[Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

[Christine Froula]

I've always cherished a New York Times Book Review heading from long 
ago, perhaps about VW's essays when they were coming out:

Exceptionally Sane Most of the Time


On 3/10/2018 6:54 AM, Madelyn Detloff via Vwoolf wrote:
> I hesitate to enter this conversation again, since we have had forms 
> of it for years on this list and it always seems to devolve into an 
> either or - either trauma or neuroaffective atypicality as if we are 
> not allowed to imagine that Woolf might have been a survivor of sexual 
> abuse and someone who may have had a condition that looks like what we 
> call  bipolar disorder or some other atypicality that she lived with 
> while also being a prolific author and critic.  There is  stigma 
> connected to each hypothesis that we ought to challenge.  What  I wish 
> for us as a community of scholars is that we don’t fall prey to the 
> desire to ‘rescue’ Woolf’s  reputation from one stigma by reinforcing 
> the stigma of the other hypothesis.
>
> There have been a number of well meaning posts that nevertheless 
> participate in ableist logic and language regarding neuroaffective 
> atypicality.  Woolf was not “crazy” or “insane” whether or not she 
> experienced something like bipolar disorder, or PTSD, or some mixture 
> of both (I happen to think both is quite likely).  To be sure, there 
> has been a lot of damage done in the name of psychiatry, medicine, 
> other various forms of ‘cure’ that aim to normalize our body minds. We 
> ought to expose and critique that damage.  But I think we can do that 
> without suggesting that people who take medicine or other therapies 
> for neuroaffective atypicalities (lithium for example) are somehow 
> suffering from false consciousness or are  to be distinguished from 
> “essentially sane” people who have mood swings or struggle with PTSD.
>
> I’ve written a little about this dilemma in the Blackwell Companion to 
> Woolf
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118457917.ch20/summary 
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__onlinelibrary.wiley.com_doi_10.1002_9781118457917.ch20_summary&d=DwMFaQ&c=yHlS04HhBraes5BQ9ueu5zKhE7rtNXt_d012z2PA6ws&r=B2e-UKKhnYe5lrEq8NEkMf9o4KvCJF-4y7Z7WnzjMp0&m=xbbBluCeP-K4-MtgVPHpJkYqCqXG-LSSAyfNwh2WPGc&s=Et8k7OcqA7iOvBFe3L8J8EYhjBtu2u_IfWhtM9rF_pU&e=>. 
> It also might be helpful to read Alison Kafer’s Feminist Queer Crip on 
> the ‘curative imaginary,’ as well as Margaret Price’s Mad at School.
>
>
> Please note: what I write is not directed at any one post or poster on 
> this list.  The discussion we are having now has a long history on 
> this list and I worry that we are simply repeating our positions 
> rather than evolving them.
>
> Best,
>
> Madelyn
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Mar 7, 2018, at 12:24 PM, Diane Reynolds via Vwoolf 
> <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>> wrote:
>
>> Ellen,
>>
>> I have not had this question come up in class, but it is topical and 
>> relevant. In my Quaker meeting, we have concerns about gun control 
>> being off-loaded, as it were, onto the mentally ill, however, that 
>> term is defined, and we fear it will lead to further stigmatization 
>> of mental illness, especially bi-polar disorders—and of course, Woolf 
>> feared the consequences of her illness. What I would emphasize with 
>> Woolf,  is that mental illness is increasingly understood to come out 
>> of childhood trauma and that while it is biological to some extent, 
>> our brain biology actually changes to become more “depressive” as a 
>> result of trauma. This is in an interesting article: 
>> https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/02/will-take-political-revolution-cure-epidemic-depression.html 
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.nakedcapitalism.com_2018_02_will-2Dtake-2Dpolitical-2Drevolution-2Dcure-2Depidemic-2Ddepression.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=yHlS04HhBraes5BQ9ueu5zKhE7rtNXt_d012z2PA6ws&r=B2e-UKKhnYe5lrEq8NEkMf9o4KvCJF-4y7Z7WnzjMp0&m=xbbBluCeP-K4-MtgVPHpJkYqCqXG-LSSAyfNwh2WPGc&s=Jd3mmmzVE3W1gbC489_WNAj_Sf6tY5oCI6WYx4JohK4&e=> that 
>> makes the point that if we want to reduce mental illness, we need to 
>> fix society. This seems to me, in the context of Woolf, a good 
>> launching point for trying to imagine what it was like trying to grow 
>> up in that Victorian household with abusive half brothers, a 
>> self-absorbed father, a mother stretched too thin who labeled her 
>> “goat” and the whole set of oppressive mores—you well know the 
>> drill—that beset her.
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