The Professor and the Madman

{ March 4, 2010 @ 5:01 pm } · { challenges in education }
{ Tags: coping, education, mental illness, Schizoaffective Disorder }

I was in class last night and we were discussing a recent novel we read called The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. The book chronicles the making of the first English Oxford Dictionary. A man by the name of William Minor had a big part in compiling, over many years, much of the information that went into the book.

The author takes an in-depth look into the life of this peculiar man. He started out as a picture of academic achievement, attending and graduating from Yale in the medical field and later serving as an Army doctor for the Union during the civil war. It was after confronting the horrors and atrocities of war that Minor began to experience psychotic problems. He suffered from extreme paranoia which proved to be his ultimate undoing. In a psychotic rage, he shot and killed an innocent man in London because he thought the man was stalking him at night while he was asleep. He was found innocent of the crime due to his growing insanity and spent most of his adult life in an asylum in England.

A man by the name of Murray heard about Minor’s career and academic achievements and propositioned him to assist a group of scholars in compiling the first OED. This work became Minor’s obsession while he was tucked away in his asylum. It was his only contact with the outside world. Murray and Minor later struck up a friendship when Murray visited Minor in the asylum. Surprisingly, he did not seem to harbor any prejudice toward Minor and basically accepted him for whom he was and thanked him for all of his hard work over the years.

Our class discussion focused on mental illness and how treatment today differs from the way Minor was treated a century ago. Different classmates had different things to say. A couple of peers discussed their experiences dealing with mentally ill family members. One girl related that she was afraid of her cousin because he has Schizophrenia. She said he would come over to talk to her dad and she would hide in her room, (who was the crazy one?). The general sentiment in the class was that people with mental illness should be locked away because they can’t function.

I was about to disclose my illness to the class. I wanted them to see a living, breathing member of the mental health community who was highly functional and achieving both academic and personal success. But did I want them to know about my haunted past? I did comment though, I felt like I needed to defend myself and the people I know. I said that I used to run a creative writing therapy group for people with mental illness, and that not only were they capable of expressing themselves through their writing, but some of them were in meaningful relationships and holding down jobs. All of this is true. I could have said that I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder in 2004, and since, was capable of holding down a steady job, marrying the love of my life and months away from earning my second Masters Degree. I don’t bring this up to toot my own horn, I just want people to know that a diagnosis doesn’t mean the end of one’s functionality, it could in fact mean the beginning.

The tale about Minor was a sad one, but as I related in class, a person’s functionality depends on when he is diagnosed and how he responds to medication. Today’s therapy is not complete isolation like it was for Minor; it’s talking or writing through difficult experiences and religiously taking prescribed medication.

Advertisement