The Daily Novel

Their behaviour changes through time.

So does the behaviour of all human beings. And I don’t think that the ordinary behaviour of manic depressives changes any more than other human beings. But I do think that the ratio of manic to depressive behaviour changes hugely. And that this is very important for manic depressives themselves. Because although we will always be manic depressive the proportion of time we spend in totally incapacitated gloom can diminish very considerably. (If that is true, it is also likely, that the depression might well get worse and more frequent for some manic depressives.)
This is not based on any research findings that I have read. It is based on my own personal experience of myself and a relatively small number of other manic depressives whom I have known well.

But I would like to fill it out with some discussion of Ronald Laing, the Scottish psychiartrist, who wrote such books as ‘The Divided Self’, Sanity, Madness and the Family and The Politics of Experience. I have read most of Laing’s book and I met him a few times, at lectures he gave and socially.

I was struck when I checked his Wikipedia reference by the following sentence.

Laing was troubled by his own personal problems, suffering both from episodic alcoholism and clinical depression (according to his self-diagnosis in his 1983 BBC Radio interview with Dr. Anthony Clare [2]) , although he reportedly was free of both in the years before his death.

What Wikipedia reports fits in both with what I have read in books about him and my own personal experience of him. With one exception. It omits to say that Laing was also schizophrenic.

He told me so himself in the longest meeting I had with him, which was in the early 1980s. When he also told me that ‘The Divided Self’ was autobiography.

The occasion was a Camden School open day. Laing had been invited as a father and local celebrity and also had been asked to do one of his jazz numbers on the piano. I arrived about 4 PM and was met at the gate by a neighbour who is a psychiartrist. He quickly told me that he had been appointed as his host for the occasion, but that Ronnie was totally drunk which he could not cope with. (Journalists, because they spend so much of their lives in pubs, are expected to know how to cope with drunken behaviour!)

My attempts to contain his behaviour were not wholly successful. And at one point he was engaging in a highly agressive verbal argument with a burly working class parent. Suddenly Ronnie lunged at him. Disaster was averted. Ronnie was grabbed by another parent, who also knew him. And I grabbed the working class parent and explained that he was a bit drunk.

For the rest of that day the other working class parent, who happened to be a Buddhist, in which Laing had become interested, acted as a team with me in minding Ronnie. Laing was using the kind of language which all the Camden School girls were familiar with. But which the teachers did not like hearing in the School. And he was speaking quite loudly. We persuaded him that we should all three continue our conversation in the nearest pub.

We moved to another pub when that one closed. And to another. We arrived back at Ronnie’s house in Chalk Farm shortly after midnight. Describing the facts like this paints a picture of three drunks stumbling back home, holding each other up as they lurch from side to side.

But it was not like that.

The Buddhist had mostly not been drinking alcohol. I had adopted my usual professional behaviour which is to slowly sip half pints of bitter. Which I can do quite happily for hours.

That leaves Ronnie. He was definitely in a highly emotional state when I first met him. And perhaps a little bit drunk. He drank throughout the evening. But slowly and beer or wine, I think. He was not staggering. His speech was not slurred. And most of the evening was spent in discussing psychological ideas and listening to his reminiscences.

When we arrived back at his house there was a young Indian psychiartrist who Ronnie had agreed to meet there at 8 PM. He was still waiting patiently. He got out his notebook and started to ask his questions. Laing launched into what stands out in my mind as one of most brutal verbal attacks I have ever witnessed. He humiliated and made fun of this man, who had come half way across the world to listen to his wisdom.

The Indian ignored the insults, but persisted with his questioning as if Laing was behaving quite normally. The whole episode went on for about an hour. Laing slaughtered him again and again, despite the efforts of my Buddhist friend and I to get Ronnie to calm down.

But the important thing was that Laing’s attack was not like most drunken aggression. It was intellectually totally coherent. My conjecture as I write now is that it was the not the drink but the mental illness which was speaking. And tonight I think that maybe Laing was a manic depressive.

But I don’t have time to check whether any of the books because I have to go off to dinner, with, amongst others, a psychiartrist and an educational psychologist. So I must get the heracies I have been writing out of my mind. And behave normally.

Their behaviour sometimes seems strange or annoying to others.

This point was not amongst the original ten points with which I started this series. It emerged during the course of writing the previous blogs. But in some ways it is the most important point of all to me. Because one of the main reasons why I got sectioned and locked up in the Royal Free just before Christmas two years ago was because my behaviour seemed strange and annoying to my own wife and daughters.

They have known me a long time. I met my wife forty-one years ago. And my younger daughter is thirty-six. During that time my depressions have obviously impacted on their awareness. But in Christmas 2004 it was my manic mood that got me into trouble. (I am indebted in writing this paragraph to Randy, the blogger who commented on one of my previous posts, who made the point that no-one bothered about him too much when he was depressed. It was the manic mood that others found threatening.)

In retrospect I can now see that by the time I met my wife and reared my children I had learnt to manage my manic moods to some degree. I channelled them into writing. And sometimes that writing meant that I was spending less time talking to my family at weekends and during holiday periods than the average. So although they told me I was a workaholic, they did not want to get me locked up.

After all, although only a small part of the writing I have done over the years has been published, that small part has been sufficient to pay the rent.

My family had also got used to my occasional bouts of manic humour. Because I managed to make them laugh. And because these bouts were often associated with dinners and parties at which most people were getting a little bit drunk, so that the rational questioning mind is taking a holiday.

My family had also got used to my somewhat eccentric behaviour in the manic mood. When my mood was, for me, unusually talkative, outgoing and even mildly sexual. Two examples come to mind. One was at an open day at Camden School, which both my daughters were attending. I greeted one of the guests of honour, Pamela Stevenson, like a long-lost friend, telling her how much I admired her work, etc, etc. My wife, who had noticed that Pamela was somewhat taken aback by my behaviour, upbraided me, and was supported by both my daughters, who, like all children, do not want their fathers to embarrass them.

The second example is when I walked into a local restaurant and noticed Bill Oddie, sitting at one of the tables. So I went up and shook his hand. (Not quite such a faux pas, as the Pamela Stevenson episode, because I had met Oddie a couple of times at local parties.) But it made my family uncomfortable, because Bill Oddie was now a famous person, and I was treating him as if he was just one of the neighbours.

So I don’t think Oddie was a bit disturbed or surprised by my behaviour. Indeed, he might have been quite pleased. And in relation to Pamela Stevenson, who was deffinitely a bit uptight when I met, I have noticed that she subsequently fell for someone who is even more manic than I, Billy Connolly.

This is all rather deep stuff for a short blog. Because it touches on how all human beings trust and depend on other human beings, and want them to behave in familiar ways. Even when they are changing as they continue their individual voyages through life.

But the essential point is that what struck my family as strange in the particular circumstances was not all strange to me.

(Before I posted this blog I thought I had better check the spelling of Stevenson and the fact that she was married to Billy Connolly. So I went into Google and got this. As you will see if you click it is:

This is Robb’s unofficial Pamela Stevenson Site revealing, naked, nude, topless, down blouse, cleavage, candid - , the Official Celebrity OOps! site,

There are lots of nude pictures. But they seem to be of women other than Pamela Stevenson. Perhaps some blogger, or Pamela Stevenson’s agent, or Billy Connolly might be sufficiently stirred to get Google to do something about this.

They have a huge need for close friends.

At first reading this statement will seem banal. Obviously everyone has a huge need for friends. So this is one thing which manic depressives share with the rest of humanity.

Nevertheless I am arguing that manic depressives have an above average need for friends. On two grounds. First, personal experience. Second, research findings.

I will start with the second.

Research findings. Again and again researchers find that those designated mentally ill (not only manic depressives) have difficulty in forming close personal relationships. It is not necessary for me to waste time quoting the literature because this is now generally accepted.

But there is a corollary which needs a paragraph. Because of this, many people who share many of the symtoms of the mentally ill, do not end up sectioned, fired, or otherwise stigmatised. They are able to manage their condition, because they have been fortunate enough to make some close friends who help them to manage their condition. Which is one reason why some manic depressives manage to achieve much more in their lives than most normals.

Personal Experience. I have gradually realised on my voyage through life that my need of close friends is greater than the need my ‘close friends’ have of me. Most often I have to ring them, rather than wait for them to ring me.

This matters when I am in depression, when there is a total inability to reach out to any other human being. If, when in such a mood, someone rings you up and invites you out to lunch in two weeks time, it helps a bit.

That’s enough on the main subject. But it reminds me about how my career as a journalist actually helped my manic depressive temperament.

Because the nature of a journalist’s job is that many people want to bend their ear. So they do get rung up often by public relations men, and as they get established by managers, politicians and others in power. Of course, you know when they ring up, that it is professional not personal. But it lifts you nevertheless. It dents your mood that life is hopeless and that everything you have done is not enough.

It also meant for me that I valued such contacts. And that although I had fewer contacts than most journalists, I did have possibly deeper contacts with my sources, including the civil servants of my day, who tended to be much more reticent in their contact with journalists than they are today.

My manic depression also meant that throughout my working life I have been more dependent than the average on forming personal friendships with some of my working colleagues. And journalism is one of those careers is which there is most often a cameradie between working colleagues. Not least because of the battle to meet a deadline, which is always a battle, even if you are working for a monthly. Because something always happens in the day or two before you go to press which you would like to include.

But the main reason that manic depressives need close friends more is that it only close friends who realise that the occasional manic episodes, and the periods of incapacity, are all part and parcel of the total personality, which can be relied upon. At least relied on as much as many human beings who have never been diaghosed with anything more serious than measles.

They are sometimes totally incompetant.

And I mean totally.

Many manic depressives are quite incapable of work in either the manic mood or the depressive mood.

And I mean totally incompetant.

In the manic mood the flow of ideas is so fast and furious that it is difficult to concentrate on one thing. In the depressive mood, there is a lack of energy and a total lack of motivation. You don’t want to do anything and when you are forced to do something you tend to make terrible mistakes.

Happily this has not caused me too much trouble in life. This is at least partly because of my first career as a journalist. This is best explained by anecdote.

I started my career as a journalist for a weekly paper. Journalists are often perceived by others as lazy types. Because a lot of their work involves activities which would are not generally considered ‘work’. In my case it involved long lunches (two hours the norm, three hours quite common, four and a half hours, my record). Lunches which involved eating food I had not even dreamed of and drinking wines of a quality never even seen in the off-licences of Wolvehampton. And engaging in conversation of a wide range of subjects, often leavened with wit and humour.

I still had to do the ‘real work’ of writing the article when I got back to the office. When I was in deep depression I spent hours staring at a blank page iin the typewriter. But since working for a weekly you only have a real deadline on one day a week. And since in normal moods I have always written quickly, and in manic moods, very quickly, I always managed to do sufficient by the final day to survive.

I had more difficulty when I was working in America for a bi-weekly magazine. With two weeks in front of me I became over-optimistic about how much I could achieve on the final deadline day. By contrast, when I eventually ended up on a daily newspaper, I enjoyed my work more than ever. Because most days I managed to produce a printable story, so went home without guilt or too much worrying. And nobody bothered if I did not get anything in the paper some days. Because in The Times of those days there was intense competition between journalists to get stories in the paper. Even highly experienced journalists were getting some of their stories ’spiked’ (the term comes from the block of wood with the long spike attached on the chief sub’s desk, on which he impaled, frequently with a satisfied flourish, those stories which he deemed unworthy of tomorrow’s paper.)

Looked at from the viewpoint of the manager, this just goes to show that the newspaper was employing too many journalists, and therefore wasting the shareholders’ money. Looked at from the view-point of journalism, the best journalism comes when editors have too much copy when the deadline arrives, so they can throw out what is not as good as the stuff they actually print. Obviously I would not have survived unless I managed to produce good work on my better days. So my personal biography might have turned out differently if I had started out on a daily, rather than come to a daily after establishing a reputation over twelve years.
But I have digressed from the main theme of this post.

Manic depressives are sometimes totally incompetant. Where I was frequently totally incompetant, particularly in the depressive phase, was in social situations. Even today, occasionally, I am totally incapable of joining in with conversation, engaging in the sort of pleasantries that are part of most human interactions that are engaged in automatically. Both in ‘work’ social situations, like parties at which journalists mix with politicians, businessmen and other people with power, and in family and friendship gatherings.

This is a substantial disadvantage for a journalist. But I was lucky. Thanks to my other skills I mostly managed to avoid getting fired for it.

They like the Goon Show. Because it contains some choice examples of manic humour.

This is probably not true of all manic depressives. But the nature of the disposition is that to live with yourself you need to develop a sense of humour.

In deep depression nothing seems to help. But in my own experience humour is the best medicine to temporarily lift you out of the introspective gloom. Starting with my sister, who in my childhood was the only person who could joke me out of a black mood.

Sometimes a television, radio or film comedy can have the same effect. You start laughing despite yourself. And once you start laughing the spell is broken.

Come to think of it. Another thing that can break the spell is the opposite. A really moving and powerful tragedy works sometimes. Because it reconnects you with the world outside yourself. Where tragedy is always happening somewhere on the planet.

As you will all know if you read the newspapers.

When in manic flow they can do lots of things better than usually but they cannot put the kettle on.

This is a side-effect of the huge energy and flood of ideas. I move from my desk my desk to the kitchen when I feel thirsty. But by the time I get to the kitchen another idea has struck me, so I literally forget what I was going to do. Or sometimes there is no sugar left in the sugar pot and I have to look in several cupboards before I find the reserve supply.

The ordinary and the mundane seems difficult.

Another example. When I am writing on the crest of a manic wave, which quite often involves expressing some fairly complex ideas, I am suddenly stuck for the spelling of a quite ordinary word which I have typed thousands of times in my life. Like ‘psychiartrist’

These days I don’t even have to stop to pull down the dictionary. I just highlight the word and go into the spell check.

They seem like two different people. Not as different as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. That comes under the psychological category of split personality, which has quite different symtoms. Not schizophrenc, which is again quite different from manic depression or split personality (although frequently Jekyll and Hyde types are referred to in everyday language as schizophrenics).

Nevertheless the contrast between the person when in manic flow and the person when depressed is huge. Which is one reason why manic depressives are not the easiest types to live with. It is not only a contrast between gloom and elation. It is a contrast between intense intropection and a love of fun and partying.

Enough said I think. One of my shortest blogs ever.

They exhibit inappropriate sexual behaviour when in manic flow. I do not quarrel with this as a fact. But it is misleading to focus on the sexual aspect, although that might be the one which is most obvious to the observer. The reality of the manic depressive is quite different. His sexual urges do not suddenly happen when he is manic. They are present throughout the depressive period, but in the hopeless mood they seem impossible to fulfill.

I came across a better way of describing what is going on inside the manic depressive just now on the web site of the Manic Depressive Fellowship. They say that they ‘may be more talkative, outgoing or sexual during’ manic periods.

That is one hundred per cent accurate. The release from gloom and introspection re-awakens the urge to commune with other human beings and to have some fun. Including the sexual contact. But it does not mean that the manic depressive suddenly has an uncontrollable urge to jump on any human being he fancies.

The distinction is important because focussing on the sexual often leads to wrong diagnosis and wrong treatment.

The sex life of the manic depressive is not that much different than that of most human beings who are not manic depressive. Just think of all those MPs whose inappropriate sexual behaviour you have read about at great length in the papers. Starting with Jack Profumo and including Jeffrey Archer and John Prescott, as well as a huge number of MP’s who have not been important enough to stay in the headlines for long.

And, as any parliamentary lobby correspondent will tell you, there are a large number who have behaved in similar ways but have not been exposed by the press.

Like the manics, they do have sexual urges, but what drives them into non-marital beds, is a complex of factors, including that powerful human need to feel loved for what they are, even when they have their trousers down.

They have grandiose ideas and frequently lots of them at the same time when in manic mood. ‘Grandiose’ is the psychiartrists’ word for this characteristic. I would prefer something less negative in connotation. But I cannot think of a better word that would mean something in a headline.

‘Big ideas’ is a more satisfactory description. But it needs a little explaining to mean something. The ideas may not be totally new. But they are usually quite ambitious. And they require a long period of work in order to bring them to reality. Obviously some ideas which emerge in manic flow are unrealistic. And to anyone, listening to a manic producing a stream of ideas, the totality may well seem totally unrealistic.

This is not at all surprising because the manic mood produces such a huge surge of energy it produces over-optimism. All of the ideas will not be put into effect when the energy surge ends.

Commonly the manic mood emerges after a longish period of depression. And some of the ideas that emerge have been rumbling around in the lower reaches of the mind while the manic has been submerged in gloom and introspection.

This blog is an example of a grandiose idea. It covers a much greater range of subjects than most blogs. Which has its disadvatages. So that those readers who are primarily interested in journalism may be annoyed to find on this site today another stream of rants about manic depression.

But tomorrow may well be different.

Peter Scott presumably got his gong because most Vice-Chancellors do. But you only have to read the mission statement of Kingston University to realise that his kind of education is light years away from most of what Tony Blair has been encouraging. Here is the statement:

The mission of Kingston University is to promote participation in Higher Education, which it regards as a democratic entitlement; to strive for excellence in learning, teaching and research; to realise the creative potential and fire the imagination of all its members; and to equip its students to make effective contributions to society and the economy.

Note that contributions to society comes before contributions to the economy.

Peter Scott formulated his ideas about higher education during the many years he spent as a journalist editing The Times Higher Educational Supplement when the Thatcher government was bringing in its own business-orientated ‘reforms’. He continued to speak up for what he believed in, even after Rupert Murdoch acquired the Higher, along with the rest of The Times group. When the Murdoch men began to stamp their imprint on the title, he left and went into higher education to put into practice what he had learnt as a journalist.

He gets thedailynovel award for Knight of the Year.