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The autobiographies of individuals who have experienced a psychosis fall into two major divisions, depending on whether or not there is a therapist in a major role. Those without a therapist are of special interest since they are not influenced by the personal genius of the therapist or biased by a school of therapeutic thought. This book belongs to this latter category. In the recent past the author had been legally committed to a mental institution in a catatonic stupor. While there he received twenty-eight electro-convulsive treatments which cured him, but at the price of producing a split between his sane and psychotic selves. “A whole personality had been liquidated without a trace in a technologically faultless act that has defined our relationship every since. I have never met him, never will.”
The emphasis on “technologically faultless” is without polemic. Technology is important to the author, and he examines it closely. The Zen in the title refers to a concept of meditation where enlightment is obtained while a manual skill such as archery or calligraphy is perfected. The discussions of motorcycle maintenance illustrate this process. For example, tearing the slot of a screw while trying to unscrew it leads to a meditation on the experience of being “stuck.” The anger and feelings of incompetence which occur in such situations are explored and provide an avenue to self-examination. The real motorcycle becomes the self. This is a familiar psychoanalytic concept which was first developed by Tausk.* The interesting modification is that caring for the machine enables one to learn to care for an object that is not only a narcissistic representation of the self but also the beginnings of a self-object differentiation. The motorcycle becomes a transitional object through which the author learns to relate to others.