No Canon of Normalcy

Eagles Nest intertidal rock platform, Bunurong Marine National Park.

Image: Mark Norman

Source: Museum Victoria

 

 

 

 

Scott Haas Ph.D  clinical psychologist, foodie and author of the book "Hearing Voices: Reflections of a Psychology Intern", has this to say about psychiatric hospitals after his intern year at Boston's Commonwealth Mental Health Institute.

 "The malingerers and the mentally ill I meet at Eastmark share the intensity that comes from being alone in the world. Embracing their feelings makes me aware of my own loneliness. When I am able to imagine their suffering, and their dignity in the face of it, I feel hounded, too, and disliked, and cut off from society's enterprise.

 

 

I think that's why the Them and Us mentality prevails in the mental health profession. By cutting Them off, we create the illusion that They are not at all like Us, and that We do not harbour the thoughts and feelings that They embody. If we view madness on a continuum, however, we have to become aware of those features of our souls that we would rather pretend do not exist.

 

 

The constant shuttle of patients through Eastmark confronts the commotion inside the clinician who observes as if from a distance. But in the end, there is no faraway pain, and there is nothing remote about their suffering. In many ways, They are just like Us. Their misery and their madness are fundamentally human experiences. I believe that's an important part of why the mentally ill are quarantined; to know that They are simply more vulnerable to the horrors of existence is intolerable because it means that the horrors, whether real or imagined, are familiar, and that it is the reactions to them that vary most. The mentally ill realize this better than any of Us. So We separate Them in order not to be reminded of what We all know to be true: that the world is unsafe, unpredictable in how its cruelties are meted out, indiscriminate about its choice of victims.

 

 

 

There is no right and wrong. There is no foundation, no canon of normalcy. Through no fault of their own, children and adolescents emerge as adults having experienced horrors within their families and within their societies and, as a result, they become the mentally ill I meet at Eastmark."