During my assistant professor years at UCLA, she told me one afternoon that she had an especially difficult topic to bring up. Speaking about the early years of her and my dad’s marriage, she grew tentative. “There was an early sign,” she said, “of what was to come.” She paused. “This is hard to discuss, Steve.”
For the first year of their marriage, they lived in a rented house on the other side of the Olentangy River, not far from campus. She loved that house, she said, which symbolized the promise of their life together. They were looking forward to starting a family one day. Eyes on the highway, the vast sands on all sides, I listened intently.
“But, Steve, your father had what might be called, well, a kinky side. One night, near bedtime, Virg came over to me with a plea. He asked me to tie him up, before we were going to make love.”
At first she didn’t know what to make of his request, but the look in his eye told her that he was completely serious. “‘Just like my stepmother used to do to me,’ he said, ‘when I was growing up and she punished me.’” Hardly believing what Mom was saying, I froze.
Mom continued. “‘Tie you up?’ I said back to him. Steve, I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t imagine what I’d got myself into, a Midwestern girl like me. Most of my friends had married their high school sweethearts. Here I was with this magnetic philosopher from California, with a past I knew nothing about.”
For a moment, the only sound was the hum of the tires on the flat gray pavement.
“I quickly planned my response. I knew that I needed to be clear with him. I told him distinctly: ‘Virgil, I’m not your stepmother, I’m not your keeper, and I’m not your mistress. I’m your wife. I won’t tie you up.’”
I silently calculated. His stepmother had tied him to his bed to deliver her punishments. So had the orderlies at Norwalk, to prevent his wandering at night. Fellow inmates at Byberry had secured him to a pommel horse before beating him.
The picture was coming into focus. Was there any other way for Dad?
For decades Mom had carried a crippling load—of Dad’s madness, of society’s imposed stigma and silence regarding anything related to mental illness, of needing to stay hypervigilant to ensure our survival as a family. The effort had pushed her immune system into high alert, prompting her debilitating arthritis. But her spirit had never broken.
She was finishing her story. “Then and there, Steve, I knew that things in our marriage would never be as I’d planned.”
The stillness inside the car was absolute.
12
Progressive Decline
On a damp night in the early spring of 2009 I gave a reading in Berkeley about my recently published book, The Triple Bind. In front of the sizable crowd I discussed the book’s central premise, that cultural pressures have made teenage girls ever more vulnerable to depression, binge eating, and self-harm, especially those with genetic vulnerabilities or experiences of maltreatment. As girls increasingly experience the message of needing to be both nurturing and kind and academically and athletically competitive—while doing so effortlessly and with a “hot” look—helplessness and internalization frequently result.
Once the question-and-answer period began, an elderly gentleman sitting near the back was among the first to raise his hand. He stood up shakily. The crowd strained to hear his articulate yet faltering voice. “I want the audience to know,” he said, “that I am experiencing déjà vu. Many years ago I was a student of Professor Hinshaw’s father, the esteemed Virgil Hinshaw, at the Ohio State University.” An audible murmur sounded.
Trying to mask my shock, I replied to his question and several others. Afterward, he slowly walked to the podium and introduced himself as Joel Fort—a prominent Bay Area psychologist with strong interests in legal and ethical issues as well as substance abuse. He had fought for progressive policies all his life and had even testified in the Patty Hearst case during the seventies, countering the defense claim of “brainwashing” after her abduction. The topic he most wanted to discuss, however, was Dad. We ended up seeing each other a number of times before he passed away in 2015. During those years Joel surpassed 80 years of age and showed progressive signs of physical decline. Yet he was still enthusiastically engaged in remembrance.
In 1946, I learned, he had been admitted to OSU as a precocious 16-year-old, in an early version of today’s honors programs. He was drawn to the fields of philosophy and psychology. Particularly captivating, he said, was a magnetic new professor in the philosophy department, Virgil Hinshaw, Jr., from whom he took an introductory course. He’d met with Hinshaw in the professor’s office, and the young faculty member and his colleagues had invited him and other students to talks in the community. New worlds were opening up. Joel deeply appreciated the mentorship, particularly because he lacked a real peer group on campus.
The next year he signed up for an advanced course, an erudite tour of the philosophy of science. The dense syllabus, mimeographed a bright purple, rang out with major questions: In what ways do scientific theories form? Can ethics be based on a foundation of logic? How can progress in human thought be measured? Sitting at a restaurant in Berkeley, his hand shaking from a palsy he was developing, Joel told me that each lecture was more enticing than the last. The philosophy department was transforming, he said, inspired by their most recent hire to pursue twentieth-century logical positivism as well as the classics.
Toward the end of the fall ’47 quarter, chairs creaked as the students hurried into the small amphitheater. Joel, the enthused sophomore, marveled at his good fortune. Whispers and bustling ceased as Professor Hinshaw entered the classroom, black hair swept back over his forehead, his gaze intense. What new vistas might be revealed today?
But from the first words at the podium, Joel knew that something was terribly wrong. Hinshaw gazed above their foreheads, a far-off look in his eye. Haughty and self-assured, he spoke without notes, his voice strangely commanding.
“Today we consider our origins,” he proclaimed. “Behold the primordial era, filled with dinosaurs, cavemen, and primitive love. The secret of humanity lies therein!”
The students stared at their notebooks, but the syllabus yielded no connection between the scheduled topic and these rash pronouncements. Hardly pausing, their professor wove a tale of the beginnings of modern humans, focusing on the emergence of empathy from the caves, with man and woman in eternal rapture.
“Battling the elements,” he was now shouting, “overcoming predators, finding its way, humanity prevailed. Cooperation emerged from stark, brute competition! Primitive lust transformed into sensual, deep love! The human species rose to new heights!”
Was this some kind of joke? Joel had initially wondered. But the conviction in his professor’s voice made it clear that whatever was happening was no laughing matter.
Hinshaw was finishing his impromptu lecture. “The Lord has overseen the evolution of our species. The newly formed human spirit will never be broken!”
As he recounted the story, Joel’s face filled with a blend of compassion and horror. It had dawned on him during the lecture that Hinshaw’s inspiration had come from the 1940 film One Million B.C., starring Victor Mature, Carole Landis, and Lon Chaney, Jr. A fable depicting the plight of early humans, the movie was woefully inexact, mixing cavemen and cavewomen with dinosaurs. Even so, it had been nominated for two Oscars. Completely lacking in accuracy and utterly melodramatic, it was just the kind of film that Dad would have lambasted when in his right mind.
Indeed, how did the thread of the course relate to this Hollywood epic? The linkages, it was clear, existed solely in the professor’s fantasies. Despondent, Joel realized that his beloved mentor had become floridly psychotic right in front of the class.
Following the mystifying tirade, the students filed silently from their seats, eyes averted. Thinking fast, Joel formed a strategy. Back in his room, he pulled out the campus telephone directory. Lifting the black receiver from its cradle, he dialed the chair of th
e psychology department, Professor Julian Rotter, a noted personality and clinical psychologist. To Joel’s surprise, the secretary put him right through, and he recounted what had just occurred in the classroom. Rotter was compassionate and forthright, giving assurance that he would take necessary steps. Indeed, rumors had surfaced regarding the new professor’s instability once he’d finished grad school at Princeton, though no one could ever say precisely what had happened. When illnesses are stigmatized, mystery and innuendo take precedence over any truth.
A visiting professor was brought in to cover the final class meetings, but what would become of Professor Hinshaw? It was the suddenness that stayed with him, Joel lamented, the utter surprise of witnessing such complete irrationality from a mind he’d revered. Joel’s first experience of serious mental disorder had floored him.
The following year Joel departed for the University of Chicago to complete his undergraduate years before pursuing graduate studies in psychology. Yet his lasting remembrance of Ohio State was how his professor’s usual intellect and demeanor had vanished overnight.
Within days of the incident, I’ve surmised, Dad was committed to his first stay at Columbus State Hospital, the massive mental facility on the west side of the city. This was his third involuntary commitment, following Norwalk as a teen—where he received no intervention whatsoever—and Byberry as a newly minted Ph.D., with its insulin coma therapy and reported beatings. This time, his wild thoughts and fantastic pronouncements were masked by sedative medications and his initial experience with ECT. Why, he wondered, must I once again replace my clothes with the drab uniforms of inmates, with no belts allowed over the baggy pants, to prevent self-hanging? Each day’s routine was interrupted by shouts of despair and rage in some corner of the wards. Who would get sent to solitary lock-up today?
Somehow, the episode abated within a few weeks and he was released. Back on campus for winter quarter, he never spoke of his detour into madness. He’d learned to pick up the pieces and forge ahead. If anyone were to know, they’d understand only that he’d become one of the forgotten—less than human, little more than a beast.
Although he wouldn’t have phrased it as such, by that time Dad was clearly experiencing anticipated stigma: the fear of what might happen if the world were to know about his flaw, his mark. This expectation is a particular concern for groups with hidden or potentially concealable stigmas, like mental illness. If everyone can readily see your “difference,” such as skin color or being bound to a wheelchair, there’s no secret to keep. But if the issue is hidden, the choice of whether or not to reveal always lurks. What friends will you lose? What jobs won’t you get? Will you ever attain an intimate relationship? Not only does anticipated stigma prevent disclosure but it stops people from taking on important life challenges. When trauma and maltreatment enter the mix, stigma and shame typically escalate, as victims tend to blame themselves—and keep such experiences secret.
Like so many others of his era, Dad did everything in his power to hide what had transpired during those periods in his life when his mind had spun out of control. He expected the worst if people were to know—for good reason, given the abject stigma of the times. How different his life might have been had he been able to safely tell his future wife, his colleagues, and his friends about his lifelong struggles. How much freer he might have felt with the support of peers who had lost their way, just as he had.
Later that year he was introduced to a striking graduate student in history, Alene Pryor. Intensely attracted to each other after their blind date, they saw more and more of each other and later became engaged. His chapter on Einstein’s social and moral philosophy was causing a stir, as were the sole-authored publications he’d written while a graduate student at Princeton. Once again, his trajectory was ascendant.
If only he could cling to the rational side of existence; if only he could maintain absolute silence about the chaos. No one might ever know.
*
My own name was climbing the academic ladder. I was conducting federally supported summer programs for kids with behavior disorders, writing empirical articles and theoretical papers on the development of children’s mental health problems, and giving talks at national and international conferences. I was the favored son back at UCLA, which had opened a child study center the year I returned, a terrific base for the work I was doing. Yet I realized that I’d always be viewed by my colleagues as the up-and-coming youngster, a glorified gofer, rather than a true adult, an independent scholar.
Still, I wondered whether I could make it happen anywhere else. During my second year back in Southern California, Berkeley finally listed an assistant professor position. I couldn’t imagine uprooting so soon and let it pass. By some miracle the slot remained unfilled, and the following fall I received plaintive phone calls from Berkeley faculty asking for my application. Moments before the deadline, I raced to send my materials via Federal Express. My having waited until the last minute betrayed my ambivalence.
Beneath the strategic debates over where best to thrive as a professor and father, behind the back-and-forth with Roberta about a potential return to the Bay Area, the real reason for my conflict went deeper. When he was reaching his thirties—the same age that I was now—Dad had already begun a slow, inexorable decline, fueled by his devastating episodes and brutal hospitalizations, including his journey back to 1,000,000 B.C. just as his career was launching. During the early years of his marriage, after he’d achieved tenure, he spent considerable time in hospitals following wildly erratic episodes, gradually losing his professional edge. Although many philosophers, mathematicians, and physicists perform their seminal work while in their twenties, Dad’s misdiagnosed and maltreated mental illness had clearly sped his demise.
So how could I be eclipsing Dad? He was the one who’d set out to pursue life’s fundamental questions; he was the one who’d rescued me when I’d been lost. Surpassing him felt like a betrayal. With the benefit of hindsight, I understand that I was experiencing survivor guilt, which emerges when someone makes it through a disaster while others succumb. Consequences include self-blame, guilt, and a view of one’s own life as insignificant. Maybe I hadn’t survived a plane crash, but it felt as though I were combing through wreckage of a different sort, and it was troubling to me that I’d dared to transcend the family legacy.
By winter, I’d made the finalist group at Berkeley and interviewed during torrential February rains, in the days when such storms actually happened. I spent the last morning of my three days of presentations and meetings beside the hospital bed of the former head of the clinical psychology program, Shelly Korchin. He was the psychologist who’d interviewed the Mercury astronauts years before, founded the modern clinical psychology program at Berkeley, and took a liking to me during his waning years when I did my visiting professor stint. He’d become acutely ill with a relapse of his long-standing cancer but insisted on being a part of the search committee. He cast his vote for me just in time, surviving my visit and the crucial meetings just weeks before passing away. Though it took half a year to receive the formal offer, I was clearing out my UCLA office the following fall.
Following the anguish related to the decision, a strange thing happened when I arrived on the Berkeley campus. From my first morning I felt propelled by a jet stream. I knew instantly that this was my chance to make an independent mark. I’d almost stayed back in Columbus after high school out of unspoken guilt; I’d almost decided to play out my academic career at UCLA, where things felt like a sure bet. Each time something pushed me to forge ahead. Sometimes you just have to trust your gut.
Berkeley’s psychology building is named for Edward Tolman, the eminent scientist whose classic work of the 1930s and 1940s revealed that even rodents running a maze use mental maps to guide their behavior. In essence, he was the founder of modern cognitive psychology. Yet Tolman quit Berkeley during the 1950s rather than sign the newly formed loyalty oath for California employees, a legacy of McCarthy
ism. After his protest registered far and wide, he returned to Berkeley in triumph a few years later, where he ended his career. Upon arriving, I felt that I was breathing rarefied air.
Still, many of my days were lonely. I was the only assistant professor in the department, and for much of the week I was a single parent because Roberta had entered UCLA’s doctoral program in public health, commuting each week back to Southern California to work toward her degree.
But with the hills looming right above the campus and the Bay in sight, the quality of the air was striking. Starting in late January and stretching until June, the Northern California spring yields new blossoms every few weeks in a continual reawakening. I created an undergraduate course on developmental psychopathology, covering the continuing interplay between biology and context to shape disorder and resilience. Things continued to heat up career-wise. I was awarded a major grant, as one of six investigators for a cross-site study involving a clinical trial of medication, behavioral treatment, and their combination to alter the trajectory of academic and behavioral problems of children with serious attention deficits and impulsivity. I sailed through tenure review, which I’d delayed with the move, and received full professorship a couple of years later. I had launched.
*
To find order amid chaos, scientists seek patterns. To organize the vast amounts of raw material in front of them, they create schemes and hierarchies. They classify.
It worked for the periodic table of elements, where ordered rows provide insights about the atomic mechanisms underlying matter. It worked, with adjustments to incorporate modern genetics, for Linneaus’s classification of the plant and animal kingdoms into subdivisions, all the way down to species. It worked, too, for the eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages of geological time, which organize the age of the earth according to strata and striations of rock (think, for example, of the Cretaceous and Jurassic). Medical classifications, involving symptoms, signs, syndromes, and diseases, have helped to save countless lives.
Another Kind of Madness Page 21