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Christopher Bollas begins his latest book by revealing that at the time when he was studying history and Puritan ‘miscreants’ at University and was also ‘caught up in the passions of the Free Speech Movement’ of the 1960s, he experienced the sudden onset of certain symptoms and before long he was in psychoanalytic therapy!
One might add – and the rest is history. This book certainly conveys a good deal of Bollas’s professional psychoanalytic journey over the next six decades, but the focus in this new book is on his experience with ‘schizophrenics’ – more about that word anon.
I was not aware of just how extensive Bollas’s experience with psychosis has been. In his early 20s, he worked for two years in a day community in San Francisco for autistic/psychotic children aged 5–12. In the chapter devoted to that period, he allows us to get close to the bizarre and disturbing inner world of these kids, and the experiences of those who try to make contact with and provide a humane and safe environment for them.
In the following chapter, he demonstrates how that illusion of safety was profoundly altered during his time in the community by the contemporary events in late 60s America. These broke the deceptive myth of America being an innocent society in contrast to the corruption, viciousness and destruction that American culture located in Europe and Russia. The children that Bollas and his colleagues were working with became too aware of the unavoidable news and images of assassinations of American idealised leaders, of the Vietnam War and American atrocities, and perhaps particularly of the nearby Californian riots and violence exacerbated by Governor Regan’s occupation of Berkeley. The psychotic youngsters, with their illusion of safety and reliability shattered, often felt they were responsible for the shootings and murders.
The following chapters continue to be captivating for several reasons, one of which is Bollas’ description of moves from one setting to another: Buffal