Two sisters grew up with a mother lost in delusions. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent years in and out of psychiatric facilities. Then, after undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, she regained her sanity. Rachel Aviv asks how this happened and what the answer presages for the future of psychiatry. She also considers, with great compassion, how a family rebuilds from a such a profound experience:
Christine wasn’t sure if she could call her mother “cured” simply because she lacked her previous symptoms. “She’s not fixated on things like contamination and surveillance, but at no point has she said she’s left those beliefs behind,” she said. Christine felt that it was taboo to talk to her mother about who she had once been. She suffered from the intrusive thought that if she confronted her mother with destructive things she had done, Mary would somehow revert back to the patterns from that time and become psychotic again. “It is quite a traumatized-kid thing to say, but I sort of feel like, How greedy can you get? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” she told me.
Christine didn’t know how to have an ordinary conversation with her mother. For twenty years, Mary had been suspicious when Christine asked her questions about her life. Christine now felt like an adopted child “meeting my biological mom for the first time,” she said. She bought a book by an anthropologist called “The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations” to help guide their conversations. “It says, ‘Allow them to talk about what’s important,’ ” Christine said, reading from the book, during a visit to her mother’s rehabilitation center. “If no one has ever let you speak about yourself, it can be hard,” Christine went on. “You have to kind of—”
“Think,” Mary said.
“Maybe practice—gain your voice,” Christine said.
Christine, who recorded the conversation, began with warmup questions: “When you were a kid, what was your favorite activity?”
“Running,” Mary answered immediately.
“What did you like about running?”
“It makes you feel you have wings.”
“What is your favorite TV show?” Christine asked.
“ ‘Seinfeld.’ ”
“ ‘Seinfeld’!” Christine said. “What did you like about ‘Seinfeld’?”
“The absurdity.”
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