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.