Another Kind of Madness Read online

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  To the memory of my father and mother

  To my sister, Sally, who works every day to improve the lives of people with physical and mental disorders by increasing empathy and skill on the part of practitioners

  Preface

  This book has taken literally a lifetime to emerge. I tend to be a person of fast action, but some essential ventures don’t come to fruition quickly—like understanding one’s family, finding an authentic voice to recount difficult life experiences, and working to reduce the shame and stigma regarding such weighty topics as mental illness.

  In college, I became increasingly invested in the field of psychology, spurred by my father’s initial, revelatory talk with me during my first spring break back in the Midwest. Over time I began to believe that his story, and my own, might be of value not just to my family or those in my inner circle but to a wider audience as well. This work is my attempt to convey such remembrances and accounts to the best of my memory. I’ve tried to create dialogue and narrative that adhere as closely as possible to what transpired when I was a boy, a teen, a young man, and beyond.

  The inspiration for the book’s title comes from a quote from James Baldwin, in one of his masterpieces, Giovanni’s Room: “People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.” [emphasis added]

  I cannot, of course, claim to comprehend Baldwin’s experiences, but his words are inspirational. Regarding the present narrative, as I try to make clear in the pages that follow, stigma itself is “another kind of madness,” a form with consequences that are far worse than those linked to mental illness itself. More broadly, stigma fosters a denial of human potential. The silence and shame must be transformed into open dialogue. Unless we make progress toward this goal, we will never realize what we can become as a species.

  I have altered the names of some individuals outside our family to protect their privacy, an unfortunate but still necessary action. Progress in the fight against stigma is a marathon, not a sprint.

  In the end, I hope that the material herein provides solace, inspiration, and courage to all individuals affected by mental illness either in themselves or in those close to them—in other words, to everyone.

  Introduction

  In the late summer of 1936, scalding winds scoured the Southern California region. As the calendar reached September, the 16-year-old known as Junior couldn’t shut off the voices now shouting inside his head. Preoccupied with the growing Nazi threat in Europe, day and night he roamed the sidewalks of Pasadena, the same ones that had carried him to grade school on his metal roller skates a decade before. Begging him to save the free world, the voices grew in intensity each day. Desperate to emerge with a plan to save the free world, Junior continued his relentless pacing.

  Not long after midnight on Sunday, September 6, he paused. Silent houses surrounded him in the darkness. With his shirt soaked in sweat, he suddenly gasped as a new awareness took hold of his body and mind. With thrilling clarity, he now understood: He was the sole human destined to save the free world. His long days and nights of searching had not been in vain! The revelation filled him with wonder.

  As his thoughts gathered speed another insight emerged. Alone among mankind, he had attained the power of flight. His arms, in fact, had become wings. Like Icarus, if he lifted them toward the sky, he’d be aloft. Once he soared toward the clouds, the free world’s leaders would witness this magnificent signal and pledge to conquer the Fascists.

  Alas, through his tortured logic, he reasoned that his flight would be seen around the globe only after sunrise. For now, he must await the dawn, using every ounce of his energy to shield his secret. Inhaling any stray cigarettes he could find before stubbing them out, he kept moving, inspired by his newfound mission.

  For several years, international Prohibition leaders had attended periodic dinners at his family home, alongside his father, Virgil Hinshaw, Sr., an international leader in the movement. Inevitably, discussions turned to the world situation.

  “The Fascists are taking over, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany,” said one grim discussant. “They will dominate the world!” “You Americans are isolationists,” called out another. “Who will preserve international freedom?”

  Sitting with his five brothers at the table, Junior felt his alarm grow each time. But with so much to accomplish—homework, church, sports, and part-time jobs—the warnings gradually faded. After all, what could a family of Quakers, committed pacifists, really do to aid the world situation? Yet now, with his senior year of high school approaching and his parents out of town at a Prohibition meeting, a newfound surge of energy took possession of his being, his mind expanding as it never had before.

  Amplified by radio accounts of the rise of the Fascists, the visitors’ warnings called out to him: The Nazi threat is real! Black-and-white newsreels looped before his eyes: Brownshirts marching, Hitler’s speeches before massive crowds. Repression grew but America did nothing to heed the signs. Possessed by his new mission, he understood that if he dared not step forward, who would?

  But how? If not for him, the Fascists might prevail.

  As the early-morning hours of September 6 inched toward dawn, the winds abated. Finally, a brilliant yellow-orange, the sun emerged to the east, spreading long shadows from roofs and palms. Enthralled by his energy and his remarkable insights, Junior reached his block on North Oakland Avenue, moving furtively past a few yards to find his own home, a dark-brown bungalow now directly in front of him. Breathing in, he crossed the lawn with muted footsteps. As the front door beckoned, he stared at it and then above. All was silent in the early daylight.

  There was no turning back. The time was now.

  But how to ascend? Thinking fast, he nimbly scrambled up the trellis, steadying himself as he found footholds. A final thrust and he was on the roof above the small front porch, the walkway 12 feet below. The sky loomed majestically before him, the air already torrid. The voices inside his mind reached a crescendo, pleading with him to perform his deed. Save the free world!

  Glory would be his.

  Approaching the edge, he shed his clothes and heaved them over, shoes, pants, and shirt floating to the ground beneath. Suddenly cooler, he held his breath. Calf muscles straining, arms outflung, he pushed off and propelled himself forward. For a second, there was only the feel of the air against his skin.

  The ground rushed toward him before everything turned black.

  *

  I learned of this event without any preparation at all. In the middle of April 1971, I settled into the living room sofa, picking up a magazine. I needed to start some serious reading for my freshman-year term papers at Harvard but couldn’t resist a
short break. Back in Columbus, Ohio, where I’d spent my first seventeen years, I felt as though a heavy backpack weighed me down—each compartment filled with disbelief. Did I really belong here anymore?

  From the couch, the multi-paned window revealed our white front-porch columns, framing the deep-green lawn and startlingly pink crabapple blossoms just beyond. As light filtered through intermittent, early-afternoon clouds, the mood shifted from dark to light and back again.

  Was there some kind of stirring in the wind, a small signal of change in the air? If so, I paid no attention. Things would never change, I was sure, inside the stillness of our family home. In just a few days I’d be back in Cambridge and my new life back East.

  All week, for my first spring break, I’d wandered the house in a half-daze. The colonial-soldier figures on my bedroom wallpaper, the half-deflated footballs and basketballs in our mud-hall closet, the sound-absorbing carpeting of the main floor: Everything appeared as though behind museum ropes.

  After glancing through a magazine or two, I heard a soft shuffling sound. Peering up, I saw Dad approach awkwardly from his study. He must have returned from his morning classes on campus, where three mornings per week he lectured on the history of Western philosophy for masses of Ohio State University (OSU) undergraduates. My sister, Sally, was in eleventh grade at the huge high school a block behind our home. Mom was at OSU, teaching English.

  Dad and I were alone in the house.

  “Son,” he began in a quiet voice, his eyes avoiding mine. He used the formal term when things were serious, a remnant of his Quaker upbringing. “Could we talk for a bit?”

  Placing the magazine down, I turned to face him. His body was slightly hunched, his face tense. He no longer resembled the athletic, confident personage he’d once been, early in his career and early in my life. By now, a small paunch surrounded his stomach and a heavy gravity seemed to be pulling down the corners of his mouth.

  “Sure,” I replied, wondering vaguely if I’d done something wrong. A trickle of adrenaline coursed through my veins. He beckoned for me to follow him into his bookshelf-lined library, the room he’d planned when our house had been designed a decade before. The navy-blue, brown, and maroon hues of the book covers seemed to call out from the wooden shelves. Each time I entered, I felt overwhelmed by the world’s knowledge of science, history, and math inside those pages.

  Dad paused as I walked past and pulled the sliding door shut, the soft metallic whirr of its rollers filling the air until wood contacted wood with a small hollow pop. I sat down on a straight-backed chair he’d placed near his desk, close to the tangle of file folders, syllabi, and lecture notes crowding its surface. Underneath the window overlooking our front-yard pin-oak tree sat a small table holding his manual typewriter, the ancient one he’d used at Stanford and Princeton, a gift from his father. He typed 90 words a minute without error, the keys ablaze with rapid-fire clacking. His typing seemed faster than most people’s thinking.

  Dad’s downward gaze and the quiver in his voice told me that our talk would not be about my freshman year or minor issues at home. As he cleared his throat, I clenched.

  “Steve,” he began, “there are sometimes experiences, situations in life that are, well, difficult to understand.” To my surprise he was fumbling for words, far different from his usual orations on philosophy and science.

  “What I mean is this: Perhaps it’s time you heard about some events from my history.” He paused. “There were times when I wasn’t fully rational.”

  As he continued speaking time slowed. Worlds passed before my eyes as fast as I could process them. From his periodic talks with me when I was young, I knew of the Hinshaw family’s tribulations and achievements. But something had always been missing, especially surrounding his strange disappearances, when he would vanish for weeks or months at a time. Nothing had ever been said.

  From this first, revelatory talk in Dad’s home library, from many more over the following 24 years, from discussions with his brothers that began during my twenties, and from long-preserved family letters, I pieced together the events as though witnessing them in person. It’s as though I’d been transported back to Pasadena.

  *

  Moments later, stunned from the impact, bleeding from his head, his left wrist suspended at an awkward angle, Junior struggled to regain alertness. Startled by the early-morning commotion, his brothers rushed out to see him sprawled on the concrete. They’d been worried by his strange behavior over the past days but couldn’t keep him contained inside the house.

  “My God,” cried Bob, 18, the first one out the door, “what’s happened?”

  “Be careful!” shouted Randall, three years older than Bob, rushing close behind. “Someone get Junior’s clothes.”

  But couldn’t they see what he’d accomplished? “It’s hot—I’m cooling off,” he whispered, as his brothers lifted him inside and phoned for the doctor. The emergency vehicle arrived and transported him to Los Angeles County Hospital, its huge white edifice crowning the hills east of downtown LA. His shattered arm was set in a cast but the bones didn’t quite mesh. A nurse emptied a syringe into his arm and the world floated away.

  Two weeks later he was transferred to a back ward at a public mental facility, Norwalk County Hospital, which housed patients with severe mental illness. His roommates included individuals with misshapen heads, victims of microcephaly and serious intellectual disability.

  *

  As I sat motionless before him in his study, taking in every word, Dad told me that perhaps he had at last found his true peers, as a deeply flawed individual. None of his academic accomplishments, none of his religious upbringing, none of his grand ideas could counter his newfound fate.

  Each night at Norwalk screams echoed through the corridors, competing with the angelic choruses inside his mind singing of glory and salvation. His only treatment was being tied to his bed to prevent wandering. Some mornings he worked the garbage crew but there was no school at this adult facility, only interminable, empty hours each day. Alone except for his voices and invisible to the world, he had entered a different existence.

  Over the next weeks he became convinced of a new idea, fueled by the relentless voices. The food at Norwalk was poisoned, part of an ongoing Nazi plot. To eat would signal his capitulation to the Fascist plans. As he refrained from ingesting anything but water, his body grew thinner and thinner.

  In November, his father received an urgent telephone call from the hospital’s superintendent, who stated that their patient, Virgil Jr., had lost 60 pounds, and was down to 120. “The situation is critical,” he intoned grimly. “You must come with all speed.” A pastor had been called to administer last rites.

  Rushing inside after the frantic drive, Virgil Sr. gasped in horror at the sight of his emaciated son. Resigning himself to the inevitable, he wrote to his brother that night, convinced that he would re-encounter his fourth-born only in the next world. Yet over the following weeks the ideas and voices began to lose their force and Junior began eating once more. As his strength returned he pondered his surroundings, barren and forlorn. Wishing desperately to return home for Christmas, he was told by the doctors that he was too ill.

  Weeks passed as the rainy Southern California winter finally yielded to signs of spring. By late February, staff noticed sudden, inexplicable improvement. Fully rational, he was released within a week. Following his return to Pasadena, shocked by his sudden re-emergence, no one—not his father, stepmother, or five brothers—dared to discuss the experiences of the past half-year. The shame was too great. Any talk might jinx his recovery.

  He began twelfth grade six months late. By June, he had earned straight As for the spring semester and the previous fall as well. His life of inexplicable ascents and descents had begun.

  To his family, his recovery signaled that a miracle had occurred. Like all miracles, it was enshrouded in mystery.

  *

  “It was during this stay that my diagnosis o
f schizophrenia was revealed,” Dad told me on that blustery April afternoon. “There have been other times in my life with similar episodes. Perhaps we should discuss them during a subsequent talk.”

  Evidently, our session was ending. We stood up and awkwardly shook hands. I pushed back my chair, turned, and pulled open the sliding door. Walking slowly through the living room I stopped short. Were those actually the same blossoms and sky showing through the front window? Had thirty minutes passed, or half a lifetime?

  While hearing Dad’s words I’d fought panic but also experienced a deep stillness. At last I knew something. A current of air had entered the vast vacuum just a step behind me, which I’d tried to shut out my whole life. At last, a few sounds had emerged from the void. Only one thing was certain. From that moment forward my life would never be the same.

  1

  Sunday Dinner at the Willard

  Twenty years after my father’s abortive flight to save the free world—and more than half a continent away—I was five, rushing home from morning kindergarten class. Yanking open the door to the basement, I raced down the steps.

  I just had to find Dad. If he was home, he must be in his study, getting ready for his next lecture. But sometimes he vanished into thin air. Nothing was ever said; he simply disappeared. When it happened I had no idea that he’d been involuntarily hospitalized for bouts of inexplicable, wild behavior. All I knew was that one day Dad was present and the next day there was an empty space where he’d once been. Had some kind of silent abduction taken place in the middle of the night, under armed guard?

  At the bottom of the staircase I felt the sudden coolness of the basement air. When it rained hard in the spring, water would collect in the middle of the slate-gray floor over by the washer and dryer. “Stevie, this is what’s called a flood,” Mom said. “The ground gets full of water and it collects beneath the ground level.” Grunting lightly from the exertion, Dad would grab a mechanical pump from the garage and place it in the middle of the rising pool of water. I heard it grumble and growl while the pulsing liquid pushed through the rubber tubing, up the wall, and out a side window. As the water splashed onto the driveway, small streams slowly trickled down toward the street, the rivulets converging like the gradual clasping of long, wrinkled fingers.