Manic-Depressive Psychosis

Abstract

It felt as though I had somehow logged into the spirit of the age. Clouds gathered in great vortices, blizzards swept in from the blue in late April, and the winds rocked buildings as solid as Oxford. I thought and believed I might be Judah Maccabaeus riding my gorgeous old motorcycle Bucephalus around London, England, and Northern Europe to the Gates of Hell. In fact more like Don Quixote upon Rocinante, inspired by visions of Dulcinea serving in a sandwich bar, to take on the world in expiation for some obscure sin I had committed but could no longer recollect. Or Spartacus maybe, with Doc HoUiday at the OK Corral. The confused details as a matter of fact are quite funny but perhaps out of place in a text intended for serious academic colleagues. So I will herein limit myself mainly to the aftermath and thoughts of recovery, though I am now back more or less in the condition in which I started—in a locked psychiatric ward with access to a word processor. Hence, it it clear that whatever hesitating credit I give to the beneficial effects of lithium carbonate in the management of manic-depressive psychosis (or whatever we choose to call it), I remain intermittently as crazy as I ever was. Though the place is congenial, I don’t want to convey the impression that I like it or am prepared to subside into a prolonged state of quiescence, or settle for a mess of pottage. I want more, much more. To be free to run and play tennis, for a start.

A dog that shot past me, a yellow rose in someone’s lapel, could set my thoughts in motion and obsess me for hours. What was the matter with me? Had the hand of the Lord reached out and pointed at me? Well then, why me? Why not just as well at some man in South America? When I pondered these things, it seemed more and more incomprehensible why precisely I should have been chosen as a guinea pig for a whim of God’s favour. It was an extremely odd way of going about things, to leap over the whole human race in order to arrive at me; for example there was Pascha, the rare book dealer and Hennechen, the steamship clerk.

—Knut Hamsun, Hunger, 1890

Dr. Michael Rose is 49 years old and currently live in Findhorn, Scotland. He was prematurely retired from medical practice in haematology at St. George’s and St. James’ Hospitals in South London as a consequence of his mental disturbance. He hopes to retrain as a teacher, as it seems unlikely that he will be able to return to medical practice. He is married with two children.