Last Injection

Hey there, my dearest patient, can you imagine? We have arrived to our last session of treatment. The last dose of lithium. After that, life will test your regained sanity. Don't worry, if you fail, the Asylum will wait for you with wide open arms...

As I don't want to load you with anything burdensome in our last meeting, I'll treat you with some diluted material, lest the sharp needle should pierce the fragile bubble of your mental health and break it into little pieces again.

First, let's take a look at "The Maniac" by William P. Tappan:

Those eyes that beam so beauteous bright,
And all the heaven within declare,
May set ere long in starless night
Or kindle with demoniac glare.

The thrilling voice, oft heard to bless,
Whose accents memory would prolong,
May tell the story of distress,
Or warble sorrow's broken song.

That heart where feeling holds its throne,
Which fondly beats to love and me,
Cold as the unsunned marble stone,
May lie in frigid apathy.

Lord of all good! thy fiat spake
To birth, the blessings that I have;--
Lord of all worlds! 'tis thou canst take
Again, the boon that mercy gave:

Take all, but hear my earnest prayer,

'Tis breathed in tears, reject it not, --

Take all--but let me never share

The hopeless, soulless MANIAC'S lot.

The interesting thing about this poem is that it is the complex and expressive imagery of contrast that representst both the shield against becoming a maniac and the symptoms of insanity. Just look at all these conflicting words: "beauteous bright" vs "starless night," "heaven" vs "demoniac glare," "heard to bless" vs "broken song." These phrases stand against each other as sanity and insanity oppose each other as well. And as in case of a healthy state of mind the heart "fondly beats to love," when one loses one's mind, the same heart is locked in "frigid apathy." Could the writer have been a fool for offering happiness and light just in order to remain sane? No, because whereas someone can see even in the dark if their mind is clear, a lunatic is lost in his/her inner darkness, no matter how brightly the sun shines. If we look at the price of exchange from this point of view, we can understand why mental clarity is more important for the poet than the physical one; why the stability of the inner world bears always greater significance than the stability of the outer world.

"Insanity" by Maxwell Bodenheim

Like a vivid hyperbole,
The sun plunged into April's freshness,
And struck its sparkling madness
Against the barnlike dejection
Of this dark red insane asylum.
A softly clutching noise
Stumbled from the open windows.
Now and then obliquely reeling shrieks
Rose, as though from men
To whom death had assumed
An inexpressibly kind face.
A man stood at one window,
His gaunt face trembling underneath
A feverish jauntiness.
A long white feather slanted back
Upon his almost shapeless hat,
Like an innocent evasion.
Hotly incessant, his voice
Methodically flogged the April air:
A voice that held the clashing bones
Of happiness and fear;
A voice in which emotion
Sharply ridiculed itself;
A monstrously vigorous voice
Mockingly tearing a life
With an unanswerable question.

Hollowed out by his howl,
I turned and saw an asylum guard.
His petulantly flabby face
Rolled into deathlike chips of eyes.
He bore the aimless confidence
Of one contentedly playing with other men's wings.
He walked away; the man above still shrieked.
I could not separate them.

 The first thing that struck me about this poem is the time is April, which we might call the month of the fool because of April 1th. The expression "sparkling madness" is also worth mentioning, because as opposed to the dark, hopeless quality of insanity depicted in Tappan's poem, the world "sparkling" suggest liveliness, light, and joy; another side of lunacy, which is not paralyzingly ominous, but deliberatingly gleeful. Also, at first the narrator only hears voices, shrieks; then the colors become important ("red insane asylum," "jauntiness," "white feather"). The whole atmosphere is quite creepy, though, because the patients are all passive, whereas the guard can "play with other people's wings," in which metaphor the "wing" might indicate that the people, who are controlled by the asylum guard, are all cuckoos.

"Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning

THE rain set early in to-night,
    The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
    And did its worst to vex the lake:
    I listen'd with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
    She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneel'd and made the cheerless grate
    Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
    Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
    And laid her soil'd gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
    And, last, she sat down by my side
    And call'd me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
    And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
    And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
    And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me—she
    Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
    From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
    And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
    Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
    For love of her, and all in vain:
    So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I look'd up at her eyes
    Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipp'd me; surprise
    Made my heart swell, and still it grew
    While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
    Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
    In one long yellow string I wound
    Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
    I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
    I warily oped her lids: again
    Laugh'd the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untighten'd next the tress
    About her neck; her cheek once more
Blush'd bright beneath my burning kiss:
    I propp'd her head up as before,
    Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
    The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
    That all it scorn'd at once is fled,
    And I, its love, am gain'd instead!
Porphyria's love: she guess'd not how
    Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
    And all night long we have not stirr'd

    And yet God has not said a word!

  This last poem, written by the pre-raphaelite Robert Browning was written in the Victorian era, so it's no wonder that the narrator of the poem is also insane. Just think about the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre, or Catherine's dementia in the Wuthering Heights. In this poem, the protagonist loses his mind and kills his lover with her own hair, and then proceed living without a touch of guilt. What is more, he puts the responsibility on God, saying it not his own fault that he killed his lover, but God's because he "has not said a word."

That's all for know, my dear patient, I hope you had a good time and your precarious sanity has also become a bit more secure. And don't forget that you are welcomed any later time should you want to come back.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

Joanne Greenberg: I never promised you a rose garden

Hey there, dear bedlamite, I'm glad you're back to take your next dose of lithium. Any improvements since we started the treatment? Hallucinations? Paroxysm? Side effects? It's horrible?? Well, I never promised you a rose garden...

Neither did Joanne Greenberg, so I really don't know why I expected this book to be so great. Partly it is, partly it isn't; anyway, let's get down to business. I never promised you a rose garden by Joanne Greenberg is about a schizophrenic teenager girl, Deborah Blau, who spends three years at 'That Place,' that is, a mental hospital, treated by the competent and sympathetic psychiatrist from Germany, Dr. Fried. 

One of the reasons why I liked the book is that the protagonist's illness is portrayed in an extremely detailed and elaborate way. Deborah doesn't simply hallucinate; she built up a whole new dimension inside her head, called Yr, a kingdom with its own gods, rules, and language. Completely detached from reality, the girl not only has problems feeling what "normal" people feel (such as the pain of burning and cutting oneself), but also distances herself from the English language. She thinks in the language of Yr, which has the capability of expressing things in a more focused way than English does, and, therefore, she often has a hard time trying to find the exact English counterparts of her fictional language. Difficulties of translation and this language barrier becomes one of the most dominant platform of her madness and her isolation from the world of the sane.

The layers and steps of her illness are complex, integrated in her very identity and origin. The first one was having a tyrannic grandfather, who dumped all his long-lost demands on his little grandchild, implanting the thought "You are not of them" in her head. The second one was the racism she had to encounter because of her Jewish origin, proving what great an impact racial prejudices can have. The third door leading towards dementia was having a sexually repressed father, who even though did nothing, but still couldn't hide the arousel his own daughter stimulated in him. These three steps caused her to turn towards an inner dimension, a world where she could ignore reality, where she could cling to life through being insane. Sounds like a paradox, but if you had to choose between the hell of reality, a suicide attempt, or a world made up in your mind, where you live with creations who accept and understand you without conditions, maybe you would make the same decision.

The oxymoron of staying alive through insanity is not the only thought-provoking element in the novel. Another intriguing line in the plot is the effect the inmates have on their doctors. Some of them hate the patients, some of them even get "infected" by the illnesses they are supposed to cure, while others manage to remain completely empathic and even make the ill happy by their never-ending enthusiasim. This proves what a thin line distinguishes mental health from lunacy, and how people can make others suffer even more just because they are afraid of becoming the same. How people can hurt others just because they remind them of themselves.

Language is not only important because of the Yri language made up by Deborah. It is also relevant because of the different names for insanity. Namely, there is a hierarchy of them: the most severe words, such as sick, crazy and insane can only be used for the patients of D (standing for 'disturbed') ward, whereas the more playful ones, such as cuckoo, nuts, and cracked are used when referred to the inmates of B ward. Some phrases are created by the mentally ill, these are "nutty as a fruitcake" and "bats," shortened from "bats-in-the-belfry." The latest means that "up in your head, where the bells ring, it's night and the bats are flying aroung, black and flapping and random and without direction." It is reassuring to see how even in the darkest places of mind humor and games of language can still work.

The title of the book is uttered by the doctor, Dr. Fried, when Deborah tells her that fighting for sanity might not be worth it at all. After all, "what good is your reality, when justice fails and dishonesty is glossed over and the ones who keep faith suffer." In response, the psychiatrist tells her how reality is imperfect, too, but how boring life would be if we didn't have to struggle for anything, but how you have to put up with the bad side in order to see the beauties of the world.

In the end, Deborah makes up her mind. She is capable of feeling pain again, laughing againg, and she says goodbye to Yr without grudges.

What is your choice?