Vignette

We could improve worldwide mental health if we acknowledged that parents can make you crazy. (Frank Zappa, Guardian, 21 November 2009, Family section)

An interview by Rachel Cooke with the actor Alan Davies - Observer Magazine, 6 September 2009:

How much of his distress does he put down to his mother's death? He lost her at six, which a lot of people would say better than say, losing her at 14. Six year olds seem better able to recover. ‘But you don't recover’ he says. ‘You never recover. It's not a question of recovery. That doesn't exist. There is never a time when you are over it, when it doesn't surface every day. The impact it has on your emotional development and well-being will surface at certain points in your life. It's a constantly present thing. The absence of your mother is an absence that is felt all the time. The presence of absence is one of the phrases that my therapist used. It's an odd thing to describe. It's a mental state, and sometimes it sucks. Usually it comes up when you think you might lose something, when a relationship is going wrong or when you fear it is going wrong. So you have a powerful reaction to a relationship breaking up. It's disproportionate. The process of breaking up triggers a deep-rooted emotional trauma. It's like the silt on the river bed; it has washed it all up and you relive it every time.’

A pause. ‘That's relatively easy for me to say now, but it took several years of therapy for me to understand it. I used to be determined. My mum died when I was six, I used to say to myself: “I should be over it by now”. So I would hold the other person (in the relationship) responsible, or I would blame myself: “It's me; it's not you, it's me”. That rubbish. But the real pain was much deeper. When I was able to identify the feelings, name it, voice it, control the process … I'm better now than I was in my twenties, or when I was at school, and every day was a churning mess.’

Can he say that he is happy - or happier - these days? ‘I am