Notes from a Drama Workshop ...

Poet and playwright Síomón Solomon 

 discussing his audio drama Hölderlin's Poltergeists 

at Queen Mary University of London (9 June 2023)

  

I.

 

Whilst attending a table read of selected scenes from Síomón Solomon's Hölderlin's Poltergeists (2021) [1], I was struck by the idea that madness often manifests itself as the hearing of multiple voices, whereas, on the other hand, sane individuals are those who listen faithfully (and in compliance) to the voice of reason (or, as it is sometimes referred to, common sense). 

 

In other words, we might define insanity as a form of disobedience, i.e., an inability (or refusal) to turn towards (and heed) the sound of a unified voice (be it of man or God) which speaks the Truth (as an expression of moral logic), and sanity as a form logocentricity. 

 

This perhaps helps to explain why certain philosophers and artists are fascinated by madness and write in favour of polyvocality, straining their ears to hear multiple voices whispering in many alien tongues, where others like to discern but one voice speaking clearly in a comprehensible manner.       

 

 

II.

 

Academics interested in the history (or, perhaps better to say, histories) of mental ill-health are also keen these days to "place the voices of previously silent, marginalised and disenfranchised individuals at the heart of their analyses" [2] - to let the mad speak for themselves, as it were, and celebrate neurodiversity as just another form of queerness. 

 

Whether this is as productive (and as radical) as some believe, I don't know ...

 

For whilst I'm quite happy to reflect on strangeness and listen to psychotic voices - even to the howling of wolves, or the loud rumble of thunder - in order to grasp something of a reality that isn't exclusively defined by human reason, I'm not sure we can (or should) re-imagine our own identities on the delusions of a mad poet calling himself Scardanelli ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written several posts on Síomón Solomon's astonishing drama for voices, a work that is not merely a translation from the German of Stephan Hermlin's radio play, Scardanelli, but an extended remix. Click here to read a selection of such. 

      The table read took place at Queen Mary University of London, in Mile End, as part of a two-day arts and mental health event on the theme of queering boundaries: click here for details.  

 

[2] Those who are interested in this might like to take a look at Voices in the History of Madness, a collection of interdisciplinary essays ed. Robert Ellis, Sarah Kendal, and Steven J. Taylor, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). I quote here from the introduction to this work. 

      I would also encourage readers to check out the following article by Allan Beveridge, 'Voices of the mad: patients' letters from the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, 1873-1908', in Psychological Medicine, Vol. 27, Issue 4, (Cambridge University Press, July 1997), pp. 899-908. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329179700490X 

Pippi Greenstocking: Notes on the Case of Greta Thunberg

Illustration: @artbyneva on Instagram

I.

Once upon a time, there was a young girl from Sweden called Greta. Greta had pigtails and was an unconventional child with special gifts who cared so much about climate change that she stopped going to school. Often, she would attempt to shame adults into listening to her, especially if they were more concerned with putting profit before the planet.

Many found Greta inspirational; others mockingly called her Pippi Greenstocking. And a few expressed their concern that her neurodiversity made her vulnerable and prone to fanaticism and fantasy ...

II.

Paulina Neuding, for example, is interested in the role Greta's parents have played in her meteoric rise to international fame. Her father, Svante Thunberg, is an actor and her mother, Malena Ernman, a successful opera singer, so both dream of transforming the world into a stage and seek the limelight.

A book, published last year and entitled Scener från Hjärtat, tells the story of Greta and her family - including her younger sister, Beata - in sometimes harrowing detail. Narrated by Malena, the work was written, apparently, with the collaboration of her husband and daughters.

As Neuding notes, this story is framed in terms of a family and a planet in crisis - and, rather oddly, these crises are inextricably linked. The personal is political, as they used to say in the sixties.

Thus it is, for example, that Scenes from the Heart claims that the "oppression of women, minorities, and people with disabilities stem from the same overarching root problem as climate change: an unsustainable way of life. The family's private crisis and the global climate crisis [...] are simply symptoms of the same systemic disorder."

Little wonder, therefore, that Greta seems to take everything so personally; insisting people wake up to the coming eco-apocalypse and feel the fear, pain and panic that she experiences daily. Greta Thunberg protests not merely because she believes the planet is dying, but because she feels as if she were dying inside too.

Her mother's hope seems to be that once the planet has been saved and there is environmental justice for all, then Greta and Beata can also be happy and healthy, overcoming their depression, anxiety, eating and obsessive-compulsive disorders, selective mutism, etc.

Without wishing to say anything negative about Greta, question her phenomenal impact, or deny the existential threat posed by climate change, Neuding wonders whether it's advisable to groom an anguished sixteen-year-old into a global icon ...?

Adults - including politicians and journalists such as herself - have a responsibility to not be carried away by messianic hysteria: "It is time we stopped to ask if we are using her, failing her, and even sacrificing her, for what we perceive to be a greater good." 

See: Paulina Neuding, 'Self-Harm Versus the Greater Good: Greta Thunberg and Child Activism', Quillete (23 April 2019): click here. 

For a sister post to this one on Greta as child saviour or witch, click here. 

Here's to the Crazy Ones: In Praise of Emotional Intensity

Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh

Lust for Life (1956)

Austrian-American psychoanalyst Ernest Hartmann was famously interested in what he termed boundaries of the mind - particularly those that determine the degree of separateness or connection between mental functions and processes and help shape distinct personality types.

According to Hartmann and his followers, emotionally intense individuals with less robust boundaries between themselves and the world, should be valued by society rather than derided as thin-skinned drama queens who confuse fantasy and reality and obsess over things of little or no interest to most people.

These complex and often uniquely gifted individuals - who are frequently misunderstood even by their family and friends - feel more powerfully, think more poetically, and have uncanny powers of perception rooted in a rich inner life. It's not surprising then, that so many of them become artists, philosophers, religious visionaries, or daydream believers.

If it's difficult for those of us not blessed (or cursed) with their abilities to fully understand or appreciate them, it's often just as difficult for these rare spirits to fully accept themselves and they can be subject to strongly negative emotions of self-doubt and self-loathing as well as positive states of euphoria. 

Sometimes, they can feel disoriented or acutely pained even by everyday experience and their proneness to psychological stress or anxiety can physically manifest itself in the form of migraines, asthma, panic attacks, hallucinations, or seizures. Thus, it isn't easy living in a state of heightened sensitivity or being possessed by dreams, desires, and demons.

Nor is it much fun being reminded on a daily basis that one is odd and needs to calm down, grow up, and get real. Often, even those who say they celebrate neurodiversity still treat emotional intensity as a disorder or form of psychopathology akin to bipolarism and borderline personality.

But, in the end, are we not all defective in some manner and to a greater or lesser degree? Indeed, isn't it our imperfections and failings that not only give rise to creativity and comedy, but make us human?

I wouldn't go so far as to say that sanity is merely a form of disguised madness, but I'd accept that irrational and impulsive behaviour is an important component of who we are and that sickness, perversity and passion often serve to advance culture.      

In sum: we need our décadents, as Nietzsche would say; though, as Paul Gauguin discovered, dealing with friends who are as handy with a razor as they are with a paintbrush, isn't always easy ...

See:

Ernest Hartmann, Boundaries in the Mind: A New Psychology of Personality, (Basic Books, 1991).

Ernest Hartmann, Boundaries: A New Way to Look at the World, (CIRCC EverPress, 2011).

Imi Lo, Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity, (Hodder and Stoughton, 2018).

Note that the author of the above work - who describes herself as a Specialist Psychotherapist and Arts Therapist who has trained in yoga and holistic health and practices in a manner that combines psychology with "other physical and spiritual healing modalities" - has a website devoted to Eggshell Therapy for those who identify as emotionally intense: click here.