[Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

Wed Mar 7 13:07:05 EST 2018

I think it might be helpful, too, to avoid using the rhetoric of labeling someone bipolar or as bipolar, as doinf so implies that a person with a particular trait should be identified by that trait in some sort of all-encompassing way.  Likewise, I’m uncomfortable with the “be” form of the verb being used here, as in “Woolf was bipolar.”  Woolf might well have suffered from what psychiatrists today term “bipolar disorder”—among other things, as Woolf also heard voices, which is not consistent with bipolar (not bipolar alone).  As a teacher, one can say that contemporary psychiatrists and psychologists have hypothesized that Woolf may have suffered from bipolar disorder, and we can also underscore that if she did, it of course did not define her as a person or a writer or a woman any more than it defines those of us who suffer from bipolar today.  Bipolar is a medical condition, not a type of person.  I refer to myself as “having bipolar disorder,” not “being bipolar.”  I also have a physical disability called “CMT,” which is similar to muscular dystrophy.  Nobody ever says of folks with CMT or MD:  “She is CMT” or “He was MD.”  Nor do we today act frightened to acknowledge that an admired figure of the past probably had muscular dystrophy when medical specialists today are able to perceive that that figure almost certainly had MD.  

I worry very much about a teacher’s well-meaning and thoughtful hesitancy to talk too facilely about Woolf and bipolar disorder coming across as an acceptance of the stigma that has been being attached to bipolar disorder by the larger (and social media) culture these students are enmeshed in.  It is fine to say that Woolf may very well have suffered from bipolar disorder, and that if she had been able to get the psychiatric medical treatment available to us today, she might have lived longer and written more books.  But to also say that’s all conjectural.  Except for this part:  those who get psychiatric help for bipolar disorder are much less likely to commit suicide than those who do not.  That part is a fact.

Brenda

From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of Anne Fernald via Vwoolf
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2018 9:29 AM
Cc: Woolf list
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

Dear Woolfians,

Echoing both the discomfort and much of what Brenda wrote. It's important to me to distinguish between an educated post-mortem guess, which, I agree, seems to suggest bipolar or some closely related mental illness, and saying she was bipolar as a settled fact.

Definitions change and post-hoc diagnoses based on historical evidence can get us somewhere, but not all the way, so I really want to acknowledge the fact of Woolf's mental illness, the signs that point scholars to hypothesize this or that diagnosis, and the fact that, in her lifetime, the (inadequate) treatment she received did not label her as bipolar.

Anne

On Wed, Mar 7, 2018 at 11:46 AM, Brenda S. Helt via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

What would be the problem with understanding Woolf to have suffered from bipolar disorder, exactly?  There’s good evidence for that, which you can easily find in the serious Woolf scholarship (not just in a recent news article), and saying so shouldn’t negatively affect how we understand/view Woolf and her work.  Possibly it will impact how students understand the suicide—possibly in a way that’s helpful, even.  As someone with bipolar, I can tell you that although the words used to define it have changed (when I was diagnosed in my early 20s it was “manic-depressive, for example), the disorder has been aroun a long time and a lot of very productive, very creative, very intelligent people appear to have had it.  It will help students who have it or know someone who does for their teachers not to shy away from saying “Yes, there’s a good chance Hemingway, Woolf, Plath et al were bipolar.”

That’s my two cents.  It’s what I always did with my students and I personally found only positive consequences to have come of it.  You should, though, read up on bipolar before you do that.  It sounds like you might accidentally stigmatize Woolf and bipolars generally with the attitude towards this disability I’m perceiving in the below.

Best,

Brenda Helt

Co-editor Queer Bloomsbury

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-queer-bloomsbury.html <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__edinburghuniversitypress.com_book-2Dqueer-2Dbloomsbury.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=k1OoytuRmrU4MiIwbI-7ElFohPGR5Vr0JxDyMjG9DsI&m=kK0-_fx000AiyDdYolqQe4KgXmd3EGWy8BPyWZpCjmQ&s=E-MO8d2oQBZ9pFa06ONK65GRZtR_iD3W5BnElqIKOQY&e=> 

Fine artist

http://www.brendahelt.com <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.brendahelt.com_&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=k1OoytuRmrU4MiIwbI-7ElFohPGR5Vr0JxDyMjG9DsI&m=kK0-_fx000AiyDdYolqQe4KgXmd3EGWy8BPyWZpCjmQ&s=bKWmitZuoMS7xehQqnVL9JNU-MoZX6NXq1M8peAKEEw&e=>  

From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of Ellen Moody via Vwoolf
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2018 8:24 AM
To: Woolf list
Subject: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

I would like to know how others in classroom respond to students saying as a (somewhat settled diagnosis) that Virginia Woolf was 'bi-polar."

When I resisted partly because since age 9 I have known depression, anxiety-attacks, panic and a whole array of mental problems let's say and I find each new fashionable set of terms from schizophrenic to bi-polar unconvincing. Too simplistic, too reductive.

But I listened and what I seemed to hear was this diagnosis of "bi-polar" made Woolf into a "sane" person who had deep mood swings - from say productive, cheerful and "strong" to some snakepit of breakdown, despair, suicidal impulses. As used, it seemed a normalzing tool, as if were to make Woolf more acceptable

They said they found it in a New York Times article which was trying to sell Cornwall as a place to go through the association with To the Lighthouse. On this I remarked that literally To the Lighthouse is situated in the Hebrides (I see a connection and memory of Johnson and Boswell here too), another place on the edge of the British mainland...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/travel/virginia-woolf-cornwall.html <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.nytimes.com_2018_02_26_travel_virginia-2Dwoolf-2Dcornwall.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=k1OoytuRmrU4MiIwbI-7ElFohPGR5Vr0JxDyMjG9DsI&m=kK0-_fx000AiyDdYolqQe4KgXmd3EGWy8BPyWZpCjmQ&s=J2P9W4NmeAsFaPXs6HxIUjvKknrobvyeZv8URrmMubY&e=> 

How do or would others handle this.

Ellen Moody

_______________________________________________
Vwoolf mailing list
Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lists.osu.edu_mailman_listinfo_vwoolf <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lists.osu.edu_mailman_listinfo_vwoolf&d=DwICAg&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=k1OoytuRmrU4MiIwbI-7ElFohPGR5Vr0JxDyMjG9DsI&m=kK0-_fx000AiyDdYolqQe4KgXmd3EGWy8BPyWZpCjmQ&s=wR6KPGctH8UUeGB1DmffIO7pcFGsaUEUW6nDS6Kwuqs&e=> &d=DwICAg&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=k1OoytuRmrU4MiIwbI-7ElFohPGR5Vr0JxDyMjG9DsI&m=kK0-_fx000AiyDdYolqQe4KgXmd3EGWy8BPyWZpCjmQ&s=wR6KPGctH8UUeGB1DmffIO7pcFGsaUEUW6nDS6Kwuqs&e=

-- 

Anne E. Fernald <http://www.fordham.edu/info/24101/anne_fernald> 

Acting Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences

Professor of English and Women's Studies

 <mailto:fernald at fordham.edu> fernald at fordham.edu

Rose Hill: Cunniffe 211

718-817-3034

Lincoln Center: Martino Hall 422 

212-636-7613 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20180307/a0141e60/attachment-0001.html>