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Genius or Madness?

Genius or Madness?
“Up/Down” Bipolar Disorder Documentary
Post Created by Jk the SK
Illustrated by j. kiley
Created May 12th 2013
Posted May 13th 2013

Original Transcript
6 November 2012
Genius or Madness?
Professor Glenn Wilson

“Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide” (John Dryden, 1681).
“There is no great genius without a tincture of madness” (Seneca, 1st Century A.D.).

dali spider of the evening

Many great artists and scientists appear to have gone slightly mad following their lofty achievements. Isaac Newton was arguably the greatest physicist of all time, introducing the concept of gravity and making major advances in optics, mechanics and mathematics. He was also intensely suspicious and distrustful of others and in later life dabbled in alchemy and sought hidden messages in the Bible. Of course, alchemy was not thought a mad pursuit in Newton’s day and he could have been afflicted with mercury poisoning as a result of his experiments.

dali the disintegration of the persistance of memory

Beethoven and Van Gogh are also said to have gone progressively mad, though the reasons are equally debatable. Beethoven’s mania may have been due to alcoholism, syphilis, or lead poisoning (apart from his profound deafness, which would distress anyone, let alone a musician). There are theories that Van Gogh’s mood swings were caused by porphyria rather than bipolar disorder, that he lost his ear in a duel with Gauguin (claiming self-injury to maintain his friendship) and that his “suicide” was an accidental shooting by two boys playing cowboys (whom he also protected).

van gogh starry night on the rhone

For others, the genius and madness appear in parallel. Nikola Tesla was a brilliant applied scientist whose inventions rivaled those of Edison. He obtained around 300 patents in radio and electricity technologies, pioneering alternating current and hydroelectric power. However, he claimed to be in communication with other planets, to have invented “death rays” and suffered from bizarre compulsions.

van gogh bridge

John Nash, the Nobel-winning mathematician who developed “game theory” for the social sciences also suffered paranoid delusions throughout his career. He was hospitalised involuntarily and had to feign sanity to be released. He still heard the voices but learned how to live with them and not to talk about them. “I wouldn’t have had such good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally” he said.

van gogh starry night

Sometimes it is a matter of chance or social milieu that determines whether an individual is deemed brilliant or crazy. To the Counter-Reformation Church leaders, Galileo was not necessarily mad (probably just heretical) but they clearly failed to appreciate his genius and subjected him to a lifetime of house arrest. In other times and places Picasso and Einstein might have been committed to an insane asylum rather than revered for their original thinking.

moby dick – jackson pollock

Many lists of creative achievers throughout history have been compiled along with mental health symptoms and diagnostic categories retrospectively assigned to them. Unfortunately, these are mostly anecdotal, speculative and lacking in proper controls for comparison. Some have argued that the connection between genius and madness has been over-egged because of a few high-profile cases such as those described above.

virginia woolf by george charles beresford 1902

The best evidence in support of the genius-madness link comes from behaviour genetics. The close relatives of creative people are more likely to be schizophrenic and vice versa (psychotics having more creative relatives). Einstein, for example, had a son who was schizophrenic, while Bertrand Russell had many schizophrenic relatives. According to Simonton (1999), “creative hits and crazy misses” are mixed within many illustrious family pedigrees, including the Darwins, Galtons and Huxleys.

virginia woolf

The first degree relatives of creative people are actually more prone to mental disorders than creatives themselves. This is because actual illness (as opposed to its genetic predisposition) is likely to impede a creative career. The exception seems to be writers, who themselves show high rates of many behavioural disorders, including psychoses, mood disorders, substance abuse and suicide.

Could the environment also be involved? Traumatic events in childhood and orphan status seem more common in those who make outstanding contributions to art and science. In a study of 700 high achievers, found that three-quarters had troubled childhoods, especially loss of a parent. The “school of hard knocks” could provide motivation and inspiration (Dickens and Chaplin come to mind here) while at the same time generating psychological disorder. However, this idea is opposite to the common-sense view that parental support and encouragement is beneficial to achievement, rather than maltreatment and deprivation. Indeed, the Goetzels found that wealth was more common in the backgrounds of famous people than poverty. And of course, pathology in the parents may be genetically transmitted to their children, thus accounting for some of the associations reported.

Virginia Woolf

Similar thought processes, such as unusual and grandiose ideas, together with a determination to promote them, seem to link genius and psychosis. Certain neurotransmitters and gene loci have been cited as common to both, including the male sex hormone testosterone, a gene relating to a growth factor involved in neural development and plasticity called neuregulin 1 (NRG1 and genes modulating dopamine transmission in the brain, e.g., DARPP-32.

virginia woolf painting

Unconventional thinking is characteristic of a constitutional personality trait called Psychoticism (P). This has many facets, including tough-mindedness, lack of empathy, impulsiveness, risk-taking, adventure-seeking, bizarre thinking, and a refusal to adhere to social norms. High levels of P predispose to psychopathy and clinical psychosis, as well as to creativity, thus accounting for the overlap between them. A good deal of research over recent decades has supported this theory. A related trait is called schizotypy. An optimum number of indicators for this relates to creative achievement, rather than full-blown schizophrenia.

kurt cobain

Dopamine function (or dysfunction?) may account for the link between genius and madness. Dopamine is the chemical messenger in the meso-limbic and cortical areas of the brain concerned with approach, reward, positive mood and achievement-seeking. Genes that modulate dopamine levels are reported to affect novelty-seeking behaviour and to relate to Impulsivity and Psychoticism. Recreational drugs that are addictive and sometimes lead to delusions and hallucinations (e.g., amphetamine psychosis) tend to raise levels of dopamine in the brain. By contrast, anti-psychotic medications are usually dopamine antagonists (this being one of the reasons why compliance is difficult). Untreated schizophrenics have more D2 receptors in the striatum and lower D2 binding in the thalamus.

kurt cobain – bipolar

Genius and psychotic are both inclined to loose associations (i.e., “thinking outside the box”). This can be observed as unusual responses on a word association test or in some of Salvador Dali’s surreal images (e.g., the Lobster-Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa). Such flexibility of thought seems to be increased by dopamine.

beethoven – bipolar

Another description of the schizophrenic thinking style is that it tends to be over-inclusive, with the boundaries of relevance being set more broadly. To most people, an apple falling off a tree and the movement of planets in the solar system would appear to have nothing in common, but Newton was insightful enough to connect them under the grand unifying concept of “gravity.” Of course, not all such generalisations turn out to be that useful but many great scientific theories depend upon the ability to perceive improbable connections.

carrie fisher – bipolar

Exactly how loose associations or over-inclusive thinking promote genius is unclear. If enough crazy ideas are generated, one or two might hit the target by chance alone. This approach is deliberately harnessed in “brainstorming” sessions which use random “flashcards” as a means of generating fresh ideas. Certainly, it is difficult to be creative operating within received wisdom and some of the greatest artists and composers were the “rebels” least shackled by the traditional rules of their art. However, the “shotgun” theory smacks slightly of “monkeys on typewriters”. (It would take a long time for them come up with the complete works of Shakespeare). Outstanding advances in science, like the theories of evolution and relativity, and great works of art, such as Wagner’s Ring Cycle, cannot be generated by chance alone. Profound imagination and high-level spatial intelligence is usually required in addition.

bipolar behaviour

Application to the point of “work addiction” is also often involved. Edison reckoned that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.Most creative people are also the most productive. There is a positive correlation between quality and quantity of output, implying that each masterpiece is likely to be interspersed with much that is mediocre. (I do not ne)cessarily agree with this statement.)

marilyn monroe – bipolar

The human tendency to apophenia may be implicated in both creativity and madness. This refers to seeing meaningful patterns where they do not exist and it underlies superstition and hallucinations (e.g., seeing ghosts and hearing “voices”). This perceptual style has survival value because failing to spot a predator in the forest is a bigger (potentially fatal) mistake than seeing one where it does not exist. Exaggerated apophenia is characteristic of schizotypal individuals and is enhanced by dopamine.

ernest hemingway – bipolar

Another mental “illness” linked with creativity is bipolar mood disorder (previously called “manic-depressive psychosis”). This is characterised by extreme mood swings, occurring over a period of months, and it seems particularly to afflict artists, writers, musicians and comedians. Among highly talented people who appear to have suffered mood disorder are Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Spike Milligan, Paul Merton and Stephen Fry (who presented a TV documentary on bipolar disorder detailing his experiences).

winston churchill – bipolar

Genetic analysis shows links between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Sufferers are often tortured souls, particularly when the “Black Dog” afflicts them, and their feelings may be tapped to give greater depth and sensitivity to their art. On the other hand, the “flight of ideas” experienced in the “manic” phase of the mood cycle can result in exceptional productivity. As with the trade-off between schizophrenia and genius, bipolar disorder balances troughs with peaks in a way that might account for its evolutionary survival. Treatments are available for bipolar disorder but there is a danger that, by smoothing mood, they could impede the creative forces.

bipolar wheel

Then there are the autistic spectrum disorders (such as Asperger’s syndrome) in which a deficiency in social communication is sometimes accompanied by “savant” skills in fields like music, mathematics and spatial intelligence. In the film Rain Man (1988), Dustin Hoffman plays Raymond Babbitt an autistic whose exceptional memory is exploited by his brother to count cards in Las Vegas casinos. (This was loosely based on a real-life savant called Kim Peek, who may in fact have had a chromosome disorder). The artist Louis Wain, who became famous for his surrealistic cat paintings was hospitalised for schizophrenia, but others have argued he was actually autistic.

marilyn monroe poster

These various “disorders” can all contribute to extraordinary contributions to art and science. Some tendency to psychotic traits seems to be beneficial (thus accounting for the maintenance of such genes) but too much makes the individual disorganised and is hence detrimental. It is notable that creative artists and writers have profiles similar to those of psychotic patients on clinical scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) but are less extreme – in fact, roughly half-way between normal controls and full-blown schizophrenics.

mel gibson – bipolar

What is the mechanism whereby schizophrenic genes promote survival? The clue may be in the behaviour of bower birds, the males of which make colourful and elaborate constructions in order to attract a female (the Taj Mahals of the bird world). Creativity has also been shown to promote mating success in men, as measured by number of sex partners. Since there is no such connection for women, it is not surprising that men’s productivity in art and science exceeds that of women by around ten times.(I don’t believe this statement about men exceed women by around ten times in productivity in art and science—more like opportunity and the continued imbalance in availability and acknowledgment).

medical cannabis for bipolar treatment

Obviously, it does not do to be totally and permanently “away with the fairies”; some measure of control needs to be maintained. Consider James Joyce and his daughter Lucia, who was being treated by Carl Jung for schizophrenia in 1934. Joyce doubted she could be schizophrenic because her thought patterns were so similar to his own. Jung disagreed, comparing father and daughter to two people who had arrived at the bottom of a river. According to Jung, James had dived there, whereas Lucia had fallen in.

marilyn monroe her famous selfish quote

Genius and madness have much in common but there are also important differences between them. Mostly these are to do with intelligence, self-insight and contact with reality. Salvador Dali said: “There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know that I am mad”. Certainly, Dali was eccentric, self-absorbed and grandiose with a flamboyant moustache and a manic stare. But he was also a skilled draftsman, who produced brilliant, imaginative artworks, which made him rich, famous and able to enjoy a life of luxury. He was not, therefore, totally mad. © Professor Glenn D Wilson 2012

Genius or Madness? The Psychology of Creativity – Professor Glenn D. Wilson. The text is close to what is on the video but if you want to see it just click on this link.

“Up/Down” Bipolar Disorder Documentary FULL MOVIE (2011)This is a brilliantly made Documentary. Everyone who is Bipolar or knows someone who is or those in the Psychiatric profession and do counseling with anyone who is bipolar or anyone interested in bipolar and everyone who wants to have a knowledge of bipolar and find out what it is from what the myths are or how much people are misinformed about bipolar. A MUST SEE VIDEO. STOP THE STIGMA OF BIPOLAR AND ANY FORM OF MENTAL “ILLNESS” CREATIVITY.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
QUOTATIONS on GENIUS:

“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ― Oscar Levant

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.” ― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” ― Aristotle

“I’m a misunderstood genius.”
“What’s misunderstood?”
“Nobody thinks I’m a genius.”
― Bill Watterson

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” ― E.F. Schumacher

“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde

“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.” ― Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia
QUOTATIONS on MADNESS:

“Sanity is a madness put to good uses.” ― George Santayana, Essential Santayana, The: Selected Writings

“So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there’s always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.” ― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke

“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

“I don’t possess these thoughts I have — they possess me. I don’t possess these feelings I have — They obsess me.” ― Ashly Lorenzana

“The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.” ― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence — whether much that is glorious — whether all that is profound — does not spring from disease of thought — from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the ‘light ineffable’.” ― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora
QUOTATIONS on BIPOLAR:

“I’m the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible…” ― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one’s marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends’ faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against– you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Compared to bipolar’s magic, reality seems a raw deal. It’s not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it’s the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity – the realization of illnesss, the humiliating scenes, the blown money and friendships and confidence. Depression seems almost inevitable. The pendulum swings back from transcendence in shards, a bloody, dangerous mess. Crazy high is better than crazy low. So we gamble, dump the pills, and stick it to the control freaks and doctors. They don’t understand, we say. They just don’t get it. They’ll never be artists.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It’s fun and it’s frightening as hell. Some patients – bipolar type I – experience both extremes; other – bipolar type II – suffer depression almost exclusively. But the “mixed state,” the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression’s paranoid self-loathing.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

“Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.” ― Karl Lagerfeld

“Except you cannot outrun insanity, anymore than you can outrun your own shadow.” ― Alyssa Reyans, Letters from a Bipolar Mother

“Clear your energy, honor your rhythm, live your vision ” ― George Denslow, Living Out of Darkness: A Personal Journey of Embracing the Bipolar Opportunity

Silver Linings Playbook & the Stigma of Bipolar

2 Replies

Silver Linings Playbook & The Stigma of Bipolar
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Film Review taken from Salon
Post Created with a short comment at the end
by jk the secret keeper
Posted 05.01.13

Bradley Cooper, star of Silver Linings Playbook, an Oscar-nominated film about a man living with bipolar disorder. His recent film is making progress toward removing the stigma of mental illness. I am changing the two words to Mentally Creative or Mentally Interesting. The medical community is trying to move away from diagnosing Bipolar or other issues with the brain as “Mental Illness.” They are Brain illnesses or diseases. They are not behavior problems or mental problems. Not should they be stigmatized. When you have the flu you treat it in order to get better. When you have Bipolar you treat it so that you have a better control of what is causing the patient to exhibit the brain illness. There are a variety of ways to treat bipolar as there are people that have that brain dis-ease. I don’t use medications with the exception of one. My thoughts are that you treat bipolar the way that is best for you. I try to work on what helps me keep it under better control. I am still new at it and not very good at following the ways that work the best. But bipolar tends to make you stubborn sometimes. That I have to work on, also. But to stigmatize anyone for having something they were born with or inherited or just woke up one day and there it is bipolar or any other brain illness. You don’t back away from someone with cancer or Parkinson’s or any other physical ailment. Well, bipolar is a physical part of you that is not functioning in a manner in which makes your life easier to live. by jk the SK

Silver Linings Playbook is a film that is a personal movie for David O’Russell and when the group all came together to do the film, it became a personal movie for all of them. Tiffany, played by Jennifer Lawrence, serves as a catalyst and she’s the first person who actually sees who Pat is. Pat is played by Bradley Cooper. That’s the thing that this film has done, people around this country who have seen this film say “this film actually sees who I am” because bipolar is heavily stigmatized, its not a very treatable disease and it’s a condition that is diagnosed way too late. So hopefully, a movie like this will help it become less stigmatized in the onset. The best thing about this movie is that it will be able to reach out and make people feel included. ~ Bradley Cooper

“Silver Linings Playbook” with Bradley Copper

I watched the film last night. My reaction immediately was to think of a way to make a film, write the script for a film, where instead of the mentally creative or mentally interesting being the center and the ones stigmatized, that it wouldn’t be that way at all, instead those that are stigmatized are the folks we consider “normal,” they are the ones we feel uncomfortable around and they are the ones who are put in the outskirts of society and the ones who are stigmatized. If you think about it, those who have bipolar feel uncomfortable around people who are “normal,” those who think they are above those who have problems with the brain. Bipolar isn’t a behavior problem or a mental illness, which I find to be an offensive term. Those with bipolar have the fortunate or unfortunate DNA or the brain misfirings that cause some of the “bipolar reactions” the world has toward bipolar or any other person who is mentally interesting or mentally challenged. Why do “normal” people feel that they have any better a grasp on the truth of life on how to live it than someone who has been “blessed” with the gift of bipolar.

Bipolar is something that is extremely difficult to live with, where every moment or split second could change in your reaction to your world and the way you relate to the people around you. You can fly off the handle and lose your temper from a slight change in your environment. Is that really something to be afraid of? I don’t think so. “Normal” people have moods, also. Yes, bipolar, there are mood changes, the thoughts race around your mind because you have so many ideas firing off in your brain at any given time. Life is exciting. Creating art is a major benefit that can be quite satisfying and comes at one in a rapid firing sort of way. It can be exhilarating. But in that same split second you may find yourself triggered by something you are unaware of that pushes you close to the edge of falling into a dark hole. And most times, you aren’t going to be able to catch a hold of something that will keep you from falling in. It’s an endless fall, like in Alice In Wonderland, except she eventually reaches the bottom and there usually is light there. Bipolar, the lights have gone out.

Finding your way in the dark, when you are feeling nothing but pure tortuous emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual pain, is overwhelming and blinding. Eventually, bipolar will take you to the edge that starts the voices up that make you want to kill yourself or harm yourself. If you have found a discipline when you reach this bottom level like writing or creating art, you usually start that up immediately. And you keep writing or doing your visual arts until you create something that satisfies your opinion that you have succeeded. This may be enough to level you out temporarily and you then may be able to sleep. But even then, you turn on the Walkman with the ear buds in, so not to disturb anyone else with the loudness of your music. The loudness is so that you can only hear the sound of the music and nothing else. It doesn’t usually shut out the death march. That goes on. The thoughts haunt you but you must think them. Bipolar takes you on a journey until you fall asleep.

Hopefully by morning the feelings are under control. Of course, that sleep may take you to 15 or more hours from when you close your eyes. It’s the only way to get back on track. Most likely you haven’t had any sleep in the past day or two. The benefits are that you may not go down that road of bipolar. If you are fortunate you may go down the high one where what you create makes you feel giddy and everything is delightful and light and the demons are sleeping, which means they are leaving you alone. In that bipolar world everything is happy and you laugh and you want the classical or light music to play and you want to create the uplifting poems or stories or art. You want to keep doing projects, to keep creating. So why is the world so afraid of that.

Being mentally creative or interesting isn’t contagious and bipolar people as a rule could care less about harming anyone else except maybe themselves depending on the mood. The mentally creative have been given a stigmatic bum’s rap for the violence of those who take guns and go off on the innocent of the world. Those people are not doing that because they have a brain disease, they are doing that because they are violent individuals or groups that hate themselves and the people that are in their world. Bipolar tends to want to just take care of themselves and stay away from people that judge them. They may yell suddenly and then settle down and forget about it and may want to throw things when they get frustrated but mostly they don’t have any thoughts of hurting anyone and if they get into a down spiral it is usually themselves they are wanting to harm.

So stigma is all in the mind of those who are afraid of people being real and usually afraid of themselves being real. The “normal” people don’t want their reality being touched by anything that might resemble the actual behavior of someone who is alive in any way that might make them have to have a real thought or feeling. I don’t think “normal” people know what they are. Aren’t they usually following the latest dogmatic leader that tells them how to think and how to feel about someone they don’t like. And what about all those people that don’t want to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes because in their “normal” brains they think that it might be them someday who is rich and when they get there they don’t want to have to pay high taxes. I would say the “normal” are the ones who are a bit deluded and can’t think for themselves. And the ones who are bipolar or any other mentally creative individual are the free thinkers and the ones who don’t judge and the ones who want to help support the world and all the people in it.

Maybe it is about time to take a closer look at who the good guys are and who are the ones fucking up the world. And it’s about time to stop stigmatizing and showing people with mentally creative brains as a threat to the safety of society and to see them as contributors in the way of artists and those with original ideas who will move the society and culture forward. Yes, we may get off the path every so often but doesn’t everyone need to do a walk about now and again. Stop judging everyone and start co-existing in peace. Accept difference don’t try to make everyone identical to who you are.
by Jennifer Kiley

Silver Linings Playbook – EXTENDED FEATURETTE HD (2013)Special Features

HERE IS A REVIEW FROM SALON FOR THE FILM: SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

Friday, Nov 16, 2012 01:01 PM EST
“Silver Linings Playbook” is gold
Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence face love and mental illness in the rich, manic new romantic comedy
By Andrew O’Hehir

We get thrown right into the middle of Pat Solitano Jr.’s troubled life story, without any of the usual context or background. Played by Bradley Cooper in a major departure from his customary sleek pretty-boy roles, Pat is the unhinged, overly intense and not always likable protagonist of David O. Russell’s manic, inventive and rewarding “Silver Linings Playbook.” When we first meet him, he’s standing in the corner of his spartan room in a Baltimore mental hospital, talking to himself. His mom, played by the terrific Australian actress Jacki Weaver, has shown up from Philadelphia to sign him out, against doctor’s orders and without having consulted her husband. What did Pat do that got him locked up in the first place? What’s going on with this family? Why do Pat’s wife and the school where he used to teach have restraining orders against him?

Answers to those questions won’t come into focus for a while, although you may rapidly reach the conclusion that the doctors were right and Pat would be better off heavily medicated and under psychiatric care. Back in the family’s Philly neighborhood, with its slightly desperate upper-fringe-of-the-working-class feeling, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro) has no idea his younger son is returning home. One of the best and unarguably funniest roles of De Niro’s recent oddball supporting career, Pat Sr. fronts as an Italian-American tough guy but is more like a barely glued together mass of neuroses, a failing bookie with a penchant for disastrous side bets and an intense OCD relationship with the Philadelphia Eagles. (His wardrobe gets better and better as the movie progresses; I can’t stand football, but I want Pat Sr.’s Eagles-green cardigan.)

As for Pat Jr., whose apparel frequently involves a shapeless gray track suit topped with a black garbage bag – so he can sweat off weight as he runs – his first item of business is studying up on the high-school English syllabus his estranged wife, Nikki, is teaching, in hopes of impressing her at some unspecified future date. (Nikki plays an important role in Pat’s story, but almost entirely through her absence.) This leads, however, to Pat flinging a copy of “A Farewell to Arms” through a closed window at 4 o’clock in the morning, and awakening his parents with a maniacal rant against Ernest Hemingway. (He refuses to apologize, blaming Hemingway. Pat Sr. says, rather mildly, “Tell Ernest Hemingway to come down here and apologize to us in person.”) I can’t help detecting a genre commentary of sorts here, whether it originates with Russell (who also wrote the script) or Matthew Quick, author of the original novel: Hemingway was writing one kind of story, which purports to depict the tragedies of the real world in the 20th century and does not demand a happy ending. This is the other kind of story.

In fact, “Silver Linings Playbook” is a romantic comedy, even if it doesn’t feel like one at first. Furthermore, it’s a rom-com that succeeds in revitalizing that discredited genre where so many others have failed, injecting it with the grit and emotion of realist drama rather than with amped-up whimsy or social satire or montages of people walking on the beach while whiny emo-pop plays on the soundtrack. As he did with the boxing movie in “The Fighter,” Russell proves that you can breathe new life into one of the hoariest forms in the Hollywood lexicon. He takes a movie where everyone in the audience knows how it will end and makes us suspend our disbelief and fall in love all over again. (After an entire decade in the indie-film wilderness following his 1999 breakthrough with “Three Kings,” Russell seems to have found himself a niche reinventing classic movie genres.)

It helps, of course, that we’ve got a dynamite couple to fall in love with. Russell has long had a flair for unexpected casting combinations, but I really didn’t expect Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence to be such a combustible duo. (Yes, in real life, there’s a significant age spread between these two: Cooper is 37 and Lawrence 22. At the risk of sounding like a total sexist pig, it doesn’t play that way on-screen.) Finally getting unleashed from his immensely lucrative “Hangover” roles and a series of tepid leading-man movies, Cooper gives a twitchy, physical, marvelously alive performance as Pat Jr., who’s barely aware how poor his impulse control is and doesn’t seem to notice that his face is often marred with mysterious scars and bruises. As for Lawrence, she’s been in so many movies lately that she’s in danger of being overexposed but I only wish her chaste and cautious performance as Katniss Everdeen had one-third of the fire she shows here as Tiffany, a grieving widow going through a spectacular meltdown of her own.

There have been dozens if not hundreds of other movies about two damaged people who find each other, and quite a few that try to wring bittersweet laughs out of the painful struggle with mental illness. But it’s always wonderfully satisfying to see a conventional or archetypal story structure handled with this level of craft and enthusiasm. “Silver Linings Playbook” never feels like a movie you’ve seen before, even if Pat and Tiffany’s ultimate destination is clear the moment they meet. It seems clear to us, of course, but not to them; Tiffany assumes he’ll just be another entry on her long list of recent sexual partners, while Pat clings like a drowning man to the idea that his marriage to the invisible Nikki – which ended in an act of disturbing violence, as we eventually learn – can still be redeemed.

During Tiffany and Pat’s disastrous first date (which Pat insists isn’t a date, because he’s getting back together with Nikki any day now) they eat Raisin Bran at a diner while she regales him with steamy tales about sleeping with all her co-workers (male and female) at her last job. Pat isn’t literally wearing his garbage bag in that scene, but he might as well be. All the crockery ends up on the floor, along with the remnants of Raisin Bran, and we’re left with the realization that these two people are falling in love but may be too screwed-up to deal with it – a phenomenon that afflicts many of us at one time or another, from you and me to David Petraeus and that lady with the upper arms.

There’s no point denying that “Silver Linings Playbook” is shameless cornpone, given that the bumpy course of Pat and Tiffany’s romance includes such elements as a ballroom dancing competition, a crucial showdown between the Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys and a parlay bet orchestrated by Pat Sr. that links the two. Not to mention a deceptive epistolary exchange straight out of classic French theater. But where most American romantic comedies are either made by talentless hacks or by Hollywood pros who can barely conceal their contempt for the material and the audience, this one was made by a leading American director at the height of his powers who’s paying attention to every emotional beat, every cut and every frame. Great cinema? Hell, I don’t know. But one of the most satisfying movies, that much is for sure.

ADDED NOTE BY jk the secret keeper: I need to watch the film again. Somewhere in the middle I thought the film was over and dropped off and came back before the film was over. So I watched the beginning and the end but missed the middle. My partner, Shawn, thought the film was great. What I saw I agree with her. Make a lot of noise in the middle of the night. So you get woken up by someone yelling and he happens to be bipolar. I don’t think that’s enough to threaten to someone that their behavior is going to get them thrown back into the institution. Only in America does one live under that threat if one is not strictly staying in between the lines. Freedom is another word for nothing left to shout about. SINCE WHEN. THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS TO SHOUT ABOUT. Why do we have to be quiet to keep ourselves from being locked away. I do realize, and I am not going to give away a spoiler, that the main character has done something that makes the law question his behavior more carefully but the extreme I think everyone takes it seems too extreme to me and especially in society those who are different in their brain and act differently. These are not the dark ages and those with brain problems don’t deserve to be treated as lesser citizens. GO RENT THIS FILM. IT IS A QUIRKY ROMANTIC COMEDY. THE ACTORS ARE BRILLIANT. JENNIFER LAWRENCE DESERVED HER ACADEMY AWARD AND IT DESERVED TO BE NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS. jk the secret keeper

Whitney Houston — I Look To You
QUOTATIONS on BIPOLAR:

“If I can’t feel, if I can’t move, if I can’t think, and I can’t care, then what conceivable point is there in living?” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“When you are mad, mad like this, you don’t know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else’s reality, it’s still reality to you.” ― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Creativity is closely associated with bipolar disorder. This condition is unique . Many famous historical figures and artists have had this. Yet they have led a full life and contributed so much to the society and world at large. See, you have a gift. People with bipolar disorder are very very sensitive. Much more than ordinary people. They are able to experience emotions in a very deep and intense way. It gives them a very different perspective of the world. It is not that they lose touch with reality. But the feelings of extreme intensity are manifested in creative things. They pour their emotions into either writing or whatever field they have chosen” ― Preeti Shenoy, Life is What You Make It

“It was as if my father had given me, by way of temperament, an impossibly wild, dark, and unbroken horse. It was a horse without a name, and a horse with no experience of a bit between its teeth. My mother taught me to gentle it; gave me the discipline and love to break it; and- as Alexander had known so intuitively with Bucephalus- she understood, and taught me, that the beast was best handled by turning it toward the sun.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Crazy isn’t a condition it’s a place and it exists somewhere between Love and Oblivion” ― Stanley Victor Paskavich

Toward A New Understanding of Mental Illness

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Toward A New Understanding of Mental Illness
TED Talk: Thomas Insel
Post Created by j. kiley
Post Created 04.24.13
Posted 04..13

van gogh starry night on the rhone

38,000 people die each year from Suicide. One every 15 minutes. More than murders and traffic accidents. And those who are likely to commit Suicide are those with Brain Disorders. Medical studies are moving away from calling Brain Disorders the term mental illness or disorders or a behavioral disease.

Published on Apr 16, 2013

Today, thanks to better early detection, there are 63% fewer deaths from heart disease than there were just a few decades ago. Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, wonders: Could we do the same for depression and schizophrenia? The first step in this new avenue of research, he says, is a crucial reframing: for us to stop thinking about “mental disorders” and start understanding them as “brain disorders.”

Thomas Insel: Toward a new understanding of mental illness TED Talk

QUOTATIONS on BRAIN vs MENTAL

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.” ― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“But when you’re in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you’re guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It’s very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That’s when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.” ― George Carlin, Last Words

“The vast majority of us imagine ourselves as like literature people or math people. But the truth is that the massive processor known as the human brain is neither a literature organ or a math organ. It is both and more.” ― John Green

“It is not seen as insane when a fighter, under an attack that will inevitable lead to his death, chooses to take his own life first. In fact, this act has been encouraged for centuries, and is accepted even now as an honorable reason to do the deed. How is it any different when you are under attack by your own mind?” ― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.” ― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four

“Their screams would echo through the house and reverberate against my eardrums until my mind would fracture. Years went by and with each fracture; I lost a piece of my soul until I became lost and empty inside.” ― J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness

“Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given year. That means millions of Americans are totally batshit.
but having perused the various tests available that they use to determine whether you’re manic depressive. OCD, schizo-affective, schizophrenic, or whatever, I’m surprised the number is that low. So I have gone through a bunch of the available tests, and I’ve taken questions from each of them, and assembled my own psychological evaluation screening which I thought I’d share with you.
So, here are some of the things that they ask to determine if you’re mentally disordered
1. In the last week, have you been feeling irritable?
2. In the last week, have you gained a little weight?
3. In the last week, have you felt like not talking to people?
4. Do you no longer get as much pleasure doing certain things as you used to?
5. In the last week, have you felt fatigued?
6. Do you think about sex a lot?
If you don’t say yes to any of these questions either you’re lying, or you don’t speak English, or you’re illiterate, in which case, I have the distinct impression that I may have lost you a few chapters ago.”
― Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking

“It is now well established that the unconscious mind is the wellspring of all human creativity.” ― Earnest Rossi

Letters of Import: Welcome to My World Annie 4

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Welcome to My World Annie 4
By Jennifer Kiley
Written 03.31.13
Illustrations by j. kiley
© jennifer kiley 2013
First Posting 03.19.13
Posted Early Tuesday Morning
Fourth Posting 04.09.13 Tuesday Oct. 22th, 2007

Dear Annie

There are many things I would like to get to know about you but I am afraid I would be intruding on your privacy. I will guess instead or make up by filling in the spaces from what you say in group or afterwards. I am quite the detective. When I was a kid, I read all the Nancy Drew books I could get my hands on. Then as I got older I graduated to Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. I read others but these two were my favorites and the most intelligent. I, also, got into the British detectives Inspectors Dagliesh and Morse on PBS. Liked reading P.D. James and Colin Dexter. I am a real mystery buff. Love a good mystery in a film, also. The point being I know how to put the pieces together rather quickly.

I should get on finishing up telling you about the cancer. The group, including Mr. Xxx were rather cavalier with my health when I received the diagnosis of Uterine cancer. It’s also called Endometrial cancer. When I got the courage up to tell the group I had been told I had cancer and they found out what kind, I felt like I got totally shot down and shut down. Everyone, including our fearless leader, thought it was the best possible news. Their logic being, if I was to get cancer, getting Uterine cancer was the best one to get. There was nothing to it. In and out for the operation and back on my feet in a couple of weeks. They were not very understanding or consoling at all. So, I think that had a lot to do with why I thoroughly shut down talking about it. I felt rejected. Like no one cared about me. I thought if I died it wouldn’t matter.

So, I started not taking it as seriously but still worried. Then My OB-Gyn told me it looked serious to her. My uterine wall was quite thick. It was a bad boxing day. That’s when she called to confirm the biopsy from the Uterine tissue she painfully scraped from the insides of my body. It was positive for cancer. Nice Christmas. She was great. She went out of her way to get the news to me as quickly as possible. Next step was to find the surgeon. It ended up being the Da Vinci
machine. State of the Art. Two weeks after surgery Scottie and I went to the surgeon behind the Da Vinci machine to get the results. He had us take seats on the other side of his rather large desk. He sat behind it looking like he was having a difficult time finding the words to say. His face wasn’t the kind anyone wants to see when they are waiting for news of this kind. We all looked at each other in the long silence. The doctor finally spoke.

He cleared his throat. “I am afraid I have some rather disturbing news for you, Madison. It seems the cancer has spread outside the containment area of your reproductive organs. It’s in your lymph system. The good news is that we feel and are quite certain that we took the lymph nodes that the cancer had entered. What this means is you have a diagnosis of Stage 3 Endometrial Cancer with an attachment to the lymphatic system. It means your case is a great deal more serious then we expected. Originally, we didn’t feel you would need anything more than the surgery. But now it appears after all you will have to go through a full treatment of Chemotherapy and a full course of Radiation Therapy Treatment that accompanies it. You will need to start almost immediately. Do you have any questions?”

I was dumbfounded and so was Scottie. It was going to really screw with her schedule. Not that she felt that was important at that moment. I thought it was and worried about it. I was trying to think about anything but what I had just heard. I was expecting to be cleared to go home and to continue on living my life in a normal way. With No more Cancer to worry about. Instead it had really only just started. I had just walked into a nightmare that was going to threaten my life from now on. I was never going to be safe from cancer again. From the moment my first doctor told me I would have to see a specialist, that was the beginning. I knew there was a reason I was avoiding it. My unconscious knew I was so god damn bloody sick. But I wasn’t going to listen to any of the signs. They weren’t going to tell me anything was wrong. Stubborn. Scottie kept telling me to call my doctor but I kept putting it off even though I was bleeding to death all the time.

Scottie and I left after we worked out a schedule for my treatment. It meant traveling over 3 hours every visit. That wasn’t going to work. I took the matters into my hands, especially after we would travel the distance for scheduled appointments and then wait there and find out after a few hours of waiting that we were not even on the schedule. I decided to find a place closer to home to receive treatments. They told me that would be impossible. They were wrong. I got on the phone the next day and before the afternoon was over I had a new oncologist. A new cancer center to go to and I could start right away with my treatments. All was transferred and it was a much quieter and comforting place.

End of the cancer saga for todays letter. Did not know I had that pent up inside of me. There is much more but I will keep spreading it out. It is more than I can deal with, so I can’t even imagine you, Annie, understanding what I was going through. No one can if they haven’t been through it. Truthfully, no empathizing will take you to the same place at all.

So, what I really wanted to talk about today was what has been happening inside me. More specifically, my feelings toward you. There’s just something that draws me into wanting to tell you everything. That must seem overwhelming I imagine. I started talk therapy when I was a teenager. It seems to have been converted into my confessional. My conversion into psychoanalysis. It’s a strong urge to understand my self. What’s the reason everything has happened the way it has. Why my life has been so fucked up. I need answers. I need to talk for all the years I was never allowed to. I was a silent child. I thought for quite some time that I was autistic. I was really convinced. I began studying autism in school. It seemed to fit all of my symptoms but I eventually figured out I was just a neglected and a severely abused child instead. Which was worse? I think both are.

Now I am living with another major setback attached to my psych problems. Have you ever heard of agoraphobia? Well, I am an agoraphobic who is not being treated and have never been treated for it or what it does for me except to have pills thrown at it. My fears are being allowed to grow. I don’t object because I don’’t want to experience the panic and anxiety that goes along with going out of the house or interacting with people. My partner, Scottie has her demons with dealing with it.

The pressure between us has been growing when Mr. Xxx started with his lack of support. Denying me my sense of reality. Making me feel like I am unable to interpret my feelings accurately about certain people I feel are treating me like shit. He defended Angie rather than supporting me. The problem comes in that we are both his clients but when he is in a session with me it is my time. That is when I should be getting his support, not her. He should be trying to understand what I am feeling and not Angie. He should be trying to help me understand why she is treating me with such vitriol. What I was feeling about what he was doing made no difference to him. He felt he had to protect Angie from me. I’ve been nothing but cordial to her and she just jumps all over me. Fuck Angie and Fuck Mr. Xxx.

I want to know why I am feeling so hostile. It’s always such a contest to battle out who is right rather then trying to figure out what is wrong. He just doesn’t feel like he cares or wants to understand the effects the group is having on me. I’m really hating to be in that room alone with Angie or him. It is becoming such a toxic place. Its only redeeming quality is that you are there and I feel you protect me. Otherwise I don’t feel safe at all.

You give me support. I wish you were the leader and that Mr. Xxx would resign from the group. He’s threatened to do it enough times. Why doesn’t he just do it and turn the leadership over to you full time. I’d like that more than anything else. Maybe Angie would leave with him.

You’d be so perfect. You could rebuild the group and maybe we would actually talk about something relevant and we would lose him monopolizing every session with his damn stories that haven’t any relevance. We could actually do therapy. Oh, do think about it. Maybe you could work on him and make him decide he is not right for the group any longer or the group is not right with him, that it needs a woman leading a women’s therapy group and not a man.

That is probably enough for this letter. This just exhausts me. I promise I will talk more about it. I just want you to know that I am really beginning to trust you. It’s because I want to and I am believing you will come through and live up to deserving that trust, I think you have already. I do trust you. I want and need to.

I’ll have more to tell you next time. Maybe we can talk some about the individual members of the group besides Mr. Xxx. You need to know more detailed information about them to better understand the dynamics between everyone. It is quite an interesting group broken off into its’ segments. It’s all too depressing to me.

Until next time I will leave you with one secret. Watch out for Robin. She is not your friend. Do not trust her. I don’t want to see you get hurt. That is all I will say for now.

Regards,
Madison (This note is to ensure that each letter is written in the strictest of confidence.)

To Annie,

At this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I wish without need of censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the barriers or boundaries of what the potentials could be between us and the development of our relationship.

I am adding this in order that you, Annie Haskell, will know that I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. It will free up my words as I speak them upon the page. And on some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I write in honesty, but for now I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that.

Regards,
Madison Taylor

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy Psychoanalyst’s Office

Maksim — Somewhere In Time — Theme Song #1 For “Letters of Import”

John Barry’s Somewhere In Time & Rhapsody on a Theme from Pagnini — Theme #4 for Letters of Import: Welcome to My World Annie 4

QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

“A therapeutic relationship is often more psycho-emotionally intimate than a marriage, or a romantic attachment. I know things about my patients that they would never dream of revealing to their spouses or families. Why is that? One word — trust. If you do not have a connection with a therapist, you cannot trust them. If you do not have trust, you will not expose yourself, and if you do not expose your innermost being, what good is the therapy?” — unknown but ask any great therapist

“Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…whether much that is glorious–whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought…” — Edgar Allan Poe

All The Lonely People...is available now...free!

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Reblogged from On The Plum Tree:

Introduction: All The Lonely People

More than one in ten people suffer from chronic loneliness...

Our cultures do little to recognise this alarmingly growing trend. In fact, chronic loneliness can become a disease that eats into the soul causing depression and deep psychological change. The chronically lonely person asks, "What's wrong with me?" Why don't I fit in? Why am I the odd one out?"

Letters of Import: Coming Closer 3

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Coming Closer 3
By Jennifer Kiley
Written 03.31.13
Illustrations by j. kiley
© jennifer kiley 2013
First Posting 03.19.13
Posted Weekly Early Tuesday Morning
Third Posting 04.02.13
Tuesday October 15th 2007

Dear Annie

I rather left you hanging in my last letter regarding my cancer saga. Not trying to be flippant but a touch less severe or dramatic. The story does continue. But today, there are other matters I want to write about. So, I will keep it brief that aspect of my past that has to do with my recovery.

After leaving you hanging on my near death experience and no diagnosis could be found, eventually they discovered a virus that was causing the effects of some tropical illness. Nothing would stay down. My insides were shrinking. They had to hydrate me. I was losing masses of weight. Over the course of one night i lost twenty pounds. I just could not eat and when I did it wouldn’t stay down. I was on a diet of jello and ginger ale and my regular medications. They had to switch everything over to IV.

There were these great blue parachute bags that opened up quickly and kept what came up well contained. No messes. I use to be bulimic and this was worse then that ever was. Losing weight did satisfy my anorexic mindset but as Scottie would say, “That is not the way to lose weight.” I think it became her mantra with me. Eating was not one of my favorite things. And now that I am feeling a touch better. I am so particular about what I want and can put in my stomach. Everything needs to be mild and mostly white.

As I began to feel better, all seemed like I was recovering. No more Chemo. Hurray! But still Monday through Friday Scottie took me to my radiation treatment. They were an experiment in visiting Hell. They were killing the bone marrow in my hip where blood was made so enters my anemia with an already compromised immune system this was affecting my ability to make red and white blood cells.

I will stop here. Without meaning to I wrote more than I wanted but I guess it is something I never talked to anyone about at any length. I kept it all hidden. Not even Scottie. She was overloaded with caring for me. She lived it. I’m sure she didn’t want to hear about it.

What I really wanted to write to you about today is my connection to you in the women’s group. Ever since I returned, I want more and more for you to be leading the group. You may not say much but what you do say is so much more poignant than anything Mr. Xxx ever goes on and on about, blowing his bubbles, signifying nothing. You are so sensitive. You actually listen. He’s always waiting to jump in somewhere with what he wants to say next. He just has his stories he has to be sure to tell. And they never really focus on what you pour your heart into saying. That’s why I have pretty much given up. He has sucked any emotions I have out of me. I haven’t felt anything but panic and anxiety since I first started seeing him.

The closer I feel toward what you are meaning to the group and me the further away from Mr. Xxx I am growing. He has been my private therapist since I left doing therapy with another therapist. I never wanted to leave her but insurance caused us to end our relationship of over 7 years. Her name was Irene. I was so strongly attached to her. We met once a week and between sessions I would always need to call her to talk and I would write her a letter every week.

The month of our last visit was the same month and year that Princess Diana was killed in the car crash in Paris. I had started with Mr. Xxx right away. I was a basket case and needed to continue therapy without any interruption. After one or two of our sessions he asked me to write a poem about something, anything. I had told him that I was a writer and had written a novel and started many others. I, also, mentioned I was a poet from the time I was a teenager or maybe even before that.

I remember my grandmother and I had invented a secret alphabet in order to communicate privately with each other. We didn’t want anyone else to be able to read what we were writing to each other. I was pretty young when we did that. It was the signs of the beginnings of a budding author or someone with a keen imagination. That’s what my grandmother told me. She always encouraged me. She was the one person in my childhood that was not a nightmare to me or an abuser or bully.

Back to Mr. Xxx, while I was seeing him I did write that one poem. It was about the effect Princess Diana’s death had on me, which was very traumatic. It turned out to be the only poem and the only thing I wrote during the almost ten years that I have been seeing him. He slowly started sucking the life out of me. Everyone thought that I should replace him. I knew I needed a new therapist but I was too afraid of the change.

The people in my life were and are constantly putting pressure on me to terminate my therapy with him. They all feel it is a toxic relationship. I feel nothing inside with him. I am an emotional zombie with the exception of my alter Brad, who is filled with rage and comes out and tells him off all the time. He is always pissing Brad off. I should tell you up front Brad is a young teenager, male, who protects us all. He is our guardian. We want to confess to you that we have dissociative identity disorder. There are many of us inside but Brad is the most out going. He isn’t afraid of anything or anyone. Some day as we get to know you we will tell you more about us.

Back to the asshole, Mr. Xxx. I suppose we shouldn’t call him that with you. I will just tell you he makes us feel on the defensive all the time. We can’t trust him and for sure we never feel we can open up to him. We keep our true feelings or thoughts locked in a secure place inside us. Directness with him is like a battle for attention. Mr. Xxx always wants the floor or has an excuse for what he has to say.

He tries to make or causes us to deny our sense of realty. We would finally think we could tell him something real. But then we would feel like Charlie Brown kicking the football and he would become Lucy. I just realized she is a cheap therapist. So is he or should be. So, at the last moment he would prove once again we couldn’t trust him. He always has a way of twisting my feelings into being wrong and defends the person I am having the negative feelings about even though they were being mean as Hell to me. That’s when he would push me into a dark corner and Brad would come out in a raging fury and want to tear him apart for being such a Dickhead.

It was always more his session than ours. He has to show off how smart he is and would always try to one up on us whenever I said anything about art or what was happening in the news or any ideas. He always felt insecure or something and felt he had to prove he knew more than I did. I am not an egotist but I am rather brilliant and artistic and inside of my mind there is so much activity going on all the time and such a thirst for knowledge and philosophical thinking and creative ideas about subjects I wanted to write about. What I lacked was understanding from him. But enough about him or I’ll scream.

Now I would like to get a touch more personal with you. I told you some of the outline of my relationship with Mr. Xxx. It helps explain why I am thinking seriously about finding a new therapist. I know you are in no place for it to be you, at least right now. But someday, I want to know if I ever do ask that question whether the answer will be yes?

I should be completely honest with you about some of the ways that I feel. One thing that is strong in me is that I get jealous. I also get attached and can be rather dependent. I am in control of my behavior but I do feel very intense about people I care about. For an example, you seem to have a certain relationship between yourself and Robin. You engage in some intense conversations after group is over and then you give her a ride home. Now I am not exactly sure why this bothers me but it does.

Before I became ill I always took Robin home. We would have these intense conversations. Now I am not sure if I am jealous, just a touch because she talks to you, or you talk to her and spend time with her. What I am saying I think or feel I want to be in Robin’s place. I want the intense conversations with you. But also I want my friend back. That’s a real Catch-22.

We also take the same road home and I can see you both sitting in your car talking. How crazy am I that it bothers me. I don’t really want you two to be close. I can absolutely not talk to Mr. Xxx about what I am feeling. The Goddess knows what he would say. Not going to trust that.

I hope you are able to understand the trust I am placing in you being so direct and honest. Closeness with you is something I would like to build between us.

Until the next time I see you I will close with a thank you for listening.

Regards,
Madison (This note is to ensure that all is written in the strictest of confidence.)

To Annie,

Regards,
Madison Taylor

Maksim — Somewhere In Time
Theme Song #1 For “Letters of Import”

Annie Haskell --- Madison Tayler's Psychoanalyst's Office

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy Psychoanalyst’s Office

Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini—”Somewhere In Time” Theme Song #3 for Letters of Import: Coming Closer 3

QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

Letters of Import: Coming Close 2

1 Reply

Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Coming Close 2
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrations by j. kiley
© jennifer kiley 2013
First Posting 03.19.13
Posted Weekly Early Tuesday Morning
Second Posting 03.26.13
Tuesday: 10.09.07

Dear Annie,

I feel a need to be a bit less formal in addressing you. So, from now on I will just use your first name Annie. It sounds so much better than writing: Dear Annie Haskell. That does sounds rather formal and weird.

Let me start out by telling you something of what I have gone through over the past year, to fill you in on me. If it were not for the support of the women from my therapy group, I don’t know what would have happened to me. To begin with, I am the only one that remains from the original group. As you could see from last week, everyone was so warm to me on my return after being away for over 8 months. And they really made me feel wanted, like I belonged. If you knew what world I came from you would understand how important that is to me.

When I was in the hospital, group members visited daily. I never believed anyone cared that much. It definitely made me feel good. My body was so weak. It was hard to find the energy to stay conscious while everyone visited. My health sucked. Dying wasn’t very far away. I had blood transfusions. It may have been exhausting to visit with my friends but I wanted them to be there. Some place inside of me and the help of their energy, I found an inner strength so I could stay conscious during their visits.

One special friend, Kristina, came every evening. We would talk or just hang out. We’d listen to the television. The nursing staff would check on me. Do their tests. Lots of needles. Hate needles. Kristina was a great friend. I never had to pretend with her. We talked about whatever thoughts came into our minds. Her friendship was open to any conversation and any topic. Nothing was taboo. She stayed until late just as I would start falling asleep.

I should mention that the hospital had open visitation twenty-four/seven every day of the week. Visitors sometimes slept there and joined in meals with friends or family members. It was an inviting place. I loved the nursing staff except one.

She would always wake me at 2am. One night, I could not believe it, a really bad night, I had finally fallen asleep. There she was, shaking my shoulder to wake me. She made me get out of bed so she could weigh me. If I had the strength I would have told her to GO FUCK OFF. But I was too tired and too polite. I relayed this story to another night nurse, she told me I should have told her to GO FUCK OFF. I could do that. Well, I did not know that. I was losing weigh rather drastically but please do not wake someone so ill when sleep is so precious and limited. I am surprised that murders do not happen in hospitals more often, but to the staff with people like that jack-ass.

My mate, Scottie, that I’ve been with for almost forever, wasn’t too partial to hospitals, so we spoke more on the phone, several times a day, and just before I went to sleep at night. She did visit me in the hospital every day but I could tell she was like a cat out in a rain storm, just not her place. Inside her head, the following words were reverberating, “GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” And that is the correct volume level those words would make.

She was there for me completely, though. she was constantly on a deadline, an artist in great demand. She is a film director and writer. She was in editing during this time so she could be around more than usual. She was there for radiation treatments and three hours of chemotherapy. I usually fell asleep. Eventually, we decided I would contact her by cell phone a short time before chemo was over for the day. That seemed more than generous to me for her, then she wait with me all that time. I felt a touch selfish imposing on her, taking her away from her own time and demands. The studios weren’t going to so patient if she didn’t get her film edited by the deadline. Fortunately she was also one of the producers. So she did rule somewhat. But she didn’t need to watch me have poison dripping from a hanging plastic bag, coursing through my veins, gradually making me feel violently ill. Scottie didn’t need to be there for that. She needed the time off from me, too, and the things she needed to do for me that no one would want to ask anyone to ever do for them.

Unfortunately, the day came when Scottie was taking me to one of my usual chemotherapy treatments. She always waited until I was set up with my medicine bags and settled in before taking off. On this particular day, it seemed like it was taking forever for them to get things started. I had my usual blood tests before treatments. They always checked for blood counts and other important tests to be sure I was physically okay to receive the treatments. Scottie and I waited in one of the treatment rooms, which was near enough to the nurses’ desk. We could hear some of the words that were being exchanged between staff. We could hear the Doctor speaking. Not the specific words until I heard my name. Scottie looked at me. Both of us were puzzled. It was then I heard the word hospital. Plus no one had come to set up my medicine IVs. No one was coming to talk to us. It seemed like time had vanished. Nothing was moving forward. I was getting a bad sense that something was starting to move in the wrong direction. Motion stopped. Just sounds could be heard but nothing was making any sense.

Finally my doctor and nurse entered the treatment room. They faced Scottie and me. They revealed it was my body. The blood tests were not good. My body was not tolerating the Chemo. Instead it was close to killing me. (My words, not theirs. Their words were that I was extremely ill.) Scottie took my hand when the doctor told us that my blood count was basically nonexistent. My chemo had been cancelled and arrangements had been made to admit me into the hospital immediately. My condition was serious. I had a fever and an infection that they were unable to diagnose and no immune system to fight it. An expert from the Center from Disease Control was called in on my case. No one had any idea what was wrong with me. I was put into quarantine. Not sure if they were afraid my health would be compromised or whether I was a danger to the other patients in the hospital. All sorts of special procedures were initiated while treating me. No one was allowed to touch me or get too close to me. Any medical staff had to put on special clothing. It was all rather “House” or “ER.”

Well, I’d say that’s enough for now about the cancer. I want you to know that today I noticed you again, Annie. I couldn’t help but want to look at you but I didn’t want you to know that or anyone else to. I don’t like people to see my feelings on the outside, even in a therapy setting. It makes me feel too shy. Looking at you makes me feel shy. And it makes me feel awkward wanting to just watch you but feeling I couldn’t and shouldn’t. Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not a stalker. It’s just you. You’re hard not to look at. It’s not objectification. You must know that you are beautiful and there is something deeper than that. You have an aura of tenderness that surrounds you. I know I must not be the only one that feels this way or senses something really special coming from inside of you. I know I am really highly sensitive to other people. I feel what’s going on inside of them. That’s why I often need to block people out.

But let me put a question to you. Is there anyone in your life that tells you how beautiful and amazing you are? I mean on a regular basis? If you answer no, than I need to say that there should be. I, also, noticed how very quiet you are. It seems you are as shy as I am. But then, this was only the second time we were in the same room together, I could be wrong about the shyness. We’ll have to wonder about that for another time.

I saw my therapist later after group and I asked him about you. The first thing he told me was that you were there more as an observer, trying to learn about group dynamics. How they functioned in a real setting. Sometimes, he said that you would participate, but not that frequently. I must say that was a disappointment to hear. I was hoping for more but for now, simply your presence will have to be enough. He did inform me you are working on a college degree and training to become a psychoanalyst. That was the best part of what he said. That is somehow comforting to me. I am delighted to know you are working on becoming a psychoanalyst.

But even better for the present, I would be seeing you in our women’s therapy group every week. That to me made my day complete. I love that idea. But then he came out with the best part, he told me that if he wasn’t able to cover a group session, you would take over in his place. I held back my enthusiasm. He didn’t need to know how much that statement thrilled me. Just to have someone else cover a group session would have been enough but to have that person be you, well, that brought my day up to the highest level possible.

He, also, finally got to the place where he told me that last week, the week I returned, was coincidentally your first session with the group. That really surprised me. It made me wonder why he hadn’t introduced you last week to the group. But then I remembered I was a few moments late arriving. Anyway, I let it go.

Back to you entering into my life the same day that I entered into yours. I enjoy when serendipity happens. It creates a sense of magic in my mind and an opening up of so many feelings inside me. The best part is feeling the excitement that maybe someday I could actually ask you a super important question. It might sound strange coming from me right now but I’m going to ask it anyway. Here goes, I would like it if some day when you have completed your studies and are finally registered as a professional psychoanalyst, if you could or would see me in a professional capacity. Sometime in the future, I would like to be your client.

Surprised? At this moment, I will not explain why I would be asking you that question. Wait patiently and in some future letter, I will go into more detail on why, I feel, that question is appropriate.

Regards,
Madison Taylor

Ps. I believe in my next letter I shall drop the formality of signing my letters to you, using my family’s name. I will just use Madison. Let’s see how I feel then before I definitely decide.
ATTENTION: (This I add to each letter I write to you, so that you know they are all written in the strictest of confidence.) To Annie, at this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I wish with sense of censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the barriers or boundaries of what the potentials could be between us and the development of our relationship. I am adding this in order that you, Annie Haskell, will know that I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. It will free up my words as I speak them upon the page. And on some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I write in honesty, but for now I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that. Regards, Madison Taylor.

Maksim — Somewhere In Time
Theme Song For “Letters of Import”

Dmitri Shostakovich — Jazz Waltz No.2 Theme #2 Letters of Import: Coming Close 2 QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

4 Replies

Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
To Begin 1
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Abstract Digital Art by j. kiley
© jennifer kiley 2013
First Posting 03.19.13
Opening Announcement: This is an experiment that I am hoping will be successful. I am rewriting a manuscript and placing it on “the secret keeper” blog. It will be a short posting late every Monday night after midnight, so actually into the wee hours of early Tuesday morning. Today’s Post includes The Title Page; Dedication; Introduction; and the Beginning of the Book “To Begin 1”… I am hoping this works and is intriguing enough to encourage those who would like to, will read & follow it. It is a rather long manuscript, so it may take some time & many turns but hopefully it will be unique, entertaining, & thought provoking reading & teaches me more about writing & telling an enticing & inspiring story. It is, also, the inspiration for a screenplay I am working on separately from this writing project. I hope for the best. And now to draw the curtain back…All characters and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. Including the dedication and what follows. All are living well in my imagination and only until they are released will anyone know what shall appear on these pages. The writer, in this case, has the last call as to where this story’s tale will go and how it will develop and end.DEDICATION

I am actually dedicating this book to Annie Haskell, a potentially fictional psychoanalyst. She is one unto herself & a culmination of all psychotherapists I have seen during my life since a teenager & up until the present day & beyond. There have been many, which I hope shall add a great deal of variety to the tale. I dedicate this book to all of them. To the positive and negative effects they have had on my life, still do, in guiding me toward my Enlightenment, Awareness, Encouragement, Support & Growth.

I wanted to add a special message, specifically for Annie, in which, the words are spoken in silence to her with truth, honesty & meaning, This passage means a great deal. My favorite passage from, what I feel is the most romantic film, “Somewhere In Time.” These words speak exactly what my former psychoanalyst means to me or at least what feelings I once held for her in my heart:

“The woman of my dreams has almost faded now. The one I have created in my mind. The sort of woman each woman dreams of, In the deepest and most secret reaches of her heart. I can almost see her now before me. What would I say to her if she were really here? “Forgive me. I have never known this feeling. I have lived without it all my life. Is it any wonder, then, I failed to recognize you? You, who brought it to me for the first time. Is there any way that I can tell you how my life has changed? Any way at all to let you know what sweetness you have given me?
There is so much to say. I cannot find the words. Except for these: “I love you”. Such would I say to her if she were really here.”

The character Elise McKenna spoke these words, while on stage in the middle of a theatre performance, to Richard Collier, who was in the audience, in the film “Somewhere In Time.” I changed the gender so it read as though a women speaking to another women:

This I still let remain in my dedication to you Annie. When one has such strong feelings, it is most difficult to ever forget the echo of such depth from one’s heart. So, you shall always be a part of my heart, mind and soul even if you are not in my life any longer.INTRODUCTION

Our writings to Annie will include: our dreams, thoughts, notes, poems, lyrics, letters, emails, role playing, screenwriting scenes, quotes and inspirations along with reflective comments that we recall of times in between birth and now: from the inner workings of the mind of a person who is living with multiple personality disorder, also known as dissociative identity disorder.

Fortunately there is nothing wrong with our identities. We all just want to be allowed to be our selves. We may at present be either or are somewhat integrated or just rather quiet. Next is complex-post traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, anxiety disorder, bi-polar disorder. We prefer manic depression or bipolar brilliant and do not like the term mental illness. We prefer to be known as mentally interesting or mentally creative or having a brain disorder.

We are survivors of childhood sexual abuse and quite the variety: emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual abuse, kidnapping, child pornography, and bondage. And then our near death experiences from cancer, near drownings, car crashes, with one death, fractured bones and two necks broken, one was mine & the other a good friend of mine. We were hit by a gunrunner. The cops found drugs in our glove compartment. Police said they would not press charges if we did the same. The drug runner was drunk and a government witness, so he helped the law but was a jerk.

And if that is not enough, they won’t even let us have medicinal marijuana to help for all this and the physical pain. Relax Peaceful and Calm are the safe words Annie gave to us and now spoken to us by our Muse and Inspiration during a meditation/relaxation session.

Namaste! Madison TaylorTHE BEGINNING

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares

A Dream

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

Tribute paid to playwright Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander.”
“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
From Hero and Leander.

A therapeutic relationship is often more psycho-emotionally intimate than a marriage, or a romantic attachment. I know things about my patients that they would never dream of revealing to their spouses or families. Why is that? One word — trust. If you do not have a connection with a therapist, you cannot trust them. If you do not have trust, you will not expose yourself, and if you do not expose your innermost being, what good is the therapy?
~ask any great therapist~

Dear Annie Haskell,

Today was my first day returning to the women’s therapy group. I had such a battle with Cancer. So many times everyone thought I was going to die. I tried not to think of it until that doctor, who thank goodness was not mine, told me so directly that I had about five years left if I survived now. Up until then, I never really thought about my mortality. It never occurred to me. Is that denial? Or I was just plain clueless.

I knew I was weak and my immune system was non-existent. But now, I felt no matter what my immune system was going through I needed to get out of the house and go someplace other than the hospital or the cancer center. It was time, whether I was fully ready, to return to my women’s group, even if it possibly compromised my health.

I looked presentable. My hair was a bit fuzzy but I liked the shortness. And I can write now that I was right. Call it my psychic intuition, but today was meant to happen the way it did. It was premonition & fortuitous that I chose Oct. 2nd 2007 to make my entrance. I needed to spend some time in the world of the familiar and the living. I didn’t realize how right I was until today turned into the day that I met you, Annie.

Who knew at that moment, when our eyes met that there would be a new woman entering my life. The Goddess was playing games today. When I first saw you, Annie, I knew immediately, in my soul that you were familiar. It didn’t register immediately but I should have known in that moment, that we had met before in some other place, in some other time. It was not in this life. It was in a past life or lives.

You had such a strong field of energy around you. The warmth was strong inside of you. I sensed right away. You’ve been in my mind since that moment. Subconsciously, my mind is working on what will happen next. I have a strong premonition about you. We will see what develops. There is a great potential for closeness between us. I feel it quite strongly. There is an attraction. What that is goes beyond what I can see right now. It’s too hard to determine.

Out of respect and the forming of a meaningful relationship I have no realization where our relationship could or will lead. There is a strong hint of our Spirits familiarity. I will write more about my thoughts in a future letter. I will reveal more as my muse inspires me.

I know you might be shocked by such a letter from someone you have only met today. I do realize that you are now a co-leader of the therapy group and boundaries must be respected but I cannot help my directness. There is a great tendency in me to be thoroughly honest with people, even if it is so recent as just meeting someone for the first time hours before now.

There is no need for you to answer this letter. No expectations there or ever. I just feel a need to write to you. In truth, I think I may make a habit of writing to you unless you in some way find this to be too forward or unwanted.

There is much in my mind that you have set off and I would like to tell you of those thoughts, feelings & ideas. I hope this will be a welcome opening into something that will grow. Until the next time.

With respect,
Madison TaylorATTENTION: To Annie, at this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever comes into my mind, heart, soul & body. I will feel no need for censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the barriers or boundaries of what the potentials could be between us and the development of our relationship. I am adding this in order that you, Annie Haskell, will know that I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. It will free up my words as I speak them upon the page. And on some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I write in honesty, but for now I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that. Regards, Madison Taylor.

Maksim — Somewhere In Time Theme Song For “Letters of Import”QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

When Bipolar: Experiencing Depression

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When Bipolar: Experiencing Depression
Part 2
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Abstract Digital Art by j. kiley
Posted on 03.11.13

I am addicted to film. They are a way of working with depression. I lose myself in films as long as I am able to absorb myself in what I am watching. As of late, I have been having difficulty keeping my attention on anything that I do except when I am working on my creative writing or working on my art work or while reading or doing research all related to the creative work that I am doing.

I hope this is helpful as an inspiration to help entertain & help while feeling depressed. Looking for a way to help release the emotional pain that depression brings on can feel unbearable & leads one many times into a state of depression that carry with it the depths of darkness where suicidal feelings lay in wait to be awakened by the slightest trigger. Once the suicidal thoughts & feelings come to the surface it is most difficult to process or find relief from their destructive nature.

With depression & suicidal thoughts, one needs to learn a method to work through the sensations that are extremely painful or numbing & can make one feel so desperate that death feels like the only answer to eliminating the overwhelming intensity of pain. There is an increasing level of thought that goes through the mind that feels like the devil is sitting on one shoulder and an angel sitting on the other. What choice should you make? It seems often that to kill one’s self pulls at your attention the strongest. You try to think about the ones that you love & would hurt if you killed yourself. But the state of your mind doesn’t always feel that it would matter that much if you were gone. You would miss their love as well as your loving them. Certain people you would feel more of a loss and it hurts you that the love you felt would turn into pain but it isn’t always strong enough to hold you here, Your animals would come to mind & you know there are certain ones that would be lost without you. No one else would understand them or be able to love them the way that you are able to. You would feel awful leaving them alone. Somehow your senses are being pulled so hard to harm yourself. You just want to die. You just can’t feel the way you do any longer, no matter who you were leaving behind.

I let these thoughts & feelings go through me & I experience them all. I write poetry & other writing, like letters to particular people I feel will understand, But often I don’t turn to anyone. When I feel that depressed that I want to die is when I am least able to reach out to anyone. So many times I have tried to call a chat-line for people who want to kill themselves but I have only gotten as far as almost pushing the button but I can never do it. Even calling my psychotherapist is extremely difficult. I go back & forth as to whether I will call her to speak or leave a voicemail. It is hard for me to ask for help when I am feeling that deeply into a depression.

Eventually, the mood is released & I am pulling out of the nose dive & starting to come up again. The feelings of craziness starts to subside. I always feel like I have done something wrong for feeling those feelings. It is the same when I am at the other end of the cycle. When in a manic phase I actually feel crazier when I am excited than when I am wanting to commit suicide. At least when I want to die I am extremely subdued but when I am manic, I act out & I know that I get so wound up that I sound in my own head like I am as mad as the hatter but I cannot help my behavior. I am just a bit off my nut. I get the feeling of whimsy and get extremely poetic. That is when I actually feel like I am getting myself into more trouble & I am causing those I love to think I am more crazy when I am high than when I am depressed & want to die. Either end of the mood cycle I would say that I am a bit off of what is good for me mentally & emotionally. The extremes take me out of my safe zones where I feel I have any control. And control is extremely important to me. I do not like losing it at all. I am afraid to be too real. It may feel real & real may feel connected but it scares the hell out of me to think or feel I may be out of control in any way. Even though, I must admit, when I am free, I feel good in the sense that I am alive whether high on a mania or low in a depression & want to kill myself. At least, I am doing something with my life rather than subduing all the elements that make me act like I am being a human animal with all the thoughts & feelings of being alive & real & being who I really am.

When I am feeling depressed, the things that I choose to come in contact with are usually sad. The movies I watch, art I view, drawings I sketch, poems I write, and music I listen to are all depressing and – at times dark. My therapist wants me to laugh but I want to listen to music that makes me feel what I feel inside. If I am depressed I want to watch a film that is sad or listen to music that is filled with pain or longing. I love the group Evanescence & their song “My Immortal”… It’s about grief and loss. While listening to the song, I feel what the song feels. I listen to a great deal of emotionally raw music b/c I feel connected to it. I love Whitney Houston & I cannot go a day without listening to something that she sings. It seems I am always finding new songs that she recorded that I for some reason have never heard. It makes me feel like she’s still there with me. I just feel really attached to her. Felt that way from the first moment I heard her sing “Greatest Love of All” many years ago before I had any idea who she was. I fell in love with her voice and her. I’ve never stopped caring about her and loving her.

It makes sense to me to want to hear her music. It brings me closer to her. I can feel her with me. That may sound crazy but I need to feel those feelings. Someone wrote that they needed to fully embrace the experience of the depression & the sadness, It brings it to the surface & I feel the fullness of the feelings. I just can’t let those feelings go. The depression comes on me and so does wanting to die. I have to accept that those feelings exist. I, also, have to accept that I do get high on the feelings of the mania. I have all this energy. I am working on both ends of the spectrum and on the middle ground too. It’s a slow process but I am working on it. I need some help. I need my therapist and I need to be able to express what I feel. Most of all I need to know from those people I love that it is okay to be me. To not feel I have to hide what or who I am & to not fear expressing my feelings. I am working on trying to do the good things that will help me with all these mood changes. Maybe someday I will find level ground. I know I don’t want to lose who I am. I need to create. That I can never allow anyone to take away from me ever again. No more messing with my mind, my body, my feelings, which means my heart and my soul. jk the secret keeper

Evanescence — My Immortal

Quotations on Depression:

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” ― David Foster Wallace

“Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don’t believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it’s good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.” ― Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.” ― Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You’re frightened, and you’re frightening, and you’re “not at all like yourself but will be soon,” but you know you won’t.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Its so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That’s above and beyond everything else, and it’s not a mental complaint-it’s a physical thing, like it’s physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. They don’t come out smooth and in conjunction with your brain the way normal people’s words do; they come out in chunks as if from a crushed-ice dispenser; you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet.” ― Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

“The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud — the obstacles of life and its suffering. … The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. … Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ” ― Goldie Hawn

“Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.” ― Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

“Killing oneself is, anyway, a misnomer. We don’t kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive. When somebody dies after a long illness, people are apt to say, with a note of approval, “He fought so hard.” And they are inclined to think, about a suicide, that no fight was involved, that somebody simply gave up. This is quite wrong.” ― Sally Brampton, Shoot The Damn Dog: A Memoir Of Depression

the perks of being a wallflower

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the perks of being a wallflower
film review by jennifer kiley
created 02.17.13
posted 02.18.13

Emma Watson—Sam; Logan Lerman—Charlie; Ezra Miller—Patrick

The Perks of Being a Wallflower was a surprise from beginning to end. When choosing to rent the film “Bully” other films were suggested. I had heard of this film but did not know many details about it, so when I saw it amongst the other choices to check out I looked into it. My partner told me that Emma Watson was in it. Well, that was all I needed to hear, being a Harry Potter fan and loving the character of Hermione Granger & sharing the same birthday as Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself. It was a go. I watched a brief trailer and read a synopsis of the film and was more and more encouraged to wanting to see it like NOW. Well, after putting it into the DVD player a little less than five hours ago from writing this, I was totally swept away by the first song that opened up the film. I have the video on this post: Could It Be Another Change by the Samples. Brilliant lyrics, beautiful song. It draws you quickly into the feel of the film. I included a trailer and the three stars and director appearing on Anderson Live. It is a short but fun video of this amazing cast and the director. Perks… is adapted from the book. The screenplay is quite intelligent, written perfectly and the story is a surprise in every moment. You have no idea what to expect. It unfolds sometimes with a bite and then a gentle nudge.

The relationships that develop are unique. The uncertainty of whether one is watching a comedy sometimes and a drama at others makes for a delightful and warming comfort that these young people in high school have found each other. But it isn’t simple at all. Events, memories and conversations that occur are never predictable and hold many startling surprises. I was spellbound by the entire film. I rewatched it with barely a break between the ending and beginning it again. That is how powerful and great a film it is. There is such depth and the film is filled with so many profound moments throughout the entire film. There is never a moment that you want your attention to wander. It seems essential to hear every word and see every movement between people and settings.

This group that Charlie has been invited into by Sam and her step-brother Patrick, see themselves as wallflowers, which in this film is a good thing. The others in the film who are on the periphery. The characters you expect to be the bullies, who meet that criteria, and the “popular” (whatever that actually means) kids are the ones that seem out of place and boring and sometimes quite insufferable to watch. You really want them to just disappear. To go away. Poof!

This film does have its hidden secrets, but I will not reveal what they are. I am NOT GOING TO DO SPOILERS here. You need to find out on your own. I would strongly suggest you rent or buy this DVD and add it to your collection. In my humble opinion, I feel it is something you will want to watch and need to watch and something everyone should watch. See the film and you will understand why I am saying this. The young actors who play these well defined characters are familiar, especially Emma Watson, who plays Sam, a young girl who is so loveable and kind, you just want to hug her for all the wonderful things she does. You feel her vulnerability and generosity when she meets Charlie, played by Logan Lerman, a writer lives within him. A superb actor who I first discovered in the TV show Jack and Bobby. Christine Lahti played mom and a college professor. Logan’s character was a young kid destined to become president.

Then there is Patrick played by Ezra Miller. You may know him from a film that, also, starred Tilda Swinton: We Need to Talk About Kevin. If you saw this film you would remember. It is a film made in 2011 that fits right in with the constantly increasing violence and mass shooting murders happening all too often in the USA and around the world. A difficult film to watch but brilliantly made and the acting and screenplay haunting. Patrick is an out going, marvelously developed young man who befriends the misfits and stands up for who he is and doesn’t take shit from anyone. You absolutely adore him or at least I did and so did my partner. He is a marvelous character that anyone would want to emulate.

All three are loveable young people, that you cannot help but cheer for and want to support throughout the film. I cannot praise this film enough. The Perks of Being a Wallflower has received raving reviews from critics and audiences. It is well worth your time to see this film. If you don’t you will never know what a majorly profound moment in time you have missed or better said you have been left out of or let pass you by. If I could rate it higher than the usual Five Stars most films give as the highest marks, then I would raise it to TEN STARS.**********

Oh, I did forget to mention it does take place in the early 1990s, with drugs and love, and sex confusion, gay characters that are not always treated with respect or into the closet and obnoxious about it. The trial of being teenagers and some who have lived through traumas that are discovered throughout the film. Charlie, is the main focus but all those around him are devoted to reassuring themselves that he is taken care of and is alright. It will hold your attention. I wanted to be sure I heard every word and nuance that occurred during the entire film. A brownie anyone.

The book has become a bible to some teenagers. One of the actor’s had to read it first before a group in his school would allow him to join them as friends. It is an important story that all people should become aware of it. Read the book and watch the film. It is the story that touches everyone’s experiences someplace in their lives, in some way. One last thought: the fact that it is a film and book about the lives of teenagers does not limit it to be something that only teenagers would want to see. It goes into the collective mind. We have all been someplace in this story. It does have an effect on all of us. — jk the secret keeper

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Trailer (2012—Emma Watson)

Emma Watson: “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”: Anderson Live—9.17.12

could it be another change—the samples

“Children who are victimized through sexual abuse often begin to develop deeply held tenets that shape their sense of self: ‘My worth is my sexuality. I’m dirty and shameful. I have no right to my own physical boundaries.’ That shapes their ideas about the world around them: ‘No one will believe me. Telling the truth results in bad consequences. People can’t be trusted.’ It doesn’t take long for children to begin to act in accordance with these belief systems. For girls who have experienced incest, sexual abuse, or rape, the boundaries between love, sex, and pain become blurred. Secrets are normal, and shame is a constant.” ― Rachel Lloyd, Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself

“We accept the love we think we deserve.” —Charlie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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