Doris Lessing believes we are all much closer to craziness than we like to believe. In conversations with Ivan Tyrrell she talks about age, breakdowns and sufism.

Lessing: I've been thinking a lot recently about an old woman I got to know, particularly with reference to Alzheimer's, a word we spray around fairly lightly. I knew her for six or seven years before she finally died when she was over ninety.

She was, in fact, a woman of low intelligence. She had a poor childhood and married because it was expected of her, Most of her adult life she was a waitress and adored her work. She was a completely social person — she danced and had a wonderful pub life — and this social satisfaction was what she wanted from life.

At the age of sixty-five she was given the sack from her job because she was too old. Shortly after that her husband died. She had no pension and she went to pieces. From having the restaurant, where she worked and where everybody knew and loved her and she had a lot of friends, she became an old woman alone in her room. She became a drunk. People round here told me about it, and at the time I got to know her, she was into her eighties and totally demoralised. Although by then she was no longer drinking so much, she was in a filthy condition and could hardly get out of the flat. What really interested me about this was not the side issues about social services and so on, it was that because she had never been anything else but a social person and couldn't cope with being alone, she got more and more stupid when she was on her own. Whenever you went to see her, if she had been alone for twenty-four hours, you'd think she was demented. I'm sure any doctor would say she was suffering from ‘Alzheimer's' or senility or something, but I noticed that if she had two or three people in to talk to her for a while, the craziness left her. She made sense. Sense on a pretty low level, but it was sense.

The point about her not being intelligent is relevant because, although she had always been a stupid woman, when she was normal, she made sense, was lively and quite funny. But whenever the services hadn't worked, and perhaps no one had seen her for two or three days, and I visited her, she was gone — totally senile again!

This happened again and again, I would go and see her and, when I arrived, she would ramble and waffle. She didn't know what time of day it was, what day of the week, or the year. But, by the time I left, she would be making perfect sense again. She was properly herself.

Now this seems to me terribly important. I cannot help but wonder how many old people are diagnosed as ill, or senile, when in fact they just need human contact.

Tyrrell: I'm sure that's true. I've also noticed that people who work on their own at home for long periods, for example, illustrators, behave oddly. I used to commission work from illustrators. Their work was detailed and time consuming requiring long periods of concentration. The artists often got obsessive about it and spent long, lonely hours working. And when I went to see them they would behave strangely for a while, either very extroverted — talking crazily a me for an hour or two, needing lots of attention — or be excessively introverted, taking ages to start talking and gradually becoming more themselves again. So people that work alone for days on end also get odd.

Lessing: But they weren't mentally ill?

Tyrrell: Well, not disturbingly so. But illustrators and artists have a reputation for eccentricity and obsession and I think this is why. Some cultivate this, of course, but I noticed many times that, by spending time with them, they would get okay again. What you're saying is, if people are left alone for days orweeks on end, they are bound to go crazy.

Lessing: And then they are given drugs by some busy doctor who says, ‘This person is senile', or whatever. And then they get worse even more quickly. There was a time when this old lady was told to take five different kinds of drugs each day. But no one ever asked what relation these drugs had to each other in her brain and body. She threw the drugs away when no one was looking for which I applauded her. And then she became quite reasonable again. But I wonder if people who look after the elderly are taught the concept that an old person living by themselves is not necessarily crazy but maybe just needs more contact with other people?

Tyrrell: They must be. Many people must have observed this.

Lessing: If it is taught they certainly didn't apply it to her and, if it isn't taught, then that's pretty frightening.

Tyrrell: One nurse going round has to visit so many people, And these nurses are under so much pressure, they can only spare a few minutes with each one, which is sad if that visit is the highlight of that old person's week.

Lessing: At one time this particular old woman was getting visits most days from a nurse who would come in for five minutes to make sure she took her pills. A home help was also supposed to do an hour and a half a week with her but would usually end up doing ten minutes. A social worker would sweep in and out once a week but for as short a time as possible. The person who helped most was a good neighbour — she was the best of the lot. What disturbed me was the readiness of the doctors to just drug her. I didn't see the point of that.

Tyrrell: That's how doctors are taught to treat people but many of them question this nowadays.

Lessing: It's a matter of luck what doctor you have. I once met Dr William Sargent who wrote Battle for the Mind and we were talking about drug treatments and he said, "Put yourself in my position. I'm sitting at my desk and in front of me is a totally depressed person and I know that there's a good chance that this depression will be shifted by a course of a certain drug. Now, what would you do?" Well I didn't know what to say because I should imagine one would try anything to get rid of depression. But what strikes me is that all these drugs treatments are so hit and miss. No one really seems to know what they are doing. It's all "if it works, good. If not, let's try something else..."

Tyrrell: Do you know much about depression in other cultures?

Lessing: I only know that some cultures don't have a word for it. A doctor friend of mine who trained here in the west but is working out in Bangalore, told me that there they bring in young women day after day who are totally depressed, but it was no use talking to them in the language we use here — it was no good asking, "Are you unhappy?", or "Why are you unhappy?" or, "What do you think brought this on?" because happiness is not something that they feel they are entitled to. He had to develop a whole new approach to communicate with them. There was no way he could talk directly to the patient, he had to talk through the relatives, which was difficult because they were often responsible for the depression.

Peter Brent, who wrote, among other things, Godmen of India, mentioned in one of the books that a doctor in India would often take a mentally sick patient out of their family and into his own household to join his large, extended family. The idea was that a saner setting would cure the insane person. It's the opposite of putting people in mental hospitals. Apparently it often worked.

Tyrrell: There is a lot of evidence that depression and schizophrenia are due to people cracking up under impossible stresses from their family or work situation. The abnormal behaviours of schizophrenics often seem to be strategies for dealing with apparently irreconcilable situations.

Lessing: I think that we are all much nearer being crazy than we ever want to think about. I once sent myself crazed on purpose. I wrote about it in my book The Four Gated City. I had been struck by the fact that, if you read accounts of what shamans do when they initiate people, and what people experience in prison camps, and what schizophrenics and others describe, the symptoms are nearly always the same. They hear voices, become disassociated and have revelations. The thing they all have in common is that they haven't eaten or slept well.

Now this thought was precipitated by seeing what happened to a girl who was living at my house at the time. A tall, thin, beautiful girl who was unhappy in her love life. She didn't eat or sleep properly for weeks. One day she suddenly found herself floating above her own body looking down as she walked across Westminster Bridge.

So, okay, I thought, I am going to try this — and I do not recommend this to anybody. I went down to my place in Devon where I knew I wouldn't be interrupted because it's difficult to have a couple of weeks by oneself in London. I went without food and sleep, deliberately watching everything that happened. It took about three days for me to begin going crazy. Then what happened was that a 'figure' appeared that I christened the 'self-hater'. It's a creature schizophrenics often describe. This figure, a person who shouts and screams at us, is obviously the conditioned conscience. It is what society creates in us, what daddy and mummy do to us; "Oh, you're a naughty girl", or "Oh, you're a naughty boy." It exists inside one but sounds as if it's coming from outside.

Anyway this voice yammering away in my head was terrifying because it was so strong. And two thoughts were running through my mind as this was happening. The first thought was that, if I wasn't moderately sophisticated in this area, I'd rush off and tell a doctor what I was experiencing and he would fill me full of drugs and probably have me sectioned. And the other thought was the fact that some of the hallucinations I was experiencing were common in all accounts of breakdowns. For example, 'the voyage', which appears in different cultures all over the world and takes different forms. If you're a Tibetan you have one type of journey or if you're Egyptian you have another. Christians have the stations of the cross. Ancient Greeks had Jason looking for the golden fleece. There is always a journey. And I had my journey.

So I watched all these things going on inside me which would have landed me in a mental hospital if I didn't know what I was doing. Well, my time in Devon was coming to an end and, after two weeks, I started to eat and sleep properly again. It took a long time, at least three weeks, to get back to normal. So I think that perhaps a lot of people are having breakdowns, or described as schizophrenics, who are simply not eating or sleeping enough. Students studying for exams, for example, often go over the edge. People crossing the Atlantic in small boats hear God talking to them, especially when food is running low. It also seems to me that it's people who have been brought up too rigidly in one way or another who have this 'self-hater' in them — this bullying, "you are naughty" figure. And it's not too far below the surface. So craziness is not quite as far away as we like to think.

Tyrrell: No it's not. And, of course, sleep deprivation and poor diet have been used to manipulate people since time immemorial. But now this is well known it should be possible to help people who are suffering.

Lessing: That's right. It ought to be. Kurt Vonegutt's son had a schizophrenic breakdown in the 1960's. He went crazy and then wrote a stage by stage account of his breakdown and why it actually happened. He ended up giving the following advice to anyone subject to this kind of breakdown: eat three meals a day, take your vitamin pills, sleep properly, don't drink too much and never touch drugs, not even pot!

Tyrrell: That's interesting. Someone I knew whose home life was unhappy, recently began behaving oddly and is now under psychiatrists and labelled schizophrenic and, for several years, he hardly ate anything else other than bread and jam!

Lessing: Vitamins! For two or three years a doctor friend of mine in Sweden, a neurologist, has been testing the effects of diet and taking vitamins on two classes of people, schizophrenics and alcoholics. He discovered that poor diet and lack of vitamins create schizophrenics and alcoholics. And putting them on a proper diet cured a large percentage of them! The only thing he could never predict who was going to be cured. He couldn't be precise. All he could say was that, in which ward, X number will be cured if I give them plenty of vitamin B and a proper diet with all the vitamins they need.

Tyrrell: How else do you think we cope with craziness?

Lessing: Yesterday I visited a friend of mine who I knew first when I was twenty-one. He is tall, thin, bony and was adopted when he was six months old. For the first six months of his life he was in an orphanage and it's clearly quite obvious that nobody cuddled him much. He's had several breakdowns and he's a painter and it's the painting that keeps him from going crazy. Nothing else helps. He can't drink because that drives him over the top. He needs his therapeutic, absorbing hobby to keep him relatively sane. People are that close to breakdown but they find ways to cope. I know painting helps but it's not all that easy is it? You can't just say to someone, "Why don't you take up painting because it's good for you?"

Tyrrell: No. When someone is suffering in depression it's hard for them to change direction themselves. Spike Milligan, who was labelled manic depressive, said that, when you are down, you don't take responsibility for your own psychological state. But the difficulty is that painting and similar therapeutic activities are something you have to do for yourself, it has to come from within.

Lessing: That's the problem. You can't make people want to do something, even if it is what they need. Sometimes it helps to get people having a breakdown to talk about their feelings into a tape recorder. A doctor I knew, who treated angry, confused people, used to do that. He would say to them, " When you are alone and feel bad, talk into a tape recorder and tell me what you feel. It doesn't matter what you say, just say it. It doesn't matter if what you say makes sense or not. Shout it, scream it if necessary, but record what you are feeling for me to hear." And with some people that worked. It was like bursting a boil of pus.

Tyrrell: Some people just need someone to take a neutral interest when they're in a crisis and listen for a while in an accepting supportive way.

Lessing: That's the trouble isn't it? There aren't enough people to listen. I think that's why some find therapy successful because they are buying a friend really. I had therapy when I was in my early 30s, for two or three years, a pretty relaxed affair. It wasn't analysis or anything like that. But now, when I look back, I know that I was buying a friend, someone who supported me all the time because I was being got at by so many people. It so happens that she was a Jungian and a Roman Catholic, but she could have been anything. Anyway, people would say to me, "Isn't it just the same as having a very good friend listening to you?" But the patience of a good friend is limited. If they hear the same miseries day in and day out they get fed up.

Tyrrell: And time spent with a therapist is usually bound up by a time limit, an hour or two a week. Also, a good therapist remains detached and knows how to promote a positive change, whereas a friend can get sucked in.

Lessing: Very easily! It doesn't take much. We can all go over the edge and disappear so quickly. A friend of mine was once very seriously depressed having an extraordinary bad time — and another friend and I would take turns to go and listen to his depressing, monotone, monologue. After a couple of hours I would find myself thinking, "That's right, what is the point to it all? You might just as well die. You haven't got the life you want. You haven't got any friends..." and I had to rush off before I was overwhelmed and lost my sanity. It's difficult not to get sucked in. Depression seems to me to be the worst of all, much worse than schizophrenia.

Tyrrell: There's a hell of a lot of it about.

Lessing: I wonder why? I know several people who get deeply depressed and they say it is the most painful thing physically. I couldn't understand this until three years ago when I really experienced the emotion of grief for the first time. It was not depression, but grief and anguish. It is an emotion that expresses itself physically.

Tyrrell: Heartache! The heart is supposed to be only a pump and yet there is a tremendous tightness and pain around the heart that's associated with these strong emotions.

Lessing: Jung said somewhere in one of his books that he would very often have a patient sitting in front of him who is completely in a trap in their life situation and neither he nor his patient could see any possible way out. Then he would meet this person four or five days later and find their problem had been solved in a way that neither of them could possibly have foreseen. And then he said something like this, that you have to have faith in the unconscious guide in the unconscious part of the person you are trying to help.

I'm sure that's true because you do see people who seem as if they are shut in a dark room and yet, somehow or other they get out, or somebody unexpectedly helps them out.

Another thing I've found is that you should never give up on anybody. That I am quite sure of because, over and over again, and I am sure you've had the same experience, we see people who are an absolutely dead loss. Hopeless cases. And yet they can, quite unexpectedly, be transformed later in their life. So, never give up on anyone, hard as it may seem sometimes.

One of the best ways to overcome that miserable feeling in the morning when you think, "Oh my God, I really can't face it!" is to smile! You don't want to smile. You don't feel like smiling. But if you move the set of your facial muscles into a smile it cheats your brain and changes the chemical balances in such a way that you quickly feel much better. I find it works like anything!

Tyrrell: Yes, that's partly why laughter is so therapeutic.

Lessing: I have a rather fanciful interpretation about schizophrenia, which is probably nonsense, but it might interest some people. It is that this self-hater part of ourselves, the conditioned conscience, is usually disassociated and is just sitting there ready to pounce. Then, then some

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© The Therapist (Now the Human Givens Journal), and Doris Lessing (1993)

This article first appeared in Volume 1, Issue 3 (1993) of the Human Givens journal. (Formally The Therapist)

Doris Lessing is a writer. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

> More information on the human givens approach can be found in the following books both by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell

Dreaming Reality: How dreaming keeps us sane or can drive us mad

Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

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> More information on the human givens approach can be found in the following books both by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell

Dreaming Reality: How dreaming keeps us sane or can drive us mad

Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

Return to top

Return to top

Return to top