the lesbian than in the male homosexual. Although this condition is not directly relevant to the research on which this book is based, and has no general application to lesbianism per se, it nevertheless throws some light on certain lesbian predicaments. We learn about extraordinary behavior through extreme cases, and mental illness is therefore a valuable teacher in our understanding of the unusual. I vividly remember two patients of mine who believed themselves to be male. Both were homosexual; one told me she was able to 'penetrate' her girl friend, and the other assured me that she had frequent ejaculations of semen. Both were schizophrenics. 718 A family spokesman said Murray grew up in a loving home. But other interviews and what appears to be Murray's online ramblings portray a disturbed individual who resented his sheltered upbringing, had problems with his mother, heard voices in his head, felt rejected and abused -- and yet appeared to be searching for a place to belong. He sought refuge in everything from an online forum for recovering Pentescostals to an occult group. These volatile ingredients combined Sunday morning when the 24-year-old Murray killed five people, including himself, and injured several others in a rampage that spanned 70 miles, from a missionary training center that expelled Murray to Colorado Springs' New Life Church, a symbol of the Pentescostal and charismatic Christianity he so despised. Murray, as promised on the Web, came "armed to the teeth" with an assault rifle, handguns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. —“Walking a Twisted Path,” By Eric Gorski, Associated Press, Marin Independent Journal, 12/13/07, p. A4. Most information about Murray has become known in recent days through ranting Internet posts that appear to be the shooter's words. On one, a poster called Chrstnghtmr complained of not being able to "socialize normally" after being home-schooled. One posting was to a site called Independent Spirits, a gathering place for those affected by a strict Christian home-schooling curriculum. —Ibid, Gorski, p. A4. Whenever it can be shown that a person regularly engages in "ranting" behavior, it is but one more proof of that person's paranoid schizophrenic symptomatology. (See the reported incident of Chris McCandless's "ranting" diatribe in the preceding Quotation # 717.) This same diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia may be accurately applied to many past and present world leaders who have also been known to indulge in similar ranting-type behavior. Chrstnghtmr [the Internet post] writes that at age 17, after an attempt at going "all out for Jesus," he plunged into a "dark suicidal depression." Chrstnghtmr describes his parents putting him on two antidepressants after he shared his feelings. None of it helped, he wrote. "Everyone prayed, they laid their hands on me, spoke in tongues over me, sought out every kind of spiritual help I knew of," the post added. —Ibid, Gorski, p A4. A stranger happening upon this scene of a quiet young man being surrounded by a group of people babbling "in tongues over" him while they "laid hands on" him might understandably surmise that the young man being thus ministered to was the only sane member of this group. The fact that Matthew had succumbed to a "dark suicidal depression" highlights the deadly nature of his schizophrenic breakdown and portends the tragedy to come, as suicide and homicide are always the opposite sides of the same schizophrenic coin, self-directed murder or other-directed murder. In every case of mass killings such as this, the perpetrator, or "shooter", has invariably been in the grip of just such a suicidally depressed mental state as had been Matthew Murray when he embarked upon his own lethal rampage. A former YWAM [Youth With a Mission] staff member, Michael Werner, said Murray was painfully shy and had trouble socializing after growing up sheltered. Later he exhibited extreme moods swings, spreading rumors about homosexuality at the center and performing dark rock songs by Marilyn Manson and Linkin Park at a 2002 Christmas celebration. —Ibid, Gorski, p. A4. Matthew's "strict home-schooling curriculum" kept him from the normal heterosexual socialization which he would have been able to experience in a regular school setting, thereby contributing greatly to the strengthening of his already latent homosexual proclivities. As a result, these proclivities eventually became so powerful and insistent that a paranoid state developed, clearly demonstrated by his act of "spreading rumors about homosexuality at the center." He had by then made the typical "paranoid shift," - (No, It is not I who am homosexual, it is the others at the YWAM center.) And once this paranoid shift had occurred and been locked into his psyche, the path led inexorably to the tragedy of his "running amok" in an orgy of mayhem similar to that which had recently transpired in the case of the Virginia Tech massacre, committed by another "suicidally depressed" young man, Seung-Hui Cho. Cho, like Matthew Murray, was afflicted with schizophrenia, the bearded lady disease, as were the perpetrators of the Columbine school massacre and the countless other blood-baths before and since, on ad infinitum. 717 "I don't recall Alex ever talking about any girlfriends," says Westerberg. "Although a couple of times he mentioned wanting to get married and have a family some day. You could tell he didn't take relationships lightly. He wasn't the kind of a guy who would go out and pick up girls just to get laid." It was clear to Borah, too, that McCandless hadn't spent much time cruising single bars. "One night a bunch of us went out to a bar in Madison," says Borah, and it was hard to get him out on the dance floor. But once he was out there, he wouldn't sit down. We had a blast. After Alex died and all, Carine [his sister] told me that as far as she knew, I was one of the only girls he ever went dancing with." In high school McCandless had enjoyed a close rapport with two or three members of the opposite sex, and Carine recalls one instance when he got drunk and tried to bring a girl up to his bedroom in the middle of the night (they made so much noise stumbling up the stairs that Billie [his mother] was awakened and sent the girl home). But there is little evidence that he was sexually active as a teenager and even less to suggest that he slept with any woman after graduating from high school. (Nor, for that matter, is there any evidence that he was ever sexually intimate with a man.) It seems that McCandless was drawn to women but remained largely or entirely celibate, as chaste as a monk. —Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer, First Anchor Books Edition, February 1997, pp. 65-66. —Krakauer, Ibid, pp. 133-134 McCandless didn't conform particularly well to the bush-casual stereotype. Although he was rash, untutored in the ways of the backcountry, and incautious to the point of foolhardiness, he wasn't incompetent--he wouldn't have lasted 113 days if he were. And he wasn't a nutcase, he wasn't a sociopath, he wasn't an outcast. McCandless was something else--although precisely what is hard to say. A pilgrim, perhaps. —Krakauer, Ibid, p. 85 As for the thought that McCandless may also have had sociopathic tendencies to go hand-in-hand with his paranoid schizophrenia, one has to look no further than the wanton, unprovoked destruction and vandalization of the two vacant bush cabins located just several miles distant from the abandoned bus whose interior McCandless had made over into his final home. It was never positively established that McCandless was the perpetrator of this senseless cabin vandalization, but according to author Krakhauer one of the cabin owners was thoroughly convinced that McCandless had been the culprit. Ironically, if he was responsible for having destroying the cabins, in a fit of insanity, he thereby also destroyed his last chance to seek shelter later in much warmer and better-equipped quarters than those prevailing on the bus he lived in. Either one of the cabins could have provided him with the shelter he so desperately needed to save his life when the living conditions on the dilapidated bus were rapidly and lethally deteriorating. Chris McCandless was afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia, the same illness that had afflicted Judge Daniel Paul Schreber and countless other unfortunates down through the history of man. And this dreadful disease will continue to wreak its havoc presently and for ages to come unless the pathogenic force lurking at it core - severe bisexual and gender confusion - is recognized for what it is, accepted as the truth and then acted upon in order to attack and destroy the illness. The mental image of a young Chris McCandless dying alone in his derelict bus, terrified, freezing and starved, when he obviously had such great potential but for the destruction wrought upon his mind and body by his paranoid schizophrenic symptomatology, makes it imperative that this malevolent disease be conquered once and for all. "Shreber's name is legion," as was stated by Doctors Macalpine and Hunter, translators from the German of the book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, written by the paranoid schizophrenic jurist, Judge Daniel Paul Schreber, and made famous by Sigmund Freud's brilliant and insightful interpretation of Schreber's madness as being caused by his repressed bisexual conflict and gender confusion. Judge Schreber, incarcerated for many years in a German mental asylum in the late 19th century, finally partially recovered from his severe mental illness by consciously accepting his theretofore fiercely denied and repressed transvestite, or opposite-sex, tendencies, at least to the point where he was able to be discharged from the asylum and resume control of his everyday personal affairs. Unfortunately, however, Judge Schreber was never fully able to face the painful truth that his powerful opposite-sex feelings were really his very own sexual feelings and not ones which had been forced upon him by an all-powerful and demanding God for the sole purpose of using his newly-formed female body with which to bring forth upon the earth a new race of human beings. Thus, tragically, Judge Schreber remained mentally ill until the end of his life due to his psychological inability to integrate completely his transvestism, harmoniously and without repression or conflict, into his conscious awareness and self-image as a distinguished German jurist, intellectual and husband. It should again be emphasized that a psychosis is in reality nature's way of trying to cure the individual of his or her madness by forcing into psychic awareness all of the toxic emotional and sexual material which the mentally ill person has long repressed into his or her unconscious mind. There it has festered and grown like an infected boil until invariably erupting - the psychosis itself - and letting escape into conscious awareness all of the pathogenic material inside. It is only then that the organism can begin the long, tedious process of healing itself. To reiterate, the psychosis facilitates the person's repressed - thus toxic- mental and physical bisexual imagery and cravings, the frustrated, dammed-up sexual energy from which "fuels" the myriad symptoms of the mental illness, to emerge into conscious awareness where they can then be more constructively dealt with through the processes of sublimation and/or abreaction - hopefully to the point where they lose their toxic energic power to keep the various symptoms of the mental illness actively in operation. [As a clear example of this process, see Quotation/Comment #528 in the book, Schizophrenia-The Bearded Lady Disease.] If today's anti-psychotic drugs had been available in his time and given to Judge Schreber, his "invaluable book" (Freud) could never have been written and consequently it would have taken Dr. Freud much longer, if ever, to have ascertained the true cause of paranoia - repressed homosexual cravings. And since paranoia in reality encompasses all functional mental illness, science owes an incredible debt of gratitude to Schreber's bravery and painful self-honesty in laying bare before an astonished world the torments he had suffered in his illness and the critical insights he had gained from them. Most unfortunately the current multitude of psychotropic drugs all act as great depressors of self-insight, and because of this deleterious and unforeseen consequence of their use, the person's mental illness is perpetuated indefinitely. Only self-insight into their bisexual conflict and gender confusion will enable the psychiatric patient to heal himself or herself. There is no other way, and never will be. "A social recovery with insight" is the magic, golden phrase, and this result should be the final, salubrious goal of all psychotherapeutic and psychiatric intervention. In every mentally ill person's case, the only hope for a "cure" of their mental illness is for him or her to gain conscious insight into the bisexual conflict/gender confusion issues lying at the core of their illness, and furthermore the only way this can ever be accomplished is by the mentally ill person engaging in intensive, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, thus allowing the person the opportunity consciously, for the very first time, to face and work through these bisexual issues which are so painful and terrifying to the person's self-image and self-esteem, and therefore are the basic reason they had been repressed originally. As a consequence of this psychoanalytic psychotherapy, hopefully the mentally ill person will be enabled to gain the desperately-needed, curative insight into the bisexual conflict/gender confusion issues which invariably form the pathogenic core of their "mental breakdown," call the latter by whichever arbitrary psychiatric name you will. As R.D. Laing's famous patient, Mary Barnes, once explained, by being allowed to experience fully, and then work through, her psychosis in a secure setting and without the use of any mind-numbing psychotropic drugs with which to damp it down and mask its most salient features, she was enabled to gain the critical insight which helped her go back "to my real girl self through my pretence layers of girl on boy." In other words, she was finally enabled to become a truly mentally healthy, feminine woman, "a social recovery with insight." Likewise, for a psychotic male to effect a similar "social recovery with insight", he too must be helped to acquire the psychological tools which will enable him to go back "to my real boy self through my pretence layers of boy on girl." Only then will he be psychologically ready to accept his truly natural, masculine self, just as Mary Barnes had finally been enabled to accept her truly natural, feminine self - thereby effectively curing herself of her schizophrenic "bearded lady" illness. Exactly the same path, except in reverse order, must be trod by the male schizophrenic patient if he wishes to be cured of his own schizophrenia. Consequently it can never be emphasized strongly enough that it is only by means of intensive, psychoanalytic psychotherapy - without the use of self-insight-deadening psychotropic drugs - that this marvelous goal of normal mental health and well-being can ever be achieved. Admittedly drugs are sometimes needed to tranquilize a berserk person, but always the final goal of any psychiatric intervention should be to stabilize the individual to the point where intensive psychotherapy can be initiated. 716 Yet those who know her say that questions about Sergeant Lannaman's death remain unsettled, and go well beyond psychic agonies that she struggled with her entire life. "From the day she was born she was different," Barbara Lannaman, her mother, said. "Life was not satisfactory to her."... ... Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she spent nine years in the Navy, then bounced from job to job. By the time she was 42, in the spring of 2003, Denise Lannaman had been a firefighter, a sailor, a film-maker, a scuba diver, a paramedic and an auto mechanic. She also had been a frequent psychiatric patient, her family says, an iron-willed perfectionist who had dealt with life's ragged edges by making four suicide attempts. "I knew she was different all along," her sister, Michelle Forgenie, said. "On top of that she was also lesbian. They're very homophobic in Kingston. And we didn't understand it, either, at a time when she needed us to understand it." After she left the Naval Reserve in 1992, she passed the examination for New York City corrections officer, but could not get past the psychological screening, Ms. Forgenie said ... ... "She missed one of the enlistment interviews because she was in a psychiatric bed," Ms. Forgenie said. "She had to get a note that she was in the hospital. That time, she tried to kill herself with pills and liquor, sitting out in the driveway." Her doctor refused to clear her for duty. "She found another one, I guess, who took her blood pressure, vital signs, signed the note," Ms. Lannaman said. Somehow, she passed the military's psychiatric review. On May 23, 2003, she enlisted in the New York Army National guard, and in January 2005, deployed to Iraq as a sergeant, based in Tikrit. She often drove to Baghdad at night. She thrived, say family and friends. ...On a convoy, a truck blew up in front of her, killing soldiers. She shook it off. She waived the limit on her service and signed up for another three years. Then she took on what, for her, was a more dangerous assignment: a desk job at a procurement office in Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. In December 2005, Sergeant Lannaman was assigned to work with a logistics group that purchased millions of dolars in supplies. ...On Oct. 1, she had a private meeting with a superior officer, said George Roach, a retired Army sergeant first class who served as the military liaison with the family. A military investigator later told the family that at this meeting, Sergeant Lannaman was told that she would be sent home in disgrace, Ms. Forgenie said. "We were not given a reason," she said. A few hours later, she was found dead in a jeep from a gunshot wound. She had just turned 46. "Were they trying to scare her, had she stepped on toes of people who were profiteering, did someone threaten to expose her homosexuality," Ms. Forgenie asked. This is basically the story of a woman who had suffered from schizophrenia - the bearded lady disease, almost her entire life. She was a male in every aspect of her life but biologically/genitally. She thought like a male; acted like a male; dressed like a male; loved like a male; looked like a male - and, finally, suicided like a male, using a firearm instead of the "softer", more "feminine" methods of self-destruction such as sleeping pills or alcohol, etc. To reverse the wording in the famous quotation attributed to the noted paranoid schizophrenic patient, the nineteenth century German judge, Daniel Paul Schreber, "I would like to meet the woman who, faced with the choice of either being a demented human being in female habitus, or a spirited man, would not prefer the latter." Sgt. Lannaman definitely chose the "latter," which enabled her to escape being floridly psychotic her entire life. Undoubtedly her suicide resulted from her having been officially informed that she was being discharged from her beloved Army, where her masculine, warrior-like ways stood her in excellent stead, due to accusations of homosexual activity on her part. After being tormented by her severe bisexual conflict and gender confusion for so many years, leading to four previous suicide attempts, she had finally found a "home" in the Army and a way of life that agreed with her masculine self-identity completely, only to have it suddenly taken away from her. Tragically, It was more than she could stand. |
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