I concluded the previous instalment of this blog by saying that a large part of the pleasure of reading derives from the reader’s feeling that the entire meaning of the work is potentially available, that a book, a film, or a poem can be completely understood. This idea requires elaboration. In the ‘real world’, the World of the ordinary person, one is constantly confronted with an assemblage of things, phenomena, which we cannot fully comprehend– either this collection of data lacks any underlying principle of organization, is meaningless, or its meaning lies beyond us. Similarly when we are face to face with another person we are forced to recognize our own ignorance, our own helplessness. The Other has his own mind, his own ‘interests’ and these interests are not one’s own – at least, it is something of which we cannot be sure. This Existential anxiety does not occur when we read. The writer is not the book he has written; when we read we do not enter into a relationship with a genuine, historically and socially situated individual; we engage with the book itself. The book is a separate, completed artifact, a finished communicative act, an object that is by its very nature at once fundamentally meaningful and the meaning of which can be realized.
I believe there is a connection between aesthetic pleasure and schizophrenia. This connection is based on the idea of meaning being fully communicable. It is this relationship that I now wish to explore
Although I am not a professional, I have some understanding of schizophrenia. This stems partly from episodes of my own (I am myself ‘a recovered schizophrenic’) and my encounters with other sufferers. It is not easy to generalize about schizophrenia but it is worth hazarding the effort. Psychosis can be categorized into two sorts. The first is a kind of religious experience, characterized by a sense that the World possesses an underlying order. People I have met who are experiencing this sort of psychosis talk about “the interconnectedness of all things”; often they are drawn to mystical, Eastern spirituality. The second sort of psychosis is paranoid psychosis. This second sort varies from the first only in that, rather than seeing the underlying order of the World in a positive light (and positing God or the World-Soul as an explanation), the sufferer believes that she is the victim of a malevolent conspiracy. Nevertheless it possesses the same basis in ascribing to the world. The reasons why someone might suffer from the second rather than the first sort of psychosis are various, but include such things as a rationalistic mentality, an underlying guilt complex or feelings of powerlessness. It is helpful for the schizophrenic to try to ‘flick the switch’ – presume that the ‘conspiracy’ is benevolent rather than malevolent, spiritual rather than secular. (One of the things I found helpful in recovering was a kind of strategic faith in God, a prop I have since been able to discard.)
My own experience of psychosis is relevant. When I was ‘ill’, I believed, at various times, that everything on the news was faked, that I was Jesus or the Anti-Christ, that the ‘world’ in which I was living was a vast film directed by Peter Jackson and I was the star. This is just a sample of some of the things that I believed at the time. When I look back on my experiences, a number of themes emerge. The first was my need to believe that I was important to the world, even if that importance had a negative quality, deriving from my own culpability in the world’s disasters. The second theme is that I believed that I was the only ‘authentic’ agent in a fictive situation peopled by actor. I projected my own ‘interests’ –my own preoccupations- on others and assumed, when they failed to perform according to the roles I had assigned them, that they were ‘lying’. I would like to describe myself as a special case. However, I think these themes are quite common.
Psychosis and the enjoyment of reading have much in common- they both originate from the same need. When reading, the reader creates a reality that is logical, coherent and meaningful. When psychotic, the schizophrenic does the same. She forces the world to conform to the delusions that she believes and in this way makes the world both meaningful and, because in the end it relates back to her, ‘interesting’.
To conclude, I would like to offer some thoughts about what my own illness meant to me. It was not a complete waste of time. The idea that everyone is centre of their own World was born to me in a way that was almost visceral; and no-one understands that reality is a social construction better than a schizophrenic able to reflect on his own situation. For the longest time, I believed more or less continuously that I was on the verge of some incredible revelation. It is my illness that has inspired me to write this blog.