[Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

Mon Mar 12 12:48:33 EDT 2018

Dear Laurie,

One of the reasons Madelyn and I put together Queer Bloomsbury is to make some of the scholarship about Louise DeSalvo’s scholarship easier for folks to get a hold of.  Please see Christopher Reed’s essay “Bloomsbury Bashing” (originally published in Genders in 1991) and his brand spanking new preface for that essay in Queer Bloomsbury.

Very best,

Brenda

Brenda Helt

Co-editor Queer Bloomsbury (with Madelyn Detloff)

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-queer-bloomsbury.html

From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+helt0010=umn.edu at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of Laurie Reiche via Vwoolf
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2018 2:12 PM
To: Christine Froula
Cc: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf: bi-polar

I wrote this a few days ago while on a vacation but it didn’t get delivered so I just thought I’d try again and throw this out to contribute:

            ...I'm away from my home-library now so can’t pull books out to refresh my memory, but my feeling is that Woolf suffered from the typical (ill-chosen word!) effects of childhood sexual abuse: anxiety syndromes, ptsd, depression, mood swings, etc., even hearing voices, and dissociation are very common...  See Louise DeSalvo's books about Woolf and sexual abuse. I think DeSalvo debunks, quite efficiently, the idea that Woolf was "crazy" or whatever diagnosis one wants to pull out of one's denial-hat to avoid the sexual abuse issue in her life (and Vanessa’s!), and with it the terrible psychological wounds that that abuse imparted. (As well suffering at such a young age the traumas so many sudden deaths of those she loved…) Her “symptoms” don’t seem to be very mysterious in light of the fateful events during her most formative years…and none of that matters to me just as Beethoven's psychology or Plath’s or O’Keefe’s or Hemmingway’s or... matter….it is the genius of their genres, the art they gave us that I am ever so grateful for…..of course…..

            Laurie🦋

On Mar 10, 2018, at 6:23 AM, Christine Froula via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

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> 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. 

_______________________________________________
Vwoolf mailing list
Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lists.osu.edu_mailman_listinfo_vwoolf&d=DwMFaQ&c=yHlS04HhBraes5BQ9ueu5zKhE7rtNXt_d012z2PA6ws&r=B2e-UKKhnYe5lrEq8NEkMf9o4KvCJF-4y7Z7WnzjMp0&m=xbbBluCeP-K4-MtgVPHpJkYqCqXG-LSSAyfNwh2WPGc&s=d9_cIMP_CrXsvBwgOERca5jg2D7D0_MhxARy_ycK6sk&e=> 

_______________________________________________
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=yHlS04HhBraes5BQ9ueu5zKhE7rtNXt_d012z2PA6ws&r=B2e-UKKhnYe5lrEq8NEkMf9o4KvCJF-4y7Z7WnzjMp0&m=xbbBluCeP-K4-MtgVPHpJkYqCqXG-LSSAyfNwh2WPGc&s=d9_cIMP_CrXsvBwgOERca5jg2D7D0_MhxARy_ycK6sk&e=> &d=DwICAg&c=yHlS04HhBraes5BQ9ueu5zKhE7rtNXt_d012z2PA6ws&r=B2e-UKKhnYe5lrEq8NEkMf9o4KvCJF-4y7Z7WnzjMp0&m=xbbBluCeP-K4-MtgVPHpJkYqCqXG-LSSAyfNwh2WPGc&s=d9_cIMP_CrXsvBwgOERca5jg2D7D0_MhxARy_ycK6sk&e=

_______________________________________________
Vwoolf mailing list
Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20180312/11c9c7d0/attachment-0001.html>