/lit/ - Literature

>Last night I was awake all night again. Sometimes I wonder what the night time is for. It almost doesn’t exist for me — it all seems like one long, long horrible day. Anyway, I thought I’d try to be constructive about it and started to read the letters of Sigmund Freud. When I first opened the book I saw the picture of Freud inside opposite the title page and I burst into tears — he looked very depressed (which must have been taken near the end of his life) that he died a disappointed man — but Dr Kris said he had much physical pain which I had known from the Jones book — but I know this too to be so but still I trust my instincts because I see a sad disappointment in his gentle face. The book reveals (though I am not sure anyone’s love-letters should be published) that he wasn’t a stiff! I mean his gentle, sad humor and even a striving was eternal in him. I haven’t gotten very far yet because at the same time I’m reading Sean O’Casey’s first autobiography –(did I ever tell you how once he wrote a poem to me?) This book disturbs me very much in a way one should be disturbed for these things –after all.
>There was no empathy at Payne-Whitney — it had a very bad effect — they asked me after putting me in a “cell” (I mean cement blocks and all) for very disturbed depressed patients (except I felt I was in some kind of prison for a crime I hadn’t committed. The inhumanity there I found archaic. They asked me why I wasn’t happy there (everything was under lock and key; things like electric lights, dresser drawers, bathrooms, closets, bars concealed on the windows — the doors have windows so patients can be visible all the time, also, the violence and markings still remain on the walls from former patients). I answered: “Well, I’d have to be nuts if I like it here” then there screaming women in their cells — I mean they screamed out when life was unbearable I guess — at times like this I felt an available psychiatrist should have talked to them. Perhaps to alleviate even temporarily their misery and pain. I think they (the doctors) might learn something even — but all are only interested in something from the books they studied — I was surprised because they already know that. Maybe from some live suffering human being they could discover more — I had the feeling they looked more for discipline and that they let their patients go after the patients have “given up”. They asked me to mingle with the patients, to go out to O.T. (Occupational Therapy). I said: “And do what?” They said: “You could sew or play checkers, even cards and maybe knit”. I tried to explain the day I did that they would have a nut on their hands. These things were furthest from my mind. They asked me why I felt I was “different” (from the other patients I guess) so I decided if they were really that stupid I must give them a very simple answer so I said: “I just am”.