The Illness of I

I’ve been thinking about the last few times I’ve written for this blog. I mean, the entries where I worried about how the psychiatric profession might be anti-individualist—and, indeed, might even define the self as madness.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more uncomfortable I’ve become with that thesis. I wonder if it isn’t kind of a straw man argument. I mean, I don’t know that many psychotherapists to start with, and of these I’ve only known a few …alright, three…who could be really called fans of mass conformity. There was “Dr. Churl,” who I mentioned before. Then, there was a therapist I had (very briefly) who feared that maybe my interest in writing and video were misplaced. Though, honestly, I don’t know whether that was so much a comment on my individuality as a comment on my talent, or complete lack there-of.

And there was a fellow I met at a party some years ago. He was a psychiatrist, an M.D., and not merely (as he was quick to assure you) a psychologist or therapist. Anyway, he found out I was writing about the UNIX operating system for various magazines (this was the 1990s), and then he became really quite abusive. I was, he said, clearly an advocate “for some bizarre, non-standard equipment,” meaning, not Microsoft. Though, of course, this was back in the bad old days of the operating system wars, and you could expect that sort of thing on a regular basis from all sorts of people.

(Oh, and by the way, that was one of my rare triumphs. I gave as good as I got in that particular argument. Indeed, I told him exactly where to get off, and what he could do at the toll booth when he got there. The fact that I was also right, and that UNIX and UNIX-like systems are still going strong after all these years, also adds a certain pleasure to the memory.)

But, well, other than that, and maybe a couple more here and there, that’s about it. Psychotherapists and their kin don’t seem to be any more anti-individualist than any other professionals, and certainly a good deal less than some.

So, why my insistence on writing about the issue? I suppose there are three reasons. First, I genuinely am concerned about the power of the psychological sciences if they are employed in the wrong way—as they were in the Soviet mental “hospitals” in the bad old days of the Cold War. And, frankly, I’m not sure that something like that couldn’t happen again, particularly as it seems Liberal Democracy gets a little more shaky every day, and mind control gets a little more possible by the hour.

And, second, I suppose Dr. Churl left a real welt on me. I’m still working him out. Maybe these entries are a way of doing that—a sort of self-analysis to deal with the analyst.

And, third and finally, maybe I was just looking for a topic that would let me use one word in particular.  To be precise, Drapetomania.

What is that? Well, before the Civil War in this country, when slavery was legal, slave owners looked for ways to justify their exploitation of others’ sweat and toil. One way of doing that was to define slaves as being intellectually ill-suited for freedom…indeed, to be naturally inclined to servility. And so, ergo, obviously, if an [Insert N-word Here] longed for freedom, well, then, that [Insert N-word] here must be insane.

So, one prominent physician, Samuel A. Cartwright, obligingly provided a diagnosis and a word for the disease of liberty, “Drapetomania,” from the Greek drapétēs, meaning “runaway,” and manía, of obvious meaning. He even offered a treatment or two. They involved the whip, the chain, the strategic mutilation…toes, for instance.

And so, my friends, hence my fears…for as I look out upon the world as it is today, where the power imbalance between the great and the potent and the rest of us grows ever more uneven, and vast corporations demand more and more of their employees in return for less and less…

I fear…

How easy it would be for some future Dr. Cartwright or TED-talking Management Guru or obscenely powerful CEO to decide…

That our freedom, our liberty, our individuality …was quite simply, quite literally …

Insane.

The Great American Individual

I was just re-reading my own writing, specifically the recent posting about individualism in America. It struck me that I might be vulnerable to criticism with that piece—more so, that is, than usual—because I seem to indicate that America has a problem with individualism, at least in terms of writing and self-expression.

Yet, isn’t America the quintessence of individualism? Isn’t our culture the one which, more than any other, grants every citizen the option to make or remake their selves as they see fit? Choose the career, the life you like, the person you wish to marry…and, with luck and with pluck, and much hard work, you may succeed. Or you may not. But either way it is up to you.

It is, I think, very much at the heart of American identity, of our shared and not always conscious conception of ourselves. I also think it is true, or pretty much so. We really do give people the right to make or break themselves in whatever manner they see fit.

Certainly, that’s a great deal more the case here than in much of the rest of the world, even today, even in this twenty-first century. In many places still, people are born into an identity, which they cannot change. (I remember seeing a scene in the movie Gods And Monsters, which was a sort of fictionalized biography of James Whale, the director of the 1931 movie version of Frankenstein. At one point, the aged Whale [as played by Ian McKellen] has a memory of his youth. In the scene, a flashback, Whale as a young boy in an English Midlands farming family is busily sketching in a notebook. His mother rebukes him. “Don’t get above yourself,” she says. “Leave drawing to the artists.” It never once occurs to her that he might be one.)

So, yes, we are a nation of individualists.

And yet…and yet…

I can never escape the feeling that there is a difference between being an individualist and being an individual. That is, you can “stand on your own two feet,” and “stand your ground,” or whatever you want to call it…and still be exactly like the person next to you, who is also standing on their own two feet and standing their ground, a .38 Special in one hand and a copy of Atlas Shrugged in the other.

And I’ve a feeling that society wouldn’t be so eager to grant you the right to be an individualist if you were also a bit odd…if, for example, you were standing-your-ground while holding not a gun but an unpopular opinion.

In fact, come right down to it, I sort of think we’re allowed to be individuals so long as we are the kind of individuals that the larger culture demands we be. We are part, to quote an advertisement for Dr. Pepper that I saw long ago in the 1970s, “of an original crowd.” (What a lovely contradiction in terms that is.)

Specifically, I think we are allowed to be (or try to be) an individual who is a success in business or the professions. Not too successful, of course. And not in any way challenging to the system as a whole. But, a success…with a house in the ‘burbs and an IRA, and a long standing membership in the Church of Our Choice (even if we don’t go very often, and so long as it isn’t the wrong Choice), and children in a Good School, and with a Good Future (to be just like we are). Or, maybe, just to make the image a little more modern, we’ll also offer the option of a condo in the city and being an atheist or agnostic, so long as it is the right sort of atheism or agnosticism, nothing, that is, which might be too distressing to the minds of the many and the pure.

Or, to put it all another way, we are the rugged and self-sufficient individuals…that the Power Elite wants us to be…

…the individualist who is un-troubling, and undemanding, and causes no worries to the great and the powerful. And who believes that if he fails, that it is his own fault, and not that the System is stacked against him. And who, out of his shame and guilt, will never ask that the rich, in however small a fashion, share their wealth with others…

We are, in other words, the perfect caste. Our own Gods and Monsters…

The evil mother in our heads telling us, now and forever, and with such certainty…

Not to get above ourselves.

The War Against I

The other day I ran into a friend at the gym. We greeted each other with some surprise (neither of us knew the other was a member) and then chatted before returning to the various instruments of torture with which we hope to regain something like youth and health.

In the conversation, he told me that he had begun reading my most recent book, Padre. It’s the one I wrote about my parents and their passing. Then, he said an interesting thing. “You write like you talk,” he said. “Reading the book is like hanging out with you.”

I think he meant it as a compliment. I’ll take it as one, anyway. But, why I mention this (besides my own egotism) is that I’ve heard something quite different more than once. I have spent much of my life fighting tooth and nail to write as I do…or, indeed, even just to employ the first person pronoun.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been rebuked for it. I once had someone count up the number of times I used “I” or “me” in a text that was about one of my own experiences, and then she presented the total to me as though it were evidence of a complete moral failing. I had the impression that she would preferred it if I had written about myself entirely in third person. (“And then Michael Jay Tucker considered the oncoming car. Would he jump to the left or the right? Or would he perhaps run straight into the grill as a gesture of defiance? Michael Jay Tucker considered his options…”)

But it isn’t just “I” and “me” that offends people. It is the sheer sound of my voice that annoys them. For example, I once did a book on Seward Collins, a literary figure of the 1930s who hasn’t been much explored but who should be better known. He was an early lover of Dorothy Parker, and later a self-described fascist.

My book did get fairly good reviews in Academe, on those rare occasions that it was actually reviewed. Though, not everyone agreed. For example, there was an academic I encountered on the web and with whom corresponded. She had written a couple of books on similar topics. I tried to read them. Frankly, they were so larded up with postmodern jargon that they were almost indecipherable.

Anyway, we exchanged emails a couple of times, and she asked me to post glowing reviews of her books to Amazon and some of the academic networks. Because I thought we’d have sort of quid-pro-quo thing in operation, and that she’d post similar reviews of my book, I did.

So, I sent her a copy of my own book on Collins…and she wrote back, horrified, that she couldn’t possibly review it. Oh, the facts and conclusions were fine…but the tone…the tone! “You write like you talk!” she said, utterly aghast.

Needless to say, I removed all my glowing recommendations from Amazon and elsewhere as fast as my little fingers could hit the delete key.

Though, to be fair, it wasn’t just the odd academic who hated the fact that I sound “just like I talk.” I gave a copy of the book to a friend. Actually, I thought he was one of my best friends. Later, I found out I was probably wrong. Anyway, I gave him the book. He read it, or said he read it, though he resolutely avoided discussing the book whenever we met. Finally, I encountered him in a parking lot one day and bluntly asked him what he thought of it. “Well,” he said, uncomfortably, “I can hear your voice in it.”

It was said in the tone of a man who is struggling to find something neutral to say, like someone asked to comment on the baby’s most recent BM. That’s not so bad, is it? Well, yes. But then again, no.

Still, I suppose that wasn’t exactly an objection to my voice, merely to the book as a whole. Which, I guess, is a step up. After a fashion.

But getting back to my point, I have consistently encountered objections to any form of unique voice in writing—mine, or anyone else’s—pretty much everywhere I’ve gone in the world of text. And, I suppose, maybe, I guess… I can understand it in the case of mainstream journalism (not New Journalism, which is really Creative Nonfiction) because in mainstream reporting, you are not the subject of your story. You’re writing about something else. Your purpose is purely to convey information. So, maybe…

However, I’m less sympathetic to such claims when it comes to academic work, at least in the liberal arts, because I think they’re basically fraudulent. I think that what the academic is attempting to do with “academic style” is feign the objectivity, detachment, and “evidence based” conclusions of writing in the STEM professions. And, frankly, a paper about what this or that author really meant with this poem or that novel is not like a paper on the production of muons or the extinction of synapsids. The level of certainty is simply not there.

(Ironically, this is particularly true of postmodernists, who so often cling desperately to certitude, even while they claim that an objective evaluation of the universe is not possible. I understand the arguments, but I do not envy those who make them. Their position is too vulnerable even to their own self-reflection.)

And when I encounter opposition to a “personal voice” in fiction, poetry, or personal essay I am genuinely appalled. Surely, in these, the most individual of arts, the individual would be valued most of all. Yet, it is not so. Instead, you hear far too often a call for some kind of dis-individualization …for the fiction or the poem which is “not self-indulgent,” for the essay that contains no sign of the first person singular, for absence of the dreaded self.

Somehow we have come to an odd place in our intellectual development as a society. Somehow, the individual, the ego, the self…these are catered to in the popular culture. Indeed, to be selfish is presented as a virtue (think of Ayn Rand), and, more importantly, as a marketing strategy (“expensive, yes, but you’re worth it”).

However, to be self-ish is not necessarily to be individualistic. You can be a pig, and yet be identical to all the other squealing furies in the pen.

Thus, somehow, we honor the ego, even narcissism, in the market…but in self-expression, the self is suspect.

What concerns me most of all, though, is that I think this dis-individualization of the individual appears even in our conception of mental health. I’ve already mentioned in a recent posting, I think, the therapist I had once who defined my pleasure in writing, and writing in my own voice, as evidence of a disturbing neurosis.

And, of course, in the greater scheme of things, there have always been people, even psychologists, who have said that the use of “I” and “me” in writing is the dead give away of a morbid narcissist. I gather that one’s been debunked a bit, but, more recently I have run across studies which claim people suffering from Depression are more likely to use the first person singular in their writing.

Not to say a word against this research or the researchers, but I am concerned. I could see the less tolerant among us (and there are so many such) seizing upon such papers to support a profoundly dangerous thesis—to wit that selfhood is itself menacing, questionable, to be treated medically, and, in time, repressed as thoroughly as smallpox and plague.

And thus we would enter an age as fruitless as can be imagined. The day of the un-person. The era of the empty suit…

Never once self-indulgent.

As uniform and soulless as the termite.

And just as much without joy.