Another Kind of Madness Page 6

  We renewed our play-acting. I co-wrote the script and performed the lines every day.

  *

  Resuming our talks, Dad said he missed much of his twelfth-grade year because he was ill and needed to make up the work later. It wasn’t until the bombshell discussion in his study during my first spring break from college that I understood the reason why. When younger, what I often sensed were gaps.

  From our periodic conversations I pieced together his continuing trajectory. After graduating as valedictorian, Dad spoke at the Rose Bowl in front of thousands. Admitted to both UC Berkeley and Stanford, he chose Stanford, deciding to double-major in philosophy and psychology. His voice swelling with memory, Dad said that his father wished for him to return to Southern California after he graduated to help with Quaker causes, such as international famine relief related to the tragedy of World War II. But his own passion was philosophy, and at Iowa he earned a Master’s degree with Gustav Bergmann, a member of the Vienna Circle who had escaped the Nazis. A conscientious objector because of his pacifist and Quaker background, Dad received a fellowship to attend Princeton’s doctoral program. He overlapped for a time with his older brothers Randall, a grad student in economics, and Bob, in psychology, who’d already started there. Dad also had a 4-F deferment, given his half-year as a mental patient, though that issue never came up in those early discussions when I was young.

  During Dad’s initial year as a grad student, the chairman of the philosophy department informed him of a weekly, one-on-one tutorial arranged at the home of a visiting professor from Great Britain. Asking about his host, Dad learned that he was to have those sessions with Bertrand Russell. Wait! I thought. Weren’t those Russell’s books right there in Dad’s library, small ones like Why Men Fight and the huge one, Principia Mathematica? Dad said that Russell gave him many insights about philosophy.

  Three years later, while finishing his Ph.D., he was introduced to Albert Einstein, at the Institute for Advanced Study. Pulling a book from his library shelf, Dad showed me the final chapter of an edited book on physics, about Einstein’s social and moral philosophy. The author was Virgil Hinshaw, Jr. I was in awe.

  It would be well over a decade before I knew that soon after completing his dissertation, he ended up in a mental hospital outside Philadelphia, called Byberry—named for the district north of the city in which it had been built. As a grad student, Dad had followed the Allied war effort, sometimes leaving campus to pack boxes of supplies in support of the fight against Fascism. Yet he became convinced that he’d gained the power of telepathy to predict the war’s end. Early in 1945, with his degree in hand, he became acutely paranoid, believing that others might discover his powers. Agitated and raging over a failed relationship, he took the train to New York to seek out his ex-girlfriend. After he banged on her apartment door and windows in the bitter cold and yelled up to her room, neighbors called the police. Dad was booked and ended up being transported to Philadelphia on an involuntary psychiatric hold. He would spend five months in the huge, overcrowded institution, where inhumanity, beatings, and early death were daily occurrences.

  Why was Byberry located in the countryside, far from downtown Philadelphia? Even Norwalk, when it had been built in the early twentieth century, was well outside the downtown Los Angeles area. Indeed, large public mental facilities were typically built a day’s carriage ride from major cities, supposedly to provide refuge from daily stress but actually to protect the populace from insane patients—and, too often, from the barbaric practices that occurred within their walls. Clearly, stigma was part of the formula. By the 1950s, nearly 600,000 Americans were held involuntarily in such large state-run facilities.

  I wouldn’t know of the details of Byberry for some time. But when released in the summer of 1945, Dad took the train, along with his older brother Randall, back to Southern California. Unsure as to his future after his second bout of madness, he found whatever work he could. With a doctorate in philosophy—and his half-year at Byberry intentionally omitted from his résumé—he applied for teaching positions around the country. Ohio State’s philosophy department was growing. He had published several articles from his graduate work in prestigious journals and received an offer. With a starting salary of $2,000, he could move from instructor to assistant professor and eventually receive tenure. He moved to Columbus, beginning his new life in the Midwest.

  *

  By my late twenties, Mom had learned that Dad and I had been speaking about his life for nearly a decade. It hurt her, she told me, that I knew far more about many aspects of his history than she did. But she didn’t exude bitterness. Long before, she’d learned that there were major parts of his life that would remain walled off from her. Stigma and its consequences can impede the closest of relationships, eroding chances for mutual support.

  By that time Mom and I had started our own private conversations. During one, she talked about an episode of Dad’s when Sally and I were young. As her alarm peaked back then, she once again sent us to Grandmother’s for the weekend.

  “Dad was having a terrible time,” she said. “He was irate over something, I don’t know what.” She said that, one afternoon, he stormed out of the house and into the garage, where he kept his golf clubs. Dad liked golf back then, often playing at the OSU course. Afraid of what he might do next, she peered out from the kitchen window.

  “Steve, he hauled his golf bag onto the yard and was pulling out the clubs one by one. You should have seen the look on his face.” He took each club, she continued, and snapped it over his knee like a matchstick, ranting the whole time. He grabbed the broken pieces and flung them into the neighbor’s yard, screaming at some unseen threat to his well-being. Concluding, Mom added that he never really played much golf much after that.

  What else had I missed, all those years ago? From what else had I been shielded?

  During our discussions, her most vivid story concerned an early-fall evening in the 1950s, which I’ve reconstructed from her words and from my adult understanding of how bipolar disorder appears when it’s unchecked. Remarkably, I knew nothing of the event until 25 years after it occurred.

  The scent of burning leaves infused the air while living room and bedroom lights illuminated the neighborhood on Wyandotte Road. Inside our house, I was four and a half and Sally three, fast asleep in our bedrooms upstairs. After the dishes had been dried and stacked, Mom stole a few minutes with her husband in the living room to watch a popular variety show on the giant black-and-white television set. Such a break was a real treat, but the way he’d been acting recently had placed her on full alert. On the 10:00 p.m. program, live from Cincinnati—a hundred miles away—an attractive entertainer sang a show tune, swaying her hips to the rhythmic beat of the studio orchestra. Dad had seen her before but tonight he glowered at the screen. He suddenly sprang from the couch and fixated on her sequined dress. “Come here,” he commanded his wife, kneeling directly in front of the screen. “Listen—can you hear it?”

  Wishing desperately to support him but terrified of what was coming, Mom dared not answer. “She’s sending messages to me,” he whispered with reverence. But the only thing Mom could hear was the song and its bouncy melody.

  For several days he’d been awakening at dawn, rushing to his basement study to scrawl incomprehensible notes on his legal pads. He saw coded signs everywhere, in looks from people on campus, in the supposed patterns of cars parked at the curb. Essential messages were being transmitted, but only to him. Such occurrences are initial signs of paranoia, called ideas of reference, when special meanings are ascribed to everyday events—a stepping stone on the path to delusions.

  Where was the scholar who courted her before their wedding in Columbus seven years before, the handsome, intellectual figure with whom she fell in love so deeply? Had anyone else seen this different, peculiar Virgil? Far too loud, Mom recalled, Dad played religious music on the phonograph and burst into Spanish, the adopted language of his mother and his stepmother
from their missionary days. Its sensual sounds transported him back to California, as he launched into its rapid rhythms: “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia,” from the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset (“I am myself and my circumstance”); “el mundo tiene una belleza rara!” (“the world has a rare beauty”).

  In the living room that night, more excited by the second, Dad became entranced by the singer’s words and dance moves. It was a personal semaphore, with hidden meanings encoded in the lyrics. “We must go to the station!” he cried. “Right now, before she leaves!”

  Frantically, Mom calculated. If she let him drive off alone, what would he do at the station, if he even got that far? And she couldn’t just plop Sally and me in the back seat: We would wake up terrified and we certainly couldn’t see our father in this condition. What’s poorly understood—even now—is that when full-blown mania hits, irritability and anger are part of the picture just as much as euphoria and expansiveness. Impulse control vanishes, judgment disappears, and irrationality takes over. No one dare stand in the way of the plans and snap judgments getting made.

  Heart pounding, she decided to go along and try to contain him, praying that we would remain asleep upstairs until they returned. If not, she might never see her husband again. What kinds of choices were these, which she now had to make?

  She longed for someone to call. But who would understand her impossible story? How could she keep her conversation private from her agitated husband? Alas, there was no time; he was grabbing the car keys and heading for the door. Dashing up the stairs to check on Sally and me, she heard our soft breathing. “Please, God, keep them asleep,” she half-whispered before pulling herself away.

  They rushed outside to their 1956 Ford Victoria with its V8 engine. Clearly, he must drive; she would never go fast enough to make it to the station on time. He forced the key in the ignition and, as the engine turned over, punched it into reverse before jamming the lever into first. They screeched down the street.

  Once outside the city limits he managed to stop for signs and lights on the two-and four-lane highways but it was torture. “We must get there!” he shouted, though Mom was right next to him. “Can’t this car go any faster?” But he mainly remained silent, determined to receive his messages from the singer, who intended them only for him. The speedometer’s thin, blood-red dial glided past 60, 70, and 80 on the open road. He muttered each time they reached the next town.

  Once back in the countryside, the car hurtled through the darkness. Mom felt that she had entered a different existence. With every ounce of effort she could muster, she tried to stay in control and urge him back home when the opportunity arose.

  Unimaginably, an hour and a half later they arrived in the outskirts of Cincinnati, the station’s huge broadcasting tower providing a beacon. It was nearly midnight. They swerved into the parking lot, gravel shooting out from the spinning tires as he slammed on the brakes. “Stay in the car; I’ll find her,” he ordered, leaping from his seat and rushing to the fence. Mom feared an ugly confrontation with the station personnel.

  But wait! The gate was locked and the lights were off in the station’s brick building. Even with the windows rolled up, she could hear the clanging as he shook the fence, hard. Would he climb it and jump over? Emerging calmly from the car, she left the door open, a soft dome of light in the dark lot. Approaching him, she saw his chest muscles heaving, his shirt soaked despite the cool night air.

  “Honey, the station’s closed,” she said in a quiet voice. Hands clinging to the chain links, he peered ahead, panting. Careful, she thought, careful. “Remember, Virg, Stevie and Sally are still in their bedrooms. Maybe we should head back. The singer is sure to be on the air again in another few nights.”

  Wiping his face with a handkerchief, he was clearly torn. He shot another glance toward the station. “Yes,” he said, abruptly changing course, “we must go.” Doors opened and slammed shut. They flew back onto the highway and retraced their path.

  Somehow, no one seemed to be following. In the silent world of the car’s interior, the roadway, fields, and trees approached at blinding speed before disappearing off to the sides, headlight beams glued to the onrushing pavement. What would have happened, Mom asked rhetorically as she recounted the endless night, if a highway patrolman had pulled them over and he resisted? Would Dad have tried to prove his strength? If things got ugly, who would have come to the house to get Sally and me? Where would we have been sent?

  But the only sound was the rush of the tires spinning madly over the highway. Foggy with adrenaline and exhaustion, she silently prayed. Please, no accident; please, no police.

  They slowed as the car miraculously reached Columbus sometime around 3:00 a.m. and stopped with a jolt in the driveway. The block was eerily silent, the houses dark and remote. Departing the car, she heard their footsteps echo faintly off the stone walk, the only sound for miles. She finally grabbed the keys from his hand and raced up the stairs to our rooms. There we were, fast asleep, our mouths slightly agape, oblivious to the night’s events. Within moments she nearly collapsed on the bed she and Dad had shared since their wedding, the bed she’d be sharing with a stranger tonight.

  Stilling her breath, she began to drift. The last thought in her mind following the terrifying midnight drive to Cincinnati was that the evening’s events, and others like them, must stay locked inside her for the rest of her life. For the sake of the family, and because of doctors’ strict orders, the pact of silence must remain in place.

  Forever.

  *

  Some nights after dinner Dad would sit me on his lap at the kitchen table on Wyandotte Road, the air still warm from the oven. My knees and elbows would be covered with Band-Aids from falling off my bike as I continued to race around the neighborhood. At the table I might wear a construction paper crown, a single Indian feather sticking up, as Dad told me of Nickershoe, the Indian boy, and his adventures in a canoe or on the plains.

  “Indian boys and girls didn’t go to school the way you and other modern children do,” Dad said. “But they learned all the time. The tribe’s elders taught him how to carve from wood, how to fish. As he got a bit older and approached manhood, Nickershoe learned to hunt, using only his bow and arrow. He practiced and became extremely skilled. This is how Indians existed; the tribe lived off the land.”

  “Please, Daddy,” I begged, “the great hunt in the fall!”

  With a small grin, sitting erect at the table, Dad continued. “It was time for the great autumn hunt. The young braves had been preparing all summer. On glorious days, Nickershoe went with the other boys, plus an older guide, to gather food before the snows arrived. The journey took them into the forests to find bear and deer.” Each detail became imprinted in my mind. Dad went on to say that Nickershoe had to prove his courage with his bow and arrow. In an early snowfall, he might find shelter in a cave and wait out the storm. He would then ride like the wind on his Appaloosa for the final hunt.

  “Finally, the braves returned, with their kill draped over the horses in back. Everyone gathered to welcome them. As the braves headed into the camp, the elders were proud. The new group had done a fine job; Nickershoe might one day be their leader. What a feast they had, to celebrate the end of the great hunt.”

  Dad told me that he’d learned about Nickershoe when he was a boy, while camping in the mountains of Southern California. I wasn’t sure that I could ever be as brave as Nickershoe, but if someday put to the test, I might try. I felt sure that a test would come one day, when I would need to be braver than I’d ever been. But what the test might be, and when it would happen, remained a mystery.

  All these events took place in the silent 1950s, an era that seems lifetimes ago. Haven’t we traveled a vast distance since then, especially regarding attitudes about mental illness? Isn’t the stigmatization of people with mental disorders receding at a fast clip, just like fast-improving attitudes toward gay marriage?

  If only such were the case. On the one hand,
the general public knows far more about mental illness than previous generations. After all, psychology courses are routinely taught in high schools, and mental illness isn’t the secret it once was. Many more people in the United States can correctly identify symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders, psychotic conditions, and childhood forms of mental illness than ever before.

  Yet at the same time, several large-scale investigations reveal that public attitudes toward mental illness, dismal during the 1950s, have stayed essentially flat since then—meaning that the desire to keep one’s distance remains high. And three times as many people believe that mental illness is inevitably linked to violence today than people did 60 years ago. In key respects things are actually going backward.

  A major factor is the intensive media focus on horrific acts of gun violence. Photos of deranged-looking killers have become the public face of mental disorder, conveying the image that mental illness automatically produces aggression. In reality, individuals with mental illness are far more likely to be victimized by violence than others—but with rare exceptions, no more likely to commit aggression. Yet this point is almost never publicized.

  Cycles abound in the history of mental illness and its treatment. Back in the late 1700s and early 1800s, a movement occurred in Europe, soon spreading to the United States. The goal was to release those with chronic mental disorders—often believed to be possessed by evil spirits—from chains and shackles within inhumane “madhouses” to retreat-like, rural settings, staffed by sensitive, well-trained caregivers. This practice was termed moral treatment, a clear attempt to humanize people who had lost their way, through calm, therapeutic settings far from everyday stresses.