Madness

I am reading the book 'Bedlam' by Greg Hollingshead this season. Christmas vacation, as far as I am concerned, is much better spent buried in a good book, then taking part in a tradition bedecked with historically satanic rituals that once upon a time scapegoated my people. (Ironically forcing the Jews to eat too much and then run great distances only to purge themselves dramatically was a saturnalia tradition. Then I guess someone invented turkey, gravy, stuffing and cheesy mashed potatoes all of which are obviously too yummy to waste on the Jews?)

The present set of saturnalia traditions we take good advantage of along with every other shopkeeper on the planet.

I am not being a bah humbug. Okay a little. I had lots of turkey last night and today I am going out to find some cheap (cheap!) something or others that I didn't think I needed but if they are marked down enough I will buy anyways.

The real purpose of this entry is to quote from this book I am reading and enjoying very much (between bouts of intense socializing and trying to remember if I brought enough clean pairs of socks).

So Bedlam is a story about one of the first documented cases of Paranoid Schizophrenia, a man named James Tilly Matthews who claimed to be the victim of a "gang" who used magnetic forces to control political outcomes in France and England during the era of both the French Revolution and England's Reformation.

Unfortunately for Matthews before being locked up, he had the opportunity to visit France and do some mysterious work to aid the cause of peace between France and England. Whether some deep knowledge of treasonous plans by English nobles, or the fact that he is totally paranoid and unhinged has resulted in his lifelong incarceration, is the conflict at the centre of the story.

Matthews is being used both in the story and by the books author, as a talisman, "something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects". In the story Matthews' illness has the magical effect of bringing his keeper John Haslam's career as apothacary, mad-doctor, and expert on 'Sanity' into esteem and repute. As Matthews himself suggests,

"I am your talisman, ...By your use of us, you defend your power."

Which is to say, during the nascent days of the field of mental health medicine, the line between sane and insane, though never clearly demarcated was more or less non-existent. Haslam, Matthew's keeper has to determine whether the man's incarceration for insanity is falsely based, to do more with his knowledge of political subterfuge, or whether he is actually crackers. The other option, and the one that begins to unhinge even Haslam, is that Matthews though crackers, may actually be held for more than that reason alone. The final complication is that Matthews is an erudite, intelligent and convincing schizophrenic who has many of the people who have cared for him over 18 years, more then convinced of the veracity of some of his delusions.

It is Hollingshead's intention to use the relationship between the madhouse and the political turmoil of the beginning of the modern age, to draw parallels between sanity and power, and between madness and politics. The relationship between Matthews and his keepers act as a synedoche for the entire superstructure of sanity and truth, madness and delusion, and the quite frankly 'mad' politics of the age. As Matthews and his supporters struggle to gain credence, he is portrayed by his institutional caregivers, as ever more a deluded lunatic. It is up to the reader to determine to what extent they agree with the personal and moral claim to mercy and understanding Matthews has, or the institutional and objective requirement for rationality and lucidity.

This struggle is encapsulated by Haslam who is both Matthews champion and his jailer. Who, following his own nervous breakdown has a moment of brilliant lucidity when his career is jeopordized by Quaker reformers intent on curing insanity by mean's of Gods love and better hygiene. As he is taken to task for his more mundane and violent tactics towards the mad Haslam says.

"People are bedlam sir, and bedlam people, however cleverly you conceal the resemblance. Along with the three great amusements of human life - war, politics, and the vagaries of the human heart - the mad are our living reminders of this elementary fact. When they're not too annoying and terrifying we keep them at home. When they are, we lodge them in hospitals, in private madhouses, in prisons, or let them roam the streets. But let's not build our walls so high against them we forget they're ourselves merely so distressed by their as yet incurable affliction to be sociable. I repeat: incurable affliction.Refuse that kinship sir, and I wouldn't trust you to know your own face in the mirror."

I am reminded as I read of my own family's awkwardness around mental health issues. To date I know all of my mom's immediate family, save for my grandmother has at one time or other experienced some form of depression. Some to the extent of being medicated, others choosing to self-medicate.

This propensity for terrible sadness did not stop my grandfather from achieving great things, though it made my mother's life incredibly difficult. At lunch this week, when I told my grandmother I was seeing a therapist she said; "But you know why though? You have a reason - and she is helping?" I answered in the affirmative, and then decided to do some light research about my forebears. "Bubi it must have been harder when you were my age, if you felt sad for a long time, or Zaidie did, what did you guys do? How did you cope?" She replied. "You know, when I was a young woman, regular people didn't go to see a psychiatrist, only people who were crazy did that. So we didn't have psychiatrists like they do now." Which would be fine except I heard from my mother a few years before she died that my grandfather was treated with Lithium for his depression in the 80's and also briefly hospitalized when I was too young to remember it.

I know our family struggled with arrival as immigrants prior to the second world war and that my Zaidie must have worked hard to achieve his families position as upper middle class Jews in Toronto in the 50's - it clearly wasn't a good time to be a "crazy" but it appears that my Bubi, in trying to keep the peace, has wholesale forgotten that she is the matriarch and the spouse of a family riddled with depression.

Not that I am judging her, she loves us all very much, and I think as far as she is concerned mentioning the fact that there might be mental illness in the family would be crippling to us all, so silence is the best service she can give.

But it definitely makes me think of the idea of power and recognizance and acceptance, and how the lack of that acceptance must have impacted my mother, and other family members.

I should go buy some socks now the day is half gone.