[Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

Kimberly Coates kimbec at bgsu.edu
Wed Mar 7 14:29:35 EST 2018


Hi, Brenda—

No—you’re right. “Slapped” was a poor choice of words on my part. Kay Redfeld Jamison’s book Touched with Fire comes to mind. There’s plenty of evidence that substantiates your point that those diagnosed with bi-polar “share some positive mental traits linked to perception and creativity.” I don’t mind discussing the debates/discussion surrounding Woolf’s mental health with students; however, I don’t want them to fixate on any diagnoses retrospectively applied, especially when Woolf herself was so suspicious of doctors and their diagnostic labels and categories. That said, I completely agree that students who deal with these diagnoses on a daily basis can benefit from knowing that they share a struggle brilliant artists/minds like Woolf and Plath also were challenged by. I would rather students hear/listen to the struggles Woolf expresses by carefully reading her words vs getting hung up on any preconceived notions that come with diagnostic labels.

Apologies for my poor choice of words! I think we’re on the same page.

Best,
Kim

Kimberly Engdahl Coates, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Literature Program Coordinator
Affiliate Faculty Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies/American Culture Studies/Honors Program
Office: 403 East Hall
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403
kimbec at bgsu.edu
419-372-9189
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers




From: "Brenda S. Helt" <helt0010 at umn.edu<mailto:helt0010 at umn.edu>>
Date: Wednesday, March 7, 2018 at 1:46 PM
To: Kimberly Coates <kimbec at bgsu.edu<mailto:kimbec at bgsu.edu>>, 'Ellen Moody' <ellen.moody at gmail.com<mailto:ellen.moody at gmail.com>>, 'Woolf list' <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Subject: RE: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

I may not be being entirely clear.  If we talk in the classroom about “bipolar” as a “label” that has been “slapped” on someone, we will inadvertently reinforce the stigma against bipolar disorder.  It’s a condition, a “disorder,” but appears to have been shared by some of the greatest minds and talents whose work we now idolize.  It could even have encouraged some of the positive traits these creative people shared.  I imagine the next “trend” in psychiatry will be to drop the word “disorder,” but it’s what psychiatrists call it at the moment.  It might have made Woolf more insightful about some things, more perceptive—her perspective different, “slanted” in the Dickinsonian sense.  There is in fact good evidence that folks with bipolar disorder share some positive mental traits linked to perception and creativity.  In the classroom, I emphasize this, because it’s true, and because although we cannot become writers like Virginia Woolf or poets like Plath by somehow “becoming” bipolar, it helps those who have bipolar “disorder” to realize they share that with Woolf and Plath.  And it helps their peers.

To relate this convo to another we’ve long been having in the Woolf-world, we don’t want to totalize Woolf as a lesbian or as lesbian in a constrictive defining and limiting way, but nor do we talk about fearing we might “slap” the “label” of lesbian on Woolf, right?  Or of “queer.”  We can talk meaningfully about her queer perspective (in her work, in her letters, in her diaries, in what we know of her life) and how it seems to have empowered and enriched her life and work without knowing exactly what she did sexually with Vita or Leonard.  Nor do most of us now say in the classroom that Woolf would not have called herself “lesbian” or “bisexual” or “queer” and therefore we can’t use those terms to understand her or her life of her writing today.  We can talk about Woolf and bipolar disorder in positive ways in the classroom without “labeling” or “identifying” her or anyone “as bipolar.”  The things we struggle with in life can also enrich our lives and work—that might be a good direction to go with this topic in the classroom if it doesn’t sound too naive.

Is this clearer?  I’ve probably made things worse . . .

Brenda


Brenda Helt

Co-editor Queer Bloomsbury
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-queer-bloomsbury.html<https://secure-web.cisco.com/13ZSqULhnLs-NTc2H7edOedD7LzwsZ0WsXOQwM6jMe2DYWy39iChUJ03M9PQnKpk-2CXcqlJ0PSJqzTdiCz11FEAokAZkD6fu3gOlHE-aai_e6tKCKKnbToQNt0KoH5JnZ53Z8-e6NdNJUonkM8TMK88jkBU9p2OtSM_4cojCn1jPjxo-UxktgKbiw54EM6ISAYTArntqjYntJeSXbwPsXugOMg7WfIg89KMmaheJsWQujky7uiyVJZGUt-6jzzGPZuY_y6b0sgWUdII5jcnL7lF8CoKDq-9cSSQabBcvsyh_MzDuI50Fo-y2CUonpKJpGoDQj6hDC-q8hTXKOISsU0DVWrQVzgT8NaHvK98Zu6CuIButXVzD8nhH625IYQDd6rE1woDpvr6-BEu_Jf0V1KowHT_lEAdhXnMzVdGN1E0OsG9MuDLcFJOcJKUjQRN0MmqpCAHxsoDOatTB3mxKSAmuK9e2hSL0tE3zPAIHv1UdwLct_AUuQHGnZ6gVYwF9AM8Co2d3t9ENZh0aYfQYNw/https%3A%2F%2Fedinburghuniversitypress.com%2Fbook-queer-bloomsbury.html>

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From: Kimberly Coates [mailto:kimbec at bgsu.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2018 10:20 AM
To: Brenda S. Helt; 'Ellen Moody'; Woolf list
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

I agree with Brenda and Anne completely. I emphasize to students that words like “bi-polar” are diagnostic labels and they do not in anyway capture the experience of an individual on whom such a label has been slapped. We know how cynical Woolf was about doctor’s, labels, and diagnoses. I work hard to steer students away from fetishizing Woolf’s illness, and the labels that have retrospectively been applied to it, and ask them to concentrate instead on her words, the amazing capacity of her imagination, and her desire to render language a material, mobile expression of the sensations she and her characters experienced. A good place to start regarding Woolf’s stance on illness is, of course, her essay “On Being Ill.”

All Best-
Kim


**********************************************
Kimberly Engdahl Coates, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Literature Program Coordinator
Affiliate Faculty Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies/American Culture Studies/Honors Program
Office: 403 East Hall
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403
kimbec at bgsu.edu<mailto:kimbec at bgsu.edu>
419-372-9189
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers




From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+kimbec=bgnet.bgsu.edu at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf-bounces+kimbec=bgnet.bgsu.edu at lists.osu.edu>> on behalf of "Brenda S. Helt via Vwoolf" <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Reply-To: "Brenda S. Helt" <helt0010 at umn.edu<mailto:helt0010 at umn.edu>>
Date: Wednesday, March 7, 2018 at 11:46 AM
To: 'Ellen Moody' <ellen.moody at gmail.com<mailto:ellen.moody at gmail.com>>, Woolf list <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

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
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Fine artist
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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

How do or would others handle this.

Ellen Moody


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