My Mother, My Self:
Paranoid Schizophrenia and the
Literary Mirror of Madness
Mary T. Shannon, MSW, MS
Columbia University, New York
Graduate Program in Narrative Medicine
Temporality and Culture
• How do we define madness? What does ‘crazy’ look
like?
• Growing up with a mother who suffered from paranoid
schizophrenia, I learned that the answers to these
questions often said more about temporality and
cultural context than they did about the malady itself.
• 1950’s and 1960’s America: the gendered nature of
double standards and a need for conformity reigned,
often skewing the lens through which we viewed
individual differences.
• Excerpts from my memoir, The Sunday Wishbone, are
used to capture madness through an altogether
different lens – a view from the eyes of a child, where
‘crazy’ doesn’t seem so crazy after all.
• “I was eight when I first heard the term ‘paranoid
schizophrenia.’
• “It was the morning after they’d taken my mother away
again to the state mental institution, and I’d just come
downstairs when I overheard my grandparents talking
about it in the kitchen over breakfast.”
• “They call it paranoid schizophrenia and say there’s no
cure for it,” Grandma said, “but they’re giving her what
they call shock treatments, and Dr. Sorensen says those
should help. And he’s going to try some different
medicine again.”
• “Well I don’t care what they call it or how much
medicine they give her, she’s nuttier than a fruitcake,”
Grandpa spit.
• “I ran back upstairs to our room, glancing over at Mom’s
bed as I lay on mine.”
• “I remembered what Mom had told me the last time they
took her away, about how men could get as pissed off as
they wanted and get away with it, but if a woman got
good and mad and spoke her mind, they’d either shut her
up with drugs; lock her up, or both.”
• “Maybe that’s all it was, I reasoned. Maybe speaking her
mind with so much rage all the time was what made her
‘seem’ crazy, made her ‘look’ like she’d gone nuts.”
• “Unlike most, Mom refused to keep her stubborn pride
and raging temper under lock and key, so Longview State
Mental Hospital did it for her.”
• “I could always tell by the blank stare on her face when
she’d taken her pills, her eyes fixed and unmoving as
she sat smoking one cigarette after another in slow
motion..”
• “No matter how many times Grandma nagged her
about it, Mom refused to wear a bra, saying she liked
the feel of her breasts hanging loose.”
• “Mom didn’t care in the least that the sides of her bare
breasts could easily be seen through the armholes of her
dresses, or that strangers on the street would stare wide
eyed and open mouthed as they passed by.”
• Was it crazy for my mother not to wear a bra when
everyone else was all buttoned down and proper, or was
it simply brave and ahead of her time?
• Was it insane for her to speak her mind with so much
passion and bravado, or was it a bolt of confidence that
showed strength of character?
• Did being in touch with her feelings and then showing
those feelings mean she was out of control, or did she
simply possess more honesty and courage than most?
• How do we define madness, and what does crazy look
like?
The Sanctity of Family Secrets
• “Unfortunately, Mom never did learn how to be different
enough to be found interesting, but not so different that it
didn’t scare everyone.”
• “Can you keep a secret?” Mom would ask between puffs off
her Pall Mall. I’d nod solemnly and listen as she’d whisper
warnings about grandpa poisoning the food, which is why
we couldn’t eat that day.”
• “Then there were the times she was convinced he’d gassed
the house to try and kill us all, opening every window in the
dead of winter and refusing to close them until frost
collected on the Venetian blinds and my teeth banged
together like piano keys.
• “But it was in the bedroom we shared where the biggest
secret lied.”
• “You tell anyone and I’ll beat ya to a pulp,” Mom would
warn, and I believed her.”
• “I was only five but I already knew better than to tell, and
hid our secret so deep I sometimes wondered if God even
knew.”
• “It happened late at night in the darkness of our room.
Mom would call out for me in the sweetest voice I ever
heard, my name riding the space between asleep and
awake like a song.”
• “I’d lie still as stone and pretend to be asleep, but then
Mom would call our for me again – this time not so sweet
anymore, and force me to stand at the foot of her bed and
touch her in ways I never wanted, her legs spread wide and
her back arched, the streetlight angled across her body like
a three-quarter moon.”
• “I soon learned how to sleep without sleeping, how to
pretend that everything was okay when it wasn’t.”
• “On Sundays after mass I’d walk home wondering if the
church had a way of washing a soul clean, to scour it like
you would a stain on a porcelain sink. I wanted to be
cleansed like that, to be scrubbed so clean and shiny I
wouldn’t feel stained or dirty ever again.”
• “When I’d get home the house would always smell of
Grandma’s fried chicken, and I’d grab the wishbone and
run to find Mom so she could pull it apart with me and see
who was going to get the bigger half and win.”
• “Winning the Sunday wishbone was like walking out of a
movie with hope in your heart and a smile on your face,
reassured, if only for a little while, that everything was
going to be all right.”
• “Over time, I developed an unyielding belief that as long as
God and the Sunday wishbone were around, everything
could be fixed. No matter what happened, there was
always Sunday to look forward to, always another chance,
always another wishbone.”
From Silent Witness to Public Testimony
• Researchers are only now beginning to create
typological schemes characterizing female sex
offenders
• The “Psychotic Abuser” is one who suffers
from psychosis as well as unmanageable
“libidinal impulses,” like my mother
• Even now, a half century later, no one talks
about mother-daughter incest, and yet it
happens every day
• I began writing my memoir with the intention of
giving voice to the silent and the silenced
• In the process of writing, I found a safe harbor
with which to objectify my past and try to make
sense of it
• As I watched my words, phrases and paragraphs
come together on the page, I could sometimes feel
the weight of silence begin to lift, the burden of
isolation begin to disintegrate
• Literature provides a voice for the disenfranchised, a link
from one world to another through the power of story
• By making our stories public, we claim not only our
voice, but our place in the world. We connect with and
join others in the imperative to tell, to make sense of our
lives and create meaning, for the act of writing is and
always will be, a struggle against silence
• My memoir ends with a letter I wrote to my mother
when I was twenty-two, the day I learned of her death.
She was only fifty-one years old:
Dear Mom,
I never had a chance to say goodbye to you, but I wish I
had…..sometimes I feel so sorry for you…sorry you had to
live in that horrible world of voices; sorry that Daddy
walked out on you…..
But sometimes I don’t feel sorry for you at all. Sometimes
all I feel is hatred toward you, a hate so strong it hurts. I
hate you for not loving me, for not wanting me, for using
me and abusing me. I hate you for being crazy, and I hate
you for not being the mother I needed you to be…
I still have nightmares…and flashbacks…I have trouble
trusting, and I can’t fall asleep at night unless I’m alone….
…..These are my legacies, the fabric of who I am. But it’s not all
of who I am. I am also the first one to fight any injustice, even
when it’s not in my best interest.
You were the one who taught me to stand up and speak out, to
be brave no matter what. And I can do this because I have
your stubborn determination, your stubborn pride… You gave
that to me. You gave me what you could. I know that now.
You won’t believe this, but what I think of most is how you
held that wishbone for me every Sunday, saying it was a bunch
of crap, but holding it anyway.
You’d sigh, take one last drag off your cigarette, pick up the
wishbone and hold it in your outstretched hand, waiting for me
to take hold of the other end. And I always did.