Scripted Insanity

In 2013, a clinical psychologist at Oxford University conducted a study that lead to a disturbing conclusion: women are 40% more likely to develop mental illnesses than males (Ball 2013). 

Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, body dysmorphia. . . The list is devastatingly long.

But how many of these mental illnesses that are developed by women are socially inflicted? Socially manipulated? Emotionally manipulated?

It sounds like a conspiracy theory, I know; but I am not Dana Scully, and what I am proposing is not X-File material. 

Although monstrous, there is hardly anything paranormal about that which I am about to share:

Upon the recommendation of a friend, I recently watched the Clint Eastwood film 'Changeling' (2008). Based on a true story, the movie retells the nightmarish plight of Christine Collins: In 1928, Los Angeles, single mother Christine comes home from work to discover that her son, Walter, is missing. After five long months, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) contacts Christine with joyous news: her son has been found. But when she arrives at the train platform to recover him, Christine is devastated to discover that the boy is not Walter. Upon the insistence of a police captain (J.J. Jones), Christine takes the boy home with her; but she knows that an error has been made. When she confronts Jones, however, Christine is accused of being mentally unstable and an irresponsible mother. Determined to be heard, Christine takes her story to the press. Realizing that a mistake has been made, and the pending embarrassment he has caused the LAPD, Jones has Christine forcefully committed to a mental hospital. While institutionalized, Christine discovers that she is not the first woman to cross the police and be locked away. (For the sake of my readers, I will not risk spoiling the conclusion of the film.)


Society has a long standing history of locking away women who upset the balance; who refuse to conform; who cannot be controlled. The story of Christine Collins, sadly, is but one documented case.

In the days of matriarchal societies, women were highly regarded for their emotions ---their instincts, their intuitiveness. Over the centuries, however, as patriarchy established its reign, our emotions were turned against us. In an attempt to keep its feminine subjects subdued, society began to circulate the ideas that women are fragile and powerless. When some of them attempted to contradict such conditioning, however, these free-spirited females were locked away and/or forcibly reeducated (i.e. emotionally manipulated into submission). 

"You're so sensitive. You're so emotional. You're defensive. You're overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You're crazy! I was just joking, don't you have a sense of humor? You're so dramatic. Just get over it already!
. . .
When someone says these things to you, it's not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling -- that's inconsiderate behavior. A remark intended to shut you down like, "Calm down, you're overreacting," after you just addressed someone else's bad behavior, is emotional manipulation, pure and simple. 

And this is the sort of emotional manipulation that feed an epidemic. . . that defines women as crazy, irrational, overly sensitive, unhinged. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that women need only the slightest provocation to unleash their (crazy) emotions. It's patently false and unfair." (Ali 2011)

Yashar Ali, the writer of the above passage, highlighted just a few of the gas-lighting phrases that society has written and passed along over the centuries. And the epidemic that he refers to, needless to say, still thrives ---although it has, and continues, to take a number of different forms.

For example:

Hysteria
For over three centuries, woman have been strongly linked to a psychological condition called "hysteria." Dictionary.com defines hysteria as "a psychoneurotic disorder characterized by violent emotional outbreaks, disturbances of sensory and motor functions, and various abnormal effects due to autosuggestion." 

Hysteria is said to derive from the Greek word hysterikós, which roughly translates to "womb." In summary, since the mid 17th century, the Greeks have expressed a belief that disturbances in the uterus cause a woman to act irrationally ---psychotically. In time, the belief found its why into the books and teachings of the European medical community.

Below, I have included a clip from the movie 'Stonehearst Asylum.' Loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether," the underlying theme of the film can be summed up in the form of a single question: 'How can one ever truly know who is mad and who is sane?' Taken from the beginning of the movie, the following scene offers ---I believe ---a troubling but honest recount of how so-called hysteric women were classified and treated by authoritative figures in society.

Drugged. Dismissed. Forsaken. For a woman to speak up, to show the slightest bit of aggression, meant a potential lifetime of incarceration and loneliness. 

It was safer to stay quiet, to be compliant.


Melancholia
Complying, however, has a history of bringing about its own ailment. (Hence, perhaps, the cliche 'suffering in silence.') If hysteria is to be characterized as the loud and aggressive form of female insanity, then melancholia can be classified as the quiet and passive version.

Melancholia, as defined by Dictionary.com, is "a mental condition characterized by great depression of spirits and gloomy forebodings." Today this condition is predominately referred to by psychiatric professionals as depression. At the risk of stereotyping the illness, melancholia may have been the result of a lifetime of suppressed opinions, denied expressions, and forced actions.

Published in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" remains one of the most famous literary depictions of melancholia to date. Rumored to be inspired by Gilman's own experiences with mental illness, it is the story of a woman who has lived up to her cultural duties of becoming a wife and mother; however, she is discontent with her life. In an attempt to ease her depression, her husband ---a doctor ---takes his wife to their house in the country and locks her away in the attic, to sort through her thoughts. The longer the woman is left in seclusion, however, the more depressed and delirious she becomes. So much in fact that she begins to imagine seeing images of trapped women, much like her, in the decorative paper that decorates the attic walls.

While Gilman and her protagonist both survived their illness (to varying degrees), a number of women have and continue to commit suicide as a result of melancholia, of depression. Sylvia Plath, poet and author (The Bell Jar), was one such victim.

Gender-typed
Patriarchy has supplied its citizens with a script: the heteronormative script. Through social and commercial mediums, people are taught from a young age a seemingly simple layout of actions and events that will lead to success and happiness.

The script is different for each person ---rigidly dependent on an individual's sex and race.

For the first-world female, the heteronormative script typically consists of the following:

Born --> Attend school (maybe college) --> Get married --> Have babies --> 
        Raise babies --> Nurture grandchildren --> Die

Again, it is a simple plan; but in it, there is little room for mistake, alteration, or individuality. If done correctly, however, there should be no reason for a woman to feel sad or incomplete, right?

Charlotte Perkins Gilman undoubtedly had a difference in opinion on the matter.

What fails to be made apparent on the surface of society's plan is the amount of pressure that a female is subjected to ---whether by peers, or by herself. In the United States, for example, girls are constantly being bombarded with images of the so-called perfect body and narratives of how to please men. (Keywords: "to please men.") We are taught to be competitive with other women, for male attention. Also, we are raised to believe that the best day of our lives will be when we, finally, get married. 

Last week, psychotherapist and wellness expert Megan Bruneau published a post on MindBodyGreen.com ---a wellness blog ---titled "Why the Way We Talk About Marriage is Bad for Women."

"Relationships are natural," Bruneau wrote, "and we are programmed to desire connection. Marriage, on the other hand, is a cultural norm."

For those women who don't get married, whether by choice or circumstance, they are labeled social outcasts. For women who don't have children, whether by preference or infertility, they are regard by some people as disappointments. And heaven forbid that a woman is of a different sexual orientation, or if she desires to create a career rather than a family!

We women walk a greased tightrope. To live in a society that is constantly invalidating our wants to be individuals and our needs to express feelings, it is little wonder that we develop mental illnesses!

Albert Einstein once offered the following definition for insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

In order to make the world mentally safer for women, it is time for the heteronormative script to change. As liberated as society claims that we are, it is about time that women cease to be punished for having thoughts and opinions, and the emotions to back them up. Our sanity depends on it!

Works Cited

Ali, Yashar. "A Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not "Crazy."" The Huffington Post-
              Women. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 20 September 2011. Web. 31 October 2015. 

Ball, James. "Women 40% more likely than men to develop mental illness, study finds." The 

              Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 22 May 2013. Web. 31 October 

              2015.

Limited Love...?

Earlier today on MindBodyGreen.com, best-selling author and relationship expert Dr.Margaret Paul uploaded an article titled "Here's What True Love Is (And What It Isn't)" ---this being an unmistakable attempt on her part to correct any media- and culture-influenced misconceptions about the ancient God-like entity. 

Paul began identifying how limited the Western concept of Love is by noting the lack of words we English-speakers have to refer to it. In comparison, she emphasized that the Ancient Persian language has 80 words for Love, and Sanskrit has 96. Modern English society has only one.

Or does it?

Contemporary Concepts of Love
The first place to look for Love remains where it has always been: within the family. The term "family," however, is no longer strictly confined to one's nuclear gene pool. 

Clinical psychologist Meg Jay, in her book The Defining Decade, describes two kinds of families that an individual may come to have: the biological family and the urban tribe. Needless to say, the biological family is the group of people that an individual shares blood-ties with. To put the situation crudely, it is the family that one does not have the luxury of choosing. In contrast, the urban tribe is a tight-knit group of friends. The bond between the individuals is so intimate that they consider each other soul siblings; and thus the potential formation of a bromance or sismance. (Please note: "Sismance" is not a word that is officially recognized by the writers of either Urbandictionary.com or the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. One day, however, it might be!)

The Millennial Generation has become rather fond of the word "bromance" over the past few years. This label, which refers primarily to a platonic love-bond shared between two men, has become attached to such celebrity pairings as Will Ferrell and John C. O'Reilly; Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake; Ben Affleck and Matt Damon; as well as Brad Pitt and George Clooney. Such bond-forming is a demonstration that family, among a few other things, can be fluid. 

Of course, too, there is romantic Love ---that passionate and life-altering emotion that has been idealized and imitated in Hollywood movies over and over again.

Perhaps the focus on Love should not be how many words or references we Westerns have. Rather, it may be best to contemplate on what-in-the-name-of-all-that-is-holy we are doing with it.

Where We May Be Going Wrong
While the Urbandictionary may be expanding its section on modern Love colloquialisms, Dr. Margaret Paul may be right in saying that Western culture has an overall limited (underdeveloped; immature) concept of the actual entity.

Exhibited A: Love, of the capital "L" variety, is still overwhelming limited to the idea that such an emotion and/or ability exists simply between two individuals who are romantically involved with each other. Until recently, the accepted version of Love ---as publicized by the media ---consisted of a heterosexual couple. Due to the ruling of Obergefell v. Hodges in the Supreme Court, however, the Love narrative has been altered to include both homosexual and heterosexual pairings. Such in itself is an amazing victory for Western culture.

What remains lacking from the mentioned narrative, however, is the acknowledgement and acceptance of Love existing between more than two people. The topic of polyamory, especially, has been paid a great deal of attention in recent years. As to whether it, or even polygamy, may be "legitimized" by American legislation is still a subject of controversy. 

Food for thought: Since Love is generally recognized as an infinite power, why should it be limited (romantically) to only two individuals?

Exhibit B: Lust and Love, quite frequently, are treated like interchangeable terms. What Paul points out in her article, however, is that there are numerous differences between the two emotions and/or abilities. At the foundation, one is selfish while the other is selfless. 

As a society, America tends to be rather selfish. Whether the general populace recognizes it or not, the popularized non-committal (hook-up) approach to Love falls along the line of Ayn Rand's ideology of egoism. To put it bluntly, we are feeding and encouraging a cycle of sexual usury in an attempt to feel love (the endorphine-induced version) without the hurt.

Unfortunately, the latter narrative is a rather old one. While it may never end entirely, we ---as a society and a culture ---can attempt to curtail its use and influence for future generations.

Exhibit C: Loving another individual is often hard to do when one does not Love oneself. And in the West, we can be rather self-loathing and masochistic. (Anorexia, bulimia, self-mutilation, drugs...)

While the idea of loving oneself may sound contradictory (considering the previous point that I made, about selfishness), it does not have to be. Rather, instead of relying on the age-old idea of finding completion in another person (of finding a mate), we should all invest time and energy into molding ourselves into becoming an ideal mate ---someone we would be proud to date. In fact, we should date ourselves. In Loving ourselves, we can better learn how to Love others. Hurt people hurt others; Loved people Love others.