Robert Whitaker, in his ebook Mad in America, writes: “Little is understood about what causes schizophrenia” (p. 291). He’s apparently unaware {that a} recurrent idea regarding the etiology of schizophrenia is nearly as outdated because the phrase itself. I’m referring to the concept, first popularized by Sigmund Freud, {that a} frequent explanation for schizophrenia is the repression of homosexuality.
In 1908, the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coined the phrase “schizophrenia” and launched it to the general public in a lecture in Berlin. Simply three years later, Sigmund Freud began selling the concept that schizophrenia is commonly attributable to repressed homosexuality. In 1911, Freud printed his ebook The Schreber Case, through which he attributes the schizophrenic psychosis of the German decide Daniel Paul Schreber to his gay repression. The aim of the current article is to see how this idea, that gay repression is a frequent etiology of schizophrenia, has survived the check of time.
By “gay repression” I seek advice from the acutely aware or unconscious alternative of a gay to not interact in gay relations. He might have gay needs, nocturnal gay erotic desires, diurnal gay fantasies, gay urges and a gay identification and nonetheless select to guide a celibate life or to reside as a heterosexual. Such a person is in a everlasting state of trauma, since his superego desires him to be heterosexual whereas his libido insists that he’s gay. He’s most frequently afraid that if folks knew that he was gay, it could wreck his popularity, compromise his profession, shame and dishonour his household and result in everlasting catastrophe. Most individuals develop up in religions that condemn homosexuality. The worry of getting one’s homosexuality found creates paranoia. This paranoia accentuates the trauma that one continuously feels and results in a full-blown schizophrenic psychosis.
In immediately’s world, a psychotic gay would in all probability be taken to a psychological hospital and given antipsychotic medication with their devastating unwanted side effects. It will be rather more efficient and positively extra compassionate if his psychiatrist beneficial his visiting his closest homosexual bar, however I’ve by no means heard of this occurring.
In response to Freud, all people are mainly bisexual. If a younger man instantly notices that he has gay tendencies, it may lead to what’s known as “gay panic.” Since everybody has each female and male traits, a stronger presence of female qualities in a person can provoke what is known as bisexual confusion. If this battle just isn’t resolved in a wholesome manner, psychosis may result.
I’m on this topic as a result of I used to be compelled to bear psychiatric conversion remedy on the age of sixteen. This torture lasted two years. It resulted in my turning into a schizophrenic and being hospitalized in psychological hospitals for fifteen months. Throughout my confinement, I used to be satisfied that the compelled repression of my homosexuality was the true etiology of my schizophrenia. I made it my life’s objective to show to the world that psychiatrists can truly drive their sufferers insane, that there’s by no means any justice for victims of psychiatric abuse, and that gay repression can certainly trigger schizophrenia.
I started studying books about schizophrenia proper after my first hallucination, in 1963, on the age of seventeen. I’m now seventy-eight years outdated, which signifies that I’ve been learning this topic for 61 years. Throughout my analysis I’ve found 4 well-known schizophrenics whose psychological sickness I attribute to gay repression. They’re the German decide Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911), the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the Québec poet Émile Nelligan (1879-1941) and the American mathematician John Nash (1928-2015). I’ve printed articles about all 4 of them within the Journal of Literature and Artwork Research. They’re accessible on-line. I’d now like so as to add a couple of phrases about every of them to shed new gentle on what I’ve already printed.
All 4 of those males got here from a spiritual, puritanical background, which made it particularly laborious for them to satisfy their gay needs. For instance, in his autobiography Recollections of My Nervous Sickness, the decide Daniel Paul Schreber says: “Few folks have been introduced up in response to such strict ethical ideas as I, and have all through life practiced such moderation particularly in issues of intercourse, as I enterprise to say for myself” (p. 249). There isn’t any purpose to doubt his honesty when he makes it clear that the one individual with whom he has ever had sexual relations was his spouse, and on the time of writing his ebook he confides that it has been a number of years since they had been bodily intimate (p. 373).
Schreber had fantasies of being reworked into a girl. He needed to have a girl’s physique in order that he might make love with God and have youngsters with Him. However largely he seemed ahead to the pleasure of enjoying the girl’s position throughout sexual activity. He writes: “It actually have to be reasonably nice to be a girl succumbing to intercourse” (p. 46). In his creativeness, he confesses, he has “a reasonably particular foretaste of feminine sexual enjoyment in intercourse” (p.239).
However due to his puritanical upbringing and his social standing as a decent decide he might by no means permit himself to have actual gay experiences. “Fancy an individual who was a decide permitting himself to be fucked!” (p. 164), he exclaims. The conflict between vivid gay longings and the strict morals of his upbringing and occupation brought about his schizophrenia and offered the fabric for Freud’s idea of sexual repression being the principal explanation for psychological sickness.
On the identical time that Schreber was confined to a psychological hospital in Sonnenstein, Germany, Friedrich Nietzsche was hospitalized in an asylum at Jena, 195 kilometers away. They had been each repressed homosexuals and schizophrenics. They each resisted fulfilling their gay needs. They had been each pushed insane by their bisexual confusion and gay panic. They each got here from strict puritanical, Protestant, bourgeois backgrounds. They each had non secular obsessions. They had been each nervous about their reputations.
It must be remembered that at this time period, gay acts between males had been punishable by imprisonment in Germany. (Paragraph 175 of the German regulation, which made gay acts unlawful, was not annulled till 1994.) Thus, Sigmund Freud might ask: “Is it not an irresponsible slight, an indiscretion, and an act of calumny to accuse an ethically so elevated man because the retired Presiding Choose Schreber of homosexuality?” (p. 33 of The Schreber Case). Freud solutions his rhetorical query with a convincing “No,” just because Schreber himself had revealed his homosexuality.
It’s exceptional the variety of books written about Nietzsche which don’t dare even ask the query of his sexual orientation. He by no means as soon as had any sexual relationship with a girl. German homosexuals of his technology typically travelled to Italy for his or her adventures, since homosexuality was not unlawful there. Nietzsche made common journeys to Italy, and it was rumored that he contracted syphilis in a male brothel in Genoa.
Nietzsche and I’ve so many traits in widespread. We each grew up in nineteenth century puritanical Protestant households. (I say nineteenth century since my dad and mom had been born in 1903 close to Boston and our dwelling life was extra Victorian than trendy). We had been each linguists. We each spoke German, French and Italian. We had been each on the College of Bonn, he as a pupil and I as a lecturer. We each had non secular obsessions. We had been each homosexuals. We had been each schizophrenics. Regardless of all these similarities, I’ve by no means appreciated Nietzsche’s philosophy. I’m a non-Marxist socialist and he disapproved of socialism. I’m a pacifist and he glorified conflict. I discover a few of his invectives towards the Christian faith to be offensive or blasphemous.
Many Nietzsche followers had been offended at me due to my article entitled “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Homosexuality and Schizophrenia.” They assumed that I used to be making an attempt to insult Nietzsche. I used to be simply making an attempt to divulge to the world what I alone find out about Nietzsche, data that solely a schizophrenic can possess. They appear to underestimate the truth that Nietzsche spent the final eleven years of his life in a vegetative, schizophrenic stupor. A complete ebook has been written about Nietzsche’s homosexuality: Zarathustras Geheimnis (Zarathustra’s Secret) by Joachim Köhler. Sigmund Freud was the primary individual to make a public assertion about Nietzsche’s homosexuality, which he did at a gathering in 1908 of the Viennese Psychoanalytical Society. Nietzsche hoped to create a brand new faith, and his followers now deal with him as a prophet. They can’t think about that a fantastic non secular chief may very well be both a gay or a schizophrenic, regardless of all of the proof.
Émile Nelligan, Québec’s most well-known poet, was hospitalized on the age of 20 in 1899 for schizophrenia. His internment lasted till his demise 42 years later. His bisexual confusion went hand in hand along with his bilingual confusion and his bicultural confusion. For his father was an English-speaking Irish immigrant whereas his mom was a French-speaking Quebecker. A lot to the anger of his father, Nelligan very early in life confirmed a choice for his mom versus his father and for his mom’s language, tradition and nation. He wrote all his poetry in French. There may be some hypothesis that a lot of his poetry was truly written by his good friend Louis Dantin, who selected to make use of Nelligan’s identify with a view to stay nameless, however that’s not the topic of our enquiry. Within the ebook Le Naufragé du vaisseau d’or by Yvette Francoli, we be taught that Dantin was a gay (p.210). It’s not inconceivable that he and Nelligan had been lovers. It was additionally rumored that Nelligan’s good friend, the artist Charles Gill pulled Nelligan into alcohol abuse and debauchery. Individuals stated that that they had a gay relationship (p. 211). The Catholic Church condemned Nelligan’s sexual orientation and his father condemned his choice for the French language and Quebec tradition. This was sufficient to drive the delicate younger man insane, creating probably the most tragic chapters of Quebec literary historical past.
The movie A Lovely Thoughts misrepresents the reality about John Nash’s schizophrenia by hiding his homosexuality. It’s based mostly on the definitive biography of Nash by Sylvia Nasar with the identical title, however in contrast to the ebook the movie makes Nash appear to be a heterosexual. His primary sexual orientation was gay and his occasional forays into the land of heterosexuality had been sad ones and resulted from his bisexual confusion. Nash had an necessary job working for the RAND Company, which had extremely delicate contracts with america Protection Division. All workers had been required to have a strict safety clearance. Anybody suspected of being gay was mechanically excluded from working for RAND, since homosexuals had been susceptible to blackmail and thus represented an actual safety risk. (My physician in Washington, D.C., informed me once I was fifteen years outdated: “You shouldn’t be a gay as a result of homosexuals are a risk to nationwide safety after they work for the State Division”.)
In 1954, when Nash was working for RAND in Santa Monica, he went to a public males’s room at two o’clock within the morning in search of a gay journey. Sadly, the person whom he tried to seduce was a disguised police officer who had been given the duty of ridding the seashores of Santa Monica of homosexuals. Nasar writes: “Nash was charged with ‘indecent publicity.’ That’s going right into a public head and making a come-on to a different man. Meaning taking out your penis and masturbating. That’s the come-on” (p. 186).
Nash was instantly fired from his job with RAND. At this exact second, he started a strict regime aiming to repress his homosexuality. He married Alicia Larde in 1956 and abstained from all gay exercise. It was subsequent to his renunciation of gay exercise that he fell into an acute paranoid schizophrenic psychosis and was hospitalized in varied psychological hospitals, beginning in 1959 and lasting till 1969. He was given sturdy antipsychotic medication like Thorazine, which is now not offered wherever due to its devastating unwanted side effects. He was compelled to bear insulin coma remedy, which he described as being “torture.”
Within the movie, Nash’s spouse is portrayed as being his savior. In actuality, his psychosis didn’t begin till he married her. His deliberate try to repress his homosexuality was the true etiology of his schizophrenic psychosis. The movie was made for a naïve American viewers. Naïve People merely can’t imagine {that a} good, good man could be a gay.
Within the 12 months 2003 appeared a most fascinating ebook entitled Schizophrenia: The Bearded Girl Illness by J. Michael Mahoney. The ebook’s objective is to offer proof supporting Freud’s idea that gay repression, additionally known as bisexual confusion, is essentially the most frequent explanation for schizophrenia. Mahoney analyzes 639 quotations from scores of various schizophrenics, all of which painting the battle and confusion ensuing from the difficulties of accepting one’s bisexual nature. Mahoney says: “All schizophrenics are mainly ‘bearded girls’ – individuals who have no idea at a deep unconscious degree whether or not they’re male or feminine” (p. 3).
All the case research within the ebook are fascinating to learn. They affirm each Freud’s idea about the reason for schizophrenia and my very own private expertise of this sickness. Due to the eye lately delivered to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, by Luigi Mangione, it’s acceptable to quote Maloney’s remedy of Kaczynski to indicate his method to all his topics. Maloney writes: “Mr. Kaczynski truly went as far as to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist to debate his needs to be reworked into a girl, however cancelled the appointment on the final minute. It’s apparent from his personal phrases that Mr. Kaczynski was now not capable of repress his intense gay cravings and that that they had now gained ascendency of their battle along with his heterosexual drives. You will need to level out that it was not Mr. Kaczynski’s sexual emotions per se which brought about him to develop paranoid schizophrenia, however the denial, or repression, of those highly effective urges. In and of themselves, they’d trigger no issues in any respect, however repressed, they actually drove him insane” (pp. 432-433).
Sadly, Maloney insists that each one psychological sickness, together with bipolar dysfunction and varied neuroses in addition to schizophrenia have their origin in bisexual confusion. This, I imagine, goes a bit too far. For instance, there are myriad troopers who develop into schizophrenic on account of the traumas that they’ve undergone on the battlefield. Their psychosis, as soon as often called shell shock and now known as post-traumatic stress dysfunction, has nothing to do with their sexual lives.
Lately, a psychiatrist stated on CNN that Luigi Mangione was a schizophrenic. He was thus falling into Kaczynski’s footsteps in a couple of manner. They each had a Messiah advanced, wanting to avoid wasting the world with an apocalypse of their very own design. Mangione insists that his again ache prevents him from having intimate relations with ladies. If Freud, Maloney and I are right in regards to the etiology of schizophrenia, the absence of girls in Mangione’s life in all probability outcomes from his bisexual confusion or gay repression. There are numerous men and women who could be keen to accommodate Mangione’s again ache throughout moments of intimacy. He’s extraordinarily handsome, extremely educated and wealthy. Why ought to again ache discourage suitors?
There’s a very curious sentence in Sylvia Nasar’s ebook about Nash. She refers to “Freud’s now-discredited idea linking schizophrenia to repressed homosexuality” (p. 259). She doesn’t say which psychiatrists discredit Freud’s idea or why they achieve this. To me the reply is clear. If Freud, Maloney and I are proper, then these psychiatrists are fallacious. To discover a purpose why they need to need to discredit Freud, we want solely have a look at the character of present-day American capitalism. If schizophrenia can certainly be attributable to gay repression, then antipsychotic medication is ineffective. A visit to a homosexual bar could be more practical than all of the capsules on the planet.
The psychiatrists in query need to uphold the pharmaceutical hoax based mostly on the concept that psychological sickness outcomes from a chemical imbalance within the mind. When the general public realizes that it has been duped as soon as once more by the massive pharmaceutical firms, these firms will lose billions of {dollars} yearly. Robert Whitaker’s books reveal how these firms pay giant sums of cash to psychiatrists for them to put in writing constructive critiques of their medication. That is the true purpose that some psychiatrists discredit Freud’s idea. Maloney’s a number of examples and my very own expertise present that Freud was proper.
