The Collected Schizophrenias

“These are what I call explanations, rather than causes, because embedded within spiritual narratives are ideas about Why with a capital W, providing larger, more-cosmic reasons for the schizophrenias to occur.”

Wang explores the benefits and downfalls of spirituality as it relates to schizophrenia. Since schizophrenia is a disorder that leaves people especially vulnerable to influence and delusion, it is tempting for people involved in the occult to use that as an access point into their lives. Furthermore, people who work in these fields also tend to place a special significance on schizophrenia, ignoring its biological roots and never offering an actual cause.

“The burden of care becomes the burden that breaks people.”

In discussing Malcoum Tate, a man with schizophrenia who was murdered by his own sister and mother, Wang laments the ways that media and organizations like NAMI focus on the families of people with disorders rather than the person with the disorder themselves. Still, she acknowledges the powerful influence of mental illness on families and regrets how this can result in violence or distress.

“To me, there is a line between me and those like Jane and Laura; to others, that line is thin, or so negligible as to not be a line at all.”

Wang considers herself different from most people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. She describes herself as “high-functioning,” dresses in high fashion, and speaks with intentional eloquence. Wang also considers herself highly intelligent. For these reasons, she does not want to be grouped in with people like those she met in the psychiatric hospital. However, Wang knows that she is not as different from them as she wants to believe. This quote illustrates the power of Stereotypes and Stigmatization of Mental Disorders over Wang’s self-perception, as well as The Interweaving of Mental Illness With Identity.

“Rarely did I experience such a radical and visceral imbalance of power as I did as a psychiatric patient amid clinicians who knew me only as illness in human form.”

When Wang is living in the psychiatric hospital, she feels dehumanized and mistreated. She is seen as someone who is no longer capable of making her own decisions and who is defined entirely by her illness. When Wang gives a talk on her disorder to a group of clinicians in Chinatown, she remembers her experience in the hospital and feels the same sense of judgment and intimidation. This quote illustrates the relationship between Stereotypes and Stigmatization of Mental Disorders and How Institutions Fail to Treat and Prevent Mental Illness.

“I’m still trying to figure out what ‘okay’ is, particularly whether there exists a normal version of myself beneath the disorder, in the way a person with cancer is a healthy person first and foremost.”

Throughout her life, Wang has heard and read many times about “person-first” language and the idea of a person apart from their mental illness. Wang does not criticize this perspective on mental disorders and their relationship to identity, but she wonders what it truly means. Wang has come to see herself as someone who will always live with schizoaffective disorder, and for her, that is just a part of who she is. This quote illustrates the confusing nature of The Interweaving of Mental Illness With Identity.

“According to many who live and work at them, colleges and universities can’t realistically be expected to give students with severe mental illness the treatment they need.”

In describing her experiences of being involuntarily hospitalized by the Yale Psychiatric Institute and discharged by Yale University due to her mental health, Wang points out the irony in the policies and budgets of educational institutions. Mental health is not prioritized or seen as something that can practically be addressed, so it is either neglected or mismanaged, demonstrating How Institutions Fail to Treat and Prevent Mental Illness.

“There are two issues here: one being the act of passing on a genetic burden, and the other being my ability, as a woman living with severe mental illness, to be a good mother.”

When Wang considers having children, she expresses two overarching fears based on logic and her experience living with a mother with mental illness. In many ways, Wang’s doubts about her mothering abilities are the result of prevalent Stereotypes and Stigmatization of Mental Disorders. Still, Wang is optimistic that her mind may change, illustrating The Importance of Hope and Perseverance in the Face of Great Challenges.

“I was surprised by my love for Stuart. He was smart and hilarious and knew a lot of fascinating trivia. He and I also shared a diagnosis, and perhaps that, most of all, is why I had patience for his tantrums and oddities.”

During her time at Camp Wish, Wang bonds with one of the campers, a boy named Stuart who has bipolar disorder. Wang pushes herself into the experience despite having little experience with children and an overall sense of dread in interacting with them. She is surprised to find that not only does she enjoy the experience, but she bonds with Stuart over their shared experiences of mood disorders. It allows her to see the possibility of children in her future as she comes to realize that she may be the perfect person to parent a childlike Stuart. This quote illustrates how Wang’s experience bucks the Stereotypes and Stigmatization of Mental Disorders that even she falls prey to.

“A primary feature of the experience of staying in a psychiatric hospital is that you will not be believed about anything. A corollary to this feature: things will be believed about you that are not at all true.”

Wang explores the ways that Stereotypes and Stigmatization of Mental Disorders exist within the institutions that are designed to help people with such disorders. Wang looks back on her time in a psychiatric hospital with disdain, believing it to be one of the more traumatic experiences she has endured. She recalls being treated as if she did not know herself, her condition, or what was best for her well-being. In turn, stereotypes were assumed about her that were not true. This quote demonstrates How Institutions Fail to Treat and Prevent Mental Illness.

“The coherence of reality threatened to desert me. Soon my mind was a black hole, and that dead star insisted on snatching every wisp and scrap of sense; it tore at the edges of the world.”

When Wang experiences the onset of psychosis, it is terrifying and unsettling as she begins to lose touch with reality. This quote illustrates Wang’s poetic prose and the way she inserts metaphors into her work to further illuminate her thoughts and emotions.

“For those of us living with mental illness, the world is full of cages where we can be locked in.”

Wang was involuntarily hospitalized for psychosis on three separate occasions. She describes the experiences as traumatic and dehumanizing. Not only is her mental disorder in many ways like a cage but she is placed in a room that she cannot leave under the care of people she does not trust. People with mental disorders are very vulnerable, and it is all too easy to mistreat them. This problem illustrates How Institutions Fail to Treat and Prevent Mental Illness.

“Children are prone to believing in the things that they pretend are real. How many, for example, genuinely gear the boogeyman under the bed, or the monster in the closet? How many really do see ghosts in their rooms that they swear are real?”

In discussing the incident of the Slenderman stabbing and the power of a child’s imagination, Wang questions whether there is a tangible difference between a hallucination and a real threat. When a person with schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder or a small child with a powerful imagination experiences a hallucination, their fear is real.

“In this way I have become, and have remained, delusional for months at a time, which feels like breaking through a thin barrier to another world that sways and bucks and won’t throw me back through again, no matter how many pills I swallow or how much I struggle to return.”

When Wang enters a period of delusion, it can sometimes last for several months. The experience is mentally and physically exhausting, isolating, and often terrifying. During these times, Wang feels as if she has entered another world and cannot reenter reality. In her essay “On the Ward,” Wang makes it clear that mental illness and resulting circumstances like hospitalization are in many ways akin to prisons or cages. Wang also cites The Importance of Hope and Perseverance in the Face of Great Challenges in times of psychosis.

“Prehistoric Lucy mutters, makes faces, and blends into an environment comprising elements that may or may not be constructed: a real or false river, a true or invented sky. I can’t tell the difference.”

As Wang watches the movie Lucy in a theater, she begins to feel as if she is experiencing the movie as reality. Wang starts to wonder if she, too, might have superpowers she has yet to unlock. Adding to this, the skillful use of CGI and clever narrative in the film convince the viewer of its premise. Wang draws a comparison between confusing CGI and real footage with confusing reality and hallucinations or delusions.

“There are still nights when I feel myself on a knife-edge, when the terror of PTSD mingles with the trickiness of unreality. It spreads through me like ink-blotting paper, and then I am unpredictably vulnerable to all kinds of stimuli—movie trailers that both rub up against where I am raw, shocking me with adrenaline, and pull fiction into my sense of what is real.”

Wang lives with schizoaffective disorder and, as a result, is prone to delusions and confusion between reality and fantasy. The PTSD that she has only compounds this issue, making her more vulnerable to the possibility of delusion than she might otherwise be. Wang’s experiences toeing the line between reality and delusion demonstrate The Interweaving of Mental Illness With Identity.

“The question instead became about percentages. What percentage of my life was going to be spent in psychosis. What percentage of functioning I could expect? […] What percentage of insight I could expect? No one could, or can, answer these questions, of course.”

After Wang is told that she will spend the rest of her life living with schizoaffective disorder and will likely never get better, she begins to wonder about the future, her quality of life, and how to maintain hope. She knows all too well that living with a disorder forever means that she will never be fully free from psychosis or disconnect from reality. Perhaps the scariest part is the fact that nobody else has these answers, either. This quote illustrates The Interweaving of Mental Illness With Identity as well as How Institutions Fail to Treat and Prevent Mental Illness as Wang is essentially “doomed” by her doctor.

“Whereas I’d once believed that I’d been gifted an optimistic afterlife, this shimmering notion was quickly replaced by the idea that I was in perdition. In this scenario, I was doomed to wander forever in a world that was not mine, in a body that was not mine; I was doomed to be surrounded by creatures and so-called people who mimicked the lovely world that I’d once known, but who were now fictions and could evoke no emotion in me.”

When Wang first begins experiencing Cotard’s delusion, she feels mania and elation at the prospect of being granted a second chance at life after death. However, it is not long before this elation transforms into a sense of overwhelming dread that she is doomed to live an existence of suffering forever. During this time, Wang felt as though she could not connect with the outside world and was living apart from it. It was a profound and desperate terror that lasted several months.

“Francesca, what do you think of these photographs? Do you see what I was trying to do? I was trying to make myself more real.”

In this moment, Wang breaks her usual tone and form to speak directly to someone she deeply admires. The Polaroids that Wang takes of herself are inspired by Woodman and are usually taken during episodes of psychosis. Wang uses the photos to connect herself to reality and confirm her own existence. Wang’s love of photography and admiration of Woodman illustrates The Interweaving of Mental Illness With Identity.

“Francesca Woodman never has to watch her star fall, or to renegotiate her ideas of ambition, because she already faced her mortality, and is immortalized in her art.”

In discussing the death of photographer Francesca Woodman, Wang admits an underlying envy that she feels of Francesca’s automatic immortality. After Wang’s doctor told her that her illness would never improve and would only degenerate over time, Wang found herself losing hope and experiencing a lengthy period of Cotard’s delusion, in which she believed she was dead.

“Someday, we’ll be able to trace all mental illnesses to autoimmune disorders. But we’re not there yet.”

In several essays, Wang explores the potential underlying causes of mental disorders, particularly psychotic disorders. She acknowledges that there is no solid understanding of this, but upon speaking with several doctors and researching the subject, she finds that there is a current trend of theories that say mental disorders are caused by autoimmune disorders. Wang finds comfort in the notion of her disorder being something tangible and being able to trace its roots to a finite point.

“However my life unfolds, goes my thinking, is how I am meant to live it; however my life unspools itself, I was created to bear it.”

Due to her Perseverance in the Face of Great Challenges and her experiences with spirituality, Wang has come to an understanding that whatever burdens she bears are her own, and she is meant to have them. She chooses to use her negative experiences to educate and comfort others.

“I said a clumsy prayer while the sun sluiced through the windows into the tiny room.”

Wang’s poetic prose lends a unique style to her essays. Here, she uses alliteration to emphasize the imagery of the sun coming into her window. This quote also acts as a symbol of The Importance of Hope and Perseverance in the Face of Great Challenges.

“Hope, I write in my journal, is a curse and a gift.”

As Wang finds hope in the occult and the spiritual, she also realizes that this hope may be based on falsehoods. She finds spiritual rituals comforting but knows there is a chance they are ultimately meaningless beyond that. At the same time, Wang knows that her hope for a healthy future could be taken from her at any moment. This quote is part of the theme, The Importance of Hope and Perseverance in the Face of Great Challenges.