(If you had been in Mark’s position) How would you have felt to have been forced into treatment?
Ah, hypothetical empathy. I don't know how I would have felt to have been forced into treatment because I think that if I were severely depressed to the point that I were stabbing myself with a pen, I would not be resistant and would appreciate having someone or something save me. If I were stabbing my arm with a pen, you can bet the act (!) would be histrionic in nature and not suicidal. I'm not much of a fighter, except in writing. Nor am I a self-killer. I don't like pain and suffering. I don't like death. I don't like violence (You might wonder, though, in light of my poetry and my Dances with Ghosts.) I'm not of a depressive composition. I'm more of a moderately anxious and stressed composition, so I don't know what it's like to be down so low that I want to and try to kill myself.
I actually think suicidal thoughts are sometimes rational, helpful and even (kill me now ! for saying this) romantic. Sometimes life really is a piece of shit. If you watched your whole family die (I have no idea why this is my quintessential reference to torture) then I would not blame you for wanting to be dead. In fact, maybe being dead would be a better option than having to live with that kind of pain. Maybe it wouldn't be a better option. It depends on the individual and how she feels and whether or not help is helping her enough. I don't think life is ALWAYS worth living - living in a state of torture, for instance, is something no one wants. No one wants to have to be burned alive - death, in that instance, would be better. So, yes: there are some, extreme, instances in which death is preferable.
I will try to relate Mark's forced commitment and treatment to the time in my life when I was most most likely to have been committed (to somewhere or something). When my mother was emotionally abusing me because of my lesbian identity in high school, there were times when she talked (no, screamed or hissed) about wanting to have me committed to a mental hospital and to wanting to have me moved out of my school to a far away nether region (boarding school to break witches of their craft and evil life), and wanting to have me go away to a camp for recovering homosexuals.
I remember thinking, while I was lying on the floor below her screaming into the berber carpet, about what I might do if I ever ended up in a psychiatric ward or in a homo-recovery camp. I remember thinking I would fight and rebel "until the death." That I would fight the system and BE INSANE to spite the system (or to spite my mother...). Giving up was not an option. If fighting the system wouldn't have worked, I would have tried playing the system at its own game and performing the role of SANITY. I knew this, then: I knew I would do whatever the hell I had to do to SURVIVE so that I could tell my story and find my freedom.
I don't know that I would have done any of that, though. In the case of the recovery camp, it's safe to assume I would not have been in a rational or helpful environment. I would have been in a psycho ward instead of a psych ward (sorry, the sounds made me do it!) - however, perhaps all psych wards are psycho wards being operated by psychos.
Ah, hypothetical empathy. I don't know how I would have felt to have been forced into treatment because I think that if I were severely depressed to the point that I were stabbing myself with a pen, I would not be resistant and would appreciate having someone or something save me. If I were stabbing my arm with a pen, you can bet the act (!) would be histrionic in nature and not suicidal. I'm not much of a fighter, except in writing. Nor am I a self-killer. I don't like pain and suffering. I don't like death. I don't like violence (You might wonder, though, in light of my poetry and my Dances with Ghosts.) I'm not of a depressive composition. I'm more of a moderately anxious and stressed composition, so I don't know what it's like to be down so low that I want to and try to kill myself.
I actually think suicidal thoughts are sometimes rational, helpful and even (kill me now ! for saying this) romantic. Sometimes life really is a piece of shit. If you watched your whole family die (I have no idea why this is my quintessential reference to torture) then I would not blame you for wanting to be dead. In fact, maybe being dead would be a better option than having to live with that kind of pain. Maybe it wouldn't be a better option. It depends on the individual and how she feels and whether or not help is helping her enough. I don't think life is ALWAYS worth living - living in a state of torture, for instance, is something no one wants. No one wants to have to be burned alive - death, in that instance, would be better. So, yes: there are some, extreme, instances in which death is preferable.
I will try to relate Mark's forced commitment and treatment to the time in my life when I was most most likely to have been committed (to somewhere or something). When my mother was emotionally abusing me because of my lesbian identity in high school, there were times when she talked (no, screamed or hissed) about wanting to have me committed to a mental hospital and to wanting to have me moved out of my school to a far away nether region (boarding school to break witches of their craft and evil life), and wanting to have me go away to a camp for recovering homosexuals.
I remember thinking, while I was lying on the floor below her screaming into the berber carpet, about what I might do if I ever ended up in a psychiatric ward or in a homo-recovery camp. I remember thinking I would fight and rebel "until the death." That I would fight the system and BE INSANE to spite the system (or to spite my mother...). Giving up was not an option. If fighting the system wouldn't have worked, I would have tried playing the system at its own game and performing the role of SANITY. I knew this, then: I knew I would do whatever the hell I had to do to SURVIVE so that I could tell my story and find my freedom.
I don't know that I would have done any of that, though. In the case of the recovery camp, it's safe to assume I would not have been in a rational or helpful environment. I would have been in a psycho ward instead of a psych ward (sorry, the sounds made me do it!) - however, perhaps all psych wards are psycho wards being operated by psychos.
I think if I were placed in a psych ward, I would have been deemed perfectly well and sane - and that my mother would have been the one identified as being in need of psychological assistance (and maybe she recognized that on some distant level, because I never ended up in a psychiatric hospital). But who knows. When I think back to the hell years: even then, on the floor in the chaos, I was thinking about my mother, worrying about what "they" might do with her or say about her once they knew what was really going on at home. I was worrying about my mother's reputation. I did not want her to be humiliated for what she was doing to me, I just wanted her to stop doing it to me.
My rational and healthy-minded self would never want to be given ECT therapy. I would not consent to that now, and I doubt I would want that in a serious situation in which I was irrational. That's a brain damaging practice. And it's a violence to do that to someone against their will.
My rational and healthy-minded self would never want to be given ECT therapy. I would not consent to that now, and I doubt I would want that in a serious situation in which I was irrational. That's a brain damaging practice. And it's a violence to do that to someone against their will.
There are ethical questions involved in committing someone - determining what qualifies as "necessary." That's so difficult to think about. If I could trust in the rationality of the psychologist, then I could accept that it had to be done. But if I thought someone who was not trustworthy or rational had power over me, then that would be a different story and I would be stark raving mad.
I guess the point is this. I cannot imagine what it is like to be involuntarily forced into treatment as an irrational person; I can only imagine being involuntarily forced into treatment as a rational person (because that is what I am, a rational person - naysayers be damned). I knew that my mother's threats of taking me to a psychiatric hospital were ridiculous because I knew that she was the irrational one and I was the rational one (although I recognized that her irrationality was driving me into a state of suffering). If you are forced into treatment because you are in some way psychologically incapacitated, you are not going to like it. If the actions were hastily made and irrational in and of themselves (and you are able to figure this out), then get thee to a lesbian lawyer and divorce yourself from the electroconvulsive wife you married or the electroconvulsive therapist you married.
How must his wife have felt when she signed the forms giving permission for the ECT treatments?
I can only imagine that Tanya felt terribly anxious and ambivalent when she signed the permission forms for the ECT treatments. She was going against her Husband's wishes and placing her judgement above his own. She was assuming a position of power over him in a very dramatic way. Within marriages, couples are always negotiating and renegotiating power dynamics. Who knows what kind of power dynamics were established between Mark and Tanya (or, Man-and-Wife. Or, Man-and-WiFi) before this happened. It is very problematic, on many levels.
In crisis, we all have to make decisions. Often those decisions bring us completely out of our comfort zones. It's par for the terrible course. I can also imagine that she felt guilty for exercising power over her husband. Tanya may have felt terribly guilty and perceived her action emotionally as a form of betrayal and cruelty and harm. That will destroy the trust in a relationship forever.
I guess the point is this. I cannot imagine what it is like to be involuntarily forced into treatment as an irrational person; I can only imagine being involuntarily forced into treatment as a rational person (because that is what I am, a rational person - naysayers be damned). I knew that my mother's threats of taking me to a psychiatric hospital were ridiculous because I knew that she was the irrational one and I was the rational one (although I recognized that her irrationality was driving me into a state of suffering). If you are forced into treatment because you are in some way psychologically incapacitated, you are not going to like it. If the actions were hastily made and irrational in and of themselves (and you are able to figure this out), then get thee to a lesbian lawyer and divorce yourself from the electroconvulsive wife you married or the electroconvulsive therapist you married.
How must his wife have felt when she signed the forms giving permission for the ECT treatments?
I can only imagine that Tanya felt terribly anxious and ambivalent when she signed the permission forms for the ECT treatments. She was going against her Husband's wishes and placing her judgement above his own. She was assuming a position of power over him in a very dramatic way. Within marriages, couples are always negotiating and renegotiating power dynamics. Who knows what kind of power dynamics were established between Mark and Tanya (or, Man-and-Wife. Or, Man-and-WiFi) before this happened. It is very problematic, on many levels.
In crisis, we all have to make decisions. Often those decisions bring us completely out of our comfort zones. It's par for the terrible course. I can also imagine that she felt guilty for exercising power over her husband. Tanya may have felt terribly guilty and perceived her action emotionally as a form of betrayal and cruelty and harm. That will destroy the trust in a relationship forever.
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