The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [123]
One of the hardest parts of dealing with schizophrenia is believing that there’s any such thing. It would be so much simpler if you had a broken arm or even cancer. What was “wrong” would be immediately obvious. You and those around you would make appropriate allowances, get the best medical help available, and hope for the best. Although there have been some hopeful advances in objective diagnostic testing that point up biochemical abnormalities in schizophrenia, I doubt if there will ever be anything with the eloquence and simplicity of an arm in a cast. And while more and more is known every day, what are appropriate allowances and what is the best medical help are much more difficult questions for schizophrenia than for most diseases.
I myself was a Laing-Szasz fan and didn’t believe there was really any such thing as schizophrenia. I thought it was just a convenient label for patients whom doctors were confused about. I even worked in a mental hospital for several months without being convinced otherwise.
All that’s beside the point. The point is that there’s overwhelming evidence that there is a very real disease called schizophrenia (actually probably several very real diseases with overlapping symptoms), and, as you yourself suspect, it’s very possibly what you’re suffering from. There’s no percentage in your wasting energy wondering whether or not you’re crying wolf, Anita. What you’re suffering from is very real.
Krishna Murti said, “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Laing has called schizophrenia a reasonable response to an insane world. While there is certainly plenty to be upset about in these strange times, and as much as I tried to place the blame there when I went under, there is precious little evidence that our troubled world can be realistically blamed for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia occurs in all cultures in all times, displaying a remarkable consistency. What this means is that while some people at some times may have better reasons for going nuts, about the same number go nuts regardless. Translated to your situation: your mental health is not dependent on the moral, sociopolitical health of the world. Thank God for little things like that. It also means that getting well doesn’t involve selling out or becoming any less angry with things as they are.
World-mess theories are only the beginning. You’ve doubtless already run into several theories of what is causing your problems and will run into many more. Everyone has a field day explaining schizophrenia. It’s your parents, your childhood, your love life, your religion, your life style, and on and on. Usually each theory will contain just enough truth to make it irritating, but the vast majority of these theories end up giving you explanations of why you are sick rather than clues about how to get well. Besides which, most theories on this level have only poetic attractiveness and scanty, if any, objective evidence backing them up.
Love, insight, talking about your feelings, creative expression are all valuable commodities in their own right, Anita, but don’t expect them to make you well or let anyone con you into believing that some lack of these is responsible for your troubles. Freud himself said that psychotherapy wasn’t of any value in schizophrenia and all subsequent studies have borne him out. Case histories that seem to show the opposite are more than likely a reflection of the fact that a great number of schizophrenics—approximately a third—improve without any treatment. Whatever shrink happens to be standing around when such remissions occur is usually willing to assume credit.
A more serious problem with most psychological theories and therapies is that they usually involve placing blame. According to their model, your parents or your friends or you yourself or someone else has screwed up. The fact is, there is no blame. You haven’t done anything horribly wrong and neither have your parents