[PEN-L:8836] Re: Re: Re: Althusser

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Yates wrote:

> Friends,
>
> I remember reading Althusser's autobiography.  Things were proceeding
> smoothly and then after 150 pages or so the prose just became
> impenetrable to me.
>
> Every time I hear of Althusser, I have a hard time getting past the fact
> that he murdered his wife. What do list members think of this?  It's
> just like William Burroughs.

While the most violent I ever got was to smash a set of dishes, nevertheless
suffering from depression as I have for over 50 years (diagnosed for only
about 15 years) I can just barely have some imaginative identification with
Althusser on this. (I don't know enough about Burroughs to say one way
or the other). While depression is clinically defined as an affective disorder
(as opposed to a cognitive disorder such as schizophrenia) one cannot
divide them quite that neatly: it has strong cognitive effects when "deep"
enough. And I understand that Althusser was bipolar -- which often (not
usually but often) can carry psychotic symptoms with it (such that in the
past many victims of bipolar were misdiagnosed as schizhrenic). So it
is at least possible (I haven't read his autobiography so I don't know all
the facts) that he was a "decent" person despite everything. It is also
just possible that Althusser suffered from what is now called schizoid
affective disorder -- an illness with quite different etiology than
schizophrenia but exhibiting similar though not identical symptoms.
Several of my friends are schizoid affective, and they are really very
good people.

{Note on terminology: bipolar refers to manic depressive as opposed to
simply depressive illness. "Psychosis" is no longer a the name of an
illness, while "psychotic" simply names a *symptom* which may or may
not accompany various mental illnesses -- it refers to voices, paranoid
symptoms ["paranoia" is  not the name of any illness but a some-time
symptom], etc. Neurosis is no longer a dignosis used by honest
psychologists or psychiatrists either, nor is "hysteria." My friends who
suffer from psychotic symptoms can, when their medications are working,
speak quite matter-of-factly, for example, of nicotine "quieting the voices."}

The  impenetrable prose might be due to bipolar illness also. On occasion
when a bipolar friend (especially what is called a "rapid cycler") is
sinking (or rising) into the manic phrase their discourse becomes steadily
more disjointed and incoherent, though sometimes they can parenthetically
note that fact themselves. Simple depression may generate a somewhat
clotted prose or even complete inarticulateness.

Carrol