Madness & James Joyce
If you google the above what will appear will be: (Before going here, please take a look first at James Joyce Health)
Madness and James Joyce Robert Kaplan Article first published online: 6 JUN 2002
Doctors, disease and James Joyce AUSTRALIAN FAMILY PHYSICIAN Vol. 37, No. 8, August 2008
I contacted Dr. Kaplan, which was very courteous and has shown interest in my job, send two other articles, one above and the other follows, but expressed his opinion that Joyce, though in the spectrum of mental problems, specially schizoprhenia, was not an Asperger Syndrome case. The other article is Bloomsday 100: the making of a literary legend
Jeanne McKnight Unlocking the Word-Hoard: Madness, Identity and Creativity in James Joyce, which as you can see, it centers around The Portrait and therefore is a kind of misleading but and indication that from early start Joyce`s problems were there..
Unstoppable Brilliance: Irish Geniuses and Asperger's Syndrome by Michael Fitzgerald,Antoinette Walker, is not about madness and we will touch it later.
JAMES JOYCE'S DAUGHTER AND THE POSSIBLE INFLUENCE OF HER SCHIZOPHRENIA ON FINNEGANS WAKE
Secrets
of the Creative Brain
A leading neuroscientist who has spent decades studying creativity shares her
research on where genius comes from, whether it is dependent on high IQ—and
why it is so often accompanied by mental illness.
Nancy C. Andreasen
JULY/AUGUST 2014
"James Joyce, for example, had a daughter who suffered from schizophrenia, and he himself had traits that placed him on the schizophrenia spectrum. (He was socially aloof and even cruel to those close to him, and his writing became progressively more detached from his audience and from reality, culminating in the near-psychotic neologisms and loose associations of Finnegans Wake.) "
The
Descent of Madness: Evolutionary Origins of Psychosis and the Social Brain
by Community Psychiatrist Nelson Mandela School of Medicine Jonathan Burns,Jonathan
Burns page 54
"In a fascinating study conducted recently at Cambridge University, Baron-Cohen et al. (2001) have demonstrated higher than expected scores for Asperger syndrome/high-functioning autism among postgraduate scientists and mathematicians. This is of relevance since there is a genetic (and often clinical) overlap between autistic spectrum disorders and the functional psychoses. A contemporary example of the `genius-madness` phenomenon is the Nobel Laureate, John Nash, whose remarkable story is the subject of the book and recent movie A beautiful Mind. Another that springs to mind is James Joyce whose daughter had schizophrenia (and was unsuccessfully treated by Carl Jung) - an attempted reading of Ulysses must raise some questions as to Joyce`s own mental stare. Interestingly the style employed by Joyce in Ulysses, often termed `stream of consciousness`, is phenomenologically almost identical to `formal thought disorder`, which is a hallmark of psychotic thinking and language. "
Letter C G Jung sent to Joyce on September 27, 1932 — almost immediately after the review was published:
Dear Sir,
Your Ulysses has presented the world such an upsetting psychological problem that repeatedly I have been called in as a supposed authority on psychological matters.
Ulysses proved to be an exceedingly hard nut and it has forced my mind not only to most unusual efforts, but also to rather extravagant peregrinations (speaking from the standpoint of a scientist). Your book as a whole has given me no end of trouble and I was brooding over it for about three years until I succeeded to put myself into it. But I must tell you that I’m profoundly grateful to yourself as well as to your gigantic opus, because I learned a great deal from it. I shall probably never be quite sure whether I did enjoy it, because it meant too much grinding of nerves and of grey matter. I also don’t know whether you will enjoy what I have written about Ulysses because I couldn’t help telling the world how much I was bored, how I grumbled, how I cursed and how I admired. The 40 pages of non stop run at the end is a string of veritable psychological peaches. I suppose the devil’s grandmother knows so much about the real psychology of a woman, I didn’t.
Well, I just try to recommend my little essay to you, as an amusing attempt of a perfect stranger that went astray in the labyrinth of your Ulysses and happened to get out of it again by sheer good luck. At all events you may gather from my article what Ulysses has done to a supposedly balanced psychologist.
With the expression of my deepest appreciation, I remain, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
C.G. Jung
In a diagnostic, which Mr. Ellmann does not like, Jung wrote that "the relationship of father and daughter was a kind of mystical identity or participation." Jung called Lucia "her father's anima inspiratrix." "Joyce's psychological style is definitely schizophrenic, with the difference, however, that the ordinary patient cannot help himself talking and thinking in such a way, while Joyce willed it and moreover developed it with all his creative forces.Which, incidentally explains, why he himself did not go over the border. But his daughter did, because she was no genius like her father, but merely a victim of the disease. In any other time of the past Joyce's work would never have reached the printers, but in our blessed XXth century it is a message, though not yet understood."
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In face of all that, I decided for the Duck Test
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
Press
it
It is not a duck... it is a mallard...
Which fits most perfectly to James Joyce because, If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Since he isn't then why he looks, he quacks and walks like that?
Definitely although under the schizophrenia spectrum, he can swim, quack and look like them, but he is not one of them. Where, then, is his group? Two kinds of ducks came immediately to mind: Asperger and Savant.
He was already classified as under Asperger Syndrome by Michael Fitzgerald, Antoinette Walker
Unstoppable Brilliance - Irish Geniuses and Aspergers Syndrome
If you press on Asperger above, you wil see why and how they did it and how they think it fits, but first, take a look on what Dr.Darold has to say about it.
If you press on Savant above, you sill see how does it fits. Before you do, take a look on a homework I did:
I contacted Dr. Darold mentioning the articles above and this book Unstoppable Brilliance, his article on Savant, to which I asked permission to use and he was very courteous, prompted to take a look on my job when ready and said the following about Joyce and Schizophrenia, and I quote from his email:
Roque,
Thank you for your very interesting note. You certainly can cite my work by name if you wish and I would be complimented to have you do so. I look forward to reading your assessment of Joyce and his mental state however it underlies, and surfaces in his works and life.
I did manage to view a beginning chapter in the Unstoppable Genius book which describes Asperger’s as the authors see it. In general it seems accurate except it makes a distinction between an ‘autistic savant’ and what they call as “asperger’s savant” based on IQ. For me the term ‘autistic savant’ includes Asperger’s persons and it is not true that IQ or “brilliance” is limited in Autistic savants. At least 30% of autistic savants are of normal or very high intelligence. So the term “asperger’s savant’ is not in my vocabulary since they are included in ‘autistic savant”. The authors also use the term “Asperger’s geniuses” which for me is an oxymoron at worst, or redundant at best. I say that because it is important to acknowledge that ‘genius’ does exist, i.e. not all ‘geniuses’ or ‘prodigies’ are autistic or asperger’s. There is a tendency these days to assume, or allege, that every bright, creative, inventive person, living or dead, had aspergers. (the latest being Putin). The fact is genius does exist and is not always ‘on the spectrum’ or Asperger’s. Some geniuses do have some eccentricities, but not all such quirks or eccentricities are Asperger’s.
In my work I differentiate savants,
including Asperger’s, from genius, the difference being that by definition
a ‘savant’ has his or her incredible abilities, sometimes at a genius
level, superimposed on some underlying
mental disability, most often, but not always autism. So the term Asperger’s
genius for me is an oxymoron.
An interesting reference for you might be a book titled “Scholars with Autism: Achieving Dreams”. It tells of five or six persons with Asperger’s, often diagnosed later in life, who found their niche in academia. I have a chapter in the book title “Oval Souls on a Round Planet” It was edited b Lars Perner.
You mention some persons feel Joyce’s underlying mental condition was schizophrenia. Interestingly infantile autism (Kanner) was called Childhood Schizophrenia until the late 1970’s when the term autism came into more common use. I am not familiar enough with Joyce’s ‘symptoms’ to make that differentiation and look forward to reading your paper to help with that distinction. Not that it makes a big difference in that seemingly there is some underlying condition.
All of that to say that ‘autistic savant’ includes aspergers; that some autistic savants have very high IQ; and that genius does exist; not all bright and creative persons have Asperger’s.
I look forward to your paper and
learning more about the complexity of Joyce.
Darold A. Treffert, M.D.
Dr. Darold A.Treffert is one of the foremost authorities in the world about this syndrome from which he specialized in what he calls Savant Syndrome.
Dr. Darold Treffert, a Wisconsin
psychiatrist, has been studying Savant Syndrome for over 40 years. His most
recent publication, Islands
of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired and Sudden Savant,
was published by Jessica Kingsley, Inc. in April 2010 in both the United States
and England. It won gold in the Psychology/Mental Health Category at the 2011
Independent Publisher Book Awards and silver in the Psychology Category at the
ForeWord 2011 Book of the Year Awards. His earlier book,
Extraordinary People: Understanding Savant Syndrome, was the first work
to comprehensively summarize what is known about this fascinating condition,
originally described a century ago, and to introduce the reader to a number
of present day prodigious savants such as Leslie, Alonzo and George. Many persons
remember these three remarkable persons from the 1980 60 Minutes program about
them. Dr.
Treffert was also a consultant to the movie Rain Man, in which Dustin
Hoffman portrayed an autistic savant.
In addition to his work in the area of Savant Syndrome, Dr. Treffert has lectured
nationally for a number of years on the topic of "Mellowing". His
booklet, Mellowing: Lessons from Listening, has been widely distributed. Another
area of writing and speaking has been the rights of the mentally ill with respect
to balancing clinical realities with legal rights.
And from that, I decided to pursue the idea of what kind of Mallard James Joyce was starting with the hipotesis that he was a Savant.
If you have been there perhaps you should go back to cover