Instead of a comment at Doug Bremner's blog, where I don't want to start anything about this particular issue:
In
his latest entry Doug Bremner [writes] wrote:
"There were two psychiatrists there named Fleiss and Lizt who had come up with [
perverted] theory years ago that mothers drove their children crazy." (my italics) [Update: Doug Bremner changed his post. Actually
before he read this rant. You rock, Doug! :D]
Now, as even I, who is relatively new to Doug Bremner's blog, have realized in the meantime, he lost his mother at the age of four and a half, and, of course, blamed himself for her death: PTSD. - Btw Doug, if you read this: it seems, you forgot to link "here and here and here". Whatever. Which strikes me, is that something so radical and undeniable as the death of one's mother obviously can serve to spare one's acting "artificially" from being labelled as, for instance, "schizophrenic", and thus brain-diseased (???), while less radical, tangible things obviously can't.
Here's some of the radical, undeniable, but nevertheless, compared to a physical death, rather "invisible", truth from my own past:
I cannot recall to have witnessed as much as one single incident of mutual affection between my parents. What I have witnessed, continuously, from day one to the bitter end, was my mother wiping the floor with my father, and, ultimately, since my father made himself scarce, pursuing his career, with me. My mother was
the incarnation of suffering and neediness, and, of course, her misery was everybody else's responsibility but her own. With "everybody else" in the absence of my father being me, sure.
There simply was no such thing as unconditional affection - not to mention
love - at our house (I can't really make myself call it a "home"). There never was any such thing in my life.
And it was my own fault. If you'd asked my mother, that is.
Did
I believe that, too? Sure I did. So I started to search for the "magic word", that could break the spell of my mother's misery, and that only
I could find. If that makes anyone think of "schizophrenics'" somewhat "different" relationship towards language, words, the
"loss of significance", because no word seems to do the trick: right on. While the double bind is just another aspect of the same game. "Find the 'magic word', and free me from my misery, and, no, don't find it, because I
am my misery." Fact is, my mother was scared
to death of me,
because she'd made me responsible for her misery, that is, she'd put me in control of her existence.
Did that drive me crazy?...
Just some random, slightly incoherent - it's still a little touchy - thoughts an early Monday morning. Nothing but a rough outline, a few hints. The "original" consists of a good 250 pages. And yes, the concept of the schizophrenogenic mother is indeed perverted. It wasn't her as an individual. It is our whole
perverted culture. Which she, too, was a product of.
Unfortunately for this culture, I wasn't told that it altogether were just meaningless "symptoms" of some obscure and completely meaningless biological brain disease and drugged up over my eyeballs, but guided and supported on my way to becoming conscious of my past. By a therapist, who isn't quite as
perverted as our culture as a whole is.
I wonder, what Doug Bremner would have done.
_______________
One more random thought: When I was 29, my mother suffered a stroke during one of our regular arguments. After ten days in a coma, her doctor asked me, if it were all right with me, if they'd pull the plug, which was, what he'd recommend.
I argued with her, and
I said "yes".
