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Psychotically Frightened to Death
| Article
# : |
17957 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1990 |
3,283 Words |
| Author
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Ann-Louise Silver, M.D.
Ann-Louise Silver, M.D., is on the medical staff of Chestnut
Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. In addition to teaching and
writing about psychodynamic psychotherapy, she has edited
Psychoanalysis and Psychosis (International Universities
Press, 1989), illness in the Analyst (IUP, in press), and
Psychoanalysis and the Severely Ill (Guilford Press, in
press). |
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we
started
And know the place for the first
time."
T.S. Eliot
Four Quartets: "Little Gidding"
"There's one good thing
about this place, though.
My doctor is good.
I think I can talk to
him easily now…"
Rickie
Rickie, Dr. Frederic Flach's daughter, fell ill at age fourteen: "Daddy, I'm scared because…I want to die." Over the next decade, she stayed in many hospitals undergoing various treatments. In Rickie, her psychiatrist father shares his perspective with us. He is both an insider, used to treating patients, and an outsider, watching others treat his daughter. As a therapist at a psychodynamic hospital, I wish I could examine Rickie's case more fully, for much of Rickie's drama of illness and treatment takes place behind a drawn curtain.
Interspersed throughout the book are Rickie's contributions - recollections, letters, and poetry. They sparkle with intense self-scrutiny. Like Joanne Greenberg, powerhouse author of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, she teaches the lesson often resisted by the healthy. Psychosis is not simply a chemical phenomenon but a metal one as well; the process of recovery brings wisdom and strength. Her observations how her enlightened hopefulness evolved could influence the treatment of many patients.
A psychodynamic approach
As the turn-of-the century psychiatrist William Alanson White taught: "The difference between the so-called insane person or the criminal on the one hand and the so-called sane or normal person on the other is only a difference in quantity…of the various tendencies and stimuli with which he has to deal." Just as we all have the capacity for nay of the insanities, all mentally ill people have the capacity to recover.
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