The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness

“Still, I have been to a place where all too many people are forced to live. Like all too few, I have been permitted to return. I want to tell others about my journey so that those who have never experienced it will know what life inside of my schizophrenic brain has been like, and so that those who are still left behind will have hope that they too will find a path out.”

In this quote, which occurs at the outset of the narrative, Lori directly states her reasons for writing this book. In so doing, she assures us that no matter how dark, desperate, and hopeless she became—and also despite the deep darkness that we are about to witness as readers—she emerged from the other side. Through this quote, she tells readers that she hopes that this book functions as a beacon of hope. Therefore, we know that she does not mean to fetishize or wallow in the suffering that her disease caused, but to be honest about its effects, and also to demonstrate that she was able to ultimately triumph.

“I remember that when I was young my family had a medium-sized black mongrel. He was kept chained to a door, unable to move very far in one direction or another. One day as I was in the kitchen with him I suddenly grew very angry.

“In a burst of rage, I grabbed a nearby golf club and began beating the dog furiously. At first he barked hysterically. But because of the chain, he could not escape. He began to foam at the mouth. As I beat him, one by one his legs collapsed. He kept struggling to rise, but I wouldn’t let him. I kept hitting him, and hitting him, and hitting him. He fell to the ground. Then he stopped barking. His body writhed in horrible spasms, blood dribbling from his ears and mouth. After a while he stopped moving. Dead.

“To this day I do not know why I did it. I try to imagine the evil impulses and anger that must have led to such a crime. In my thoughts over the years, I have punished myself over and over again for having committed such a terrible sin against an innocent creature.

“But there is one big problem with this memory: It isn’t true. It never happened.”

This quote showcases Schilling’s talent for rendering episodes and recollections in close, searing detail without being melodramatic or overwrought. Also, the formal quality of the quote serves as a microcosm of her disease itself. It does so by beginning the recollection as if it is real, and then surprising the reader with the ultimate knowledge that it is a false recollection. This process mirrors the manner in which schizophrenia produces beliefs and sensory phenomena which seem absolutely true and real—and that it is only later, with treatment, that these delusions can be named for what they are.

“Growing up, I had always felt special. I was the oldest. I was the only girl. And I always liked having the center stage. I loved attention. To get it, I usually chose achievement. I was the kid in the Spanish class with the best accent. I was always vying for the lead in the school play. When I was only picked literary editor—and not editor-in-chief—of the school publication, I was really upset. Whatever I did had to be done all the way.”

This quote demonstrates Lori’s early over-achieving attitude. Importantly, it demonstrates the heights from which she fell. Prior to the onset of her disease, she found it easy to secure the kinds of achievements that garnered her praise and anchored her sense of self. Her special place within her family, and her ability to please her parents and those around her through her superlative achievements, were irrevocably snatched from her by her disease. This quote therefore serves to foreground her great sense of loss and desolation.

“I had always wanted my parents to be so proud of me. It was so important to me that I reflect well on them. So how could I destroy my parents by letting them know their daughter was possessed? At all costs, I had to keep it from them. So for my last year of high school, as the Voices came and went without warning, I went to the prom, applied to college, went skiing with my friends, listened to music or talked about guys with Gail. But always I had to be on my guard. When the Voices began to shriek, I had to stay composed.”

This quote demonstrates the fact that keeping up appearances was a very early obstacle to Lori acknowledging her illness, telling others about it, and seeking help. Due in large part to her sense of identity as a high-achieving and ideal daughter/girl, Lori pressures herself to maintain the identity and composure that is rapidly slipping away from her. She keeps the battle entirely internal, as a mechanism of both her own denial and her desire to continue being the ideal person that others believe her to be.

“My fear of the Voices was beginning to spill over into the rest of my life. I was always terribly anxious, because I never knew if those around me could hear them too. I watched my friends’ faces expecting to see their expressions turn to horror when they hear these Voices calling me ‘whore.’ When the Voices called me a ‘fucking bitch’ I watched my professors to see if they would throw me out of class.”

This quote demonstrates the vividness and power of the Voices. Although they are a hallucination, they feel so real to Lori that she believes that other people can hear them. By depicting her experience with the Voices in this way, Lori also opens to door for empathy. This quote matches her aim to depict her own journey with schizophrenia so that others can understand the disease better by demonstrating that the hallucinations that schizophrenia produce feel just as real as genuine sensory phenomena to those who suffer from it.

“We were admitted to a corridor filled with blank-faced people, muttering strange things to themselves, or knitting jittery patterns in the air with restless fingers, or pacing or rocking incessantly in their chairs. And there, in a visiting room, where thousands of devastated parents must have looked with horror on thousands of distraught children, I saw my daughter. But it was not my daughter. The Lori I knew was gone. And in her place was a stranger, a person who seemed to be living only partly in this world, and partly in some faraway world of her own making. There were no more apologies, no more pleas to let her out. The illness had captured her, and was part of her.”

In this quote, Marvin sees Lori during her first hospitalization. It demonstrates the sense of stigma that Marvin feels around Lori’s illness. Although he works within the psychiatry field, he seems to views these psychiatric patients and the facility with a mixture of horror, disgust, and pain. It is these things that he will be called upon to overcome in order to face the reality of his daughter’s disease. 

“Patient stated the voices are constant and tell her to hurt herself at times, other times she states she should hurt herself as well without listening to the voices. Patient also mentioned that she feels she can fly because she feels she flew before. Patient stated she flew 2 years ago when she was in college. Patient stated she went sky-diving. The first time she used a parachute, then second time, the patient stated she went sky-diving without a parachute and landed on her feet. Patient feels that this is not anything magical…”

This quote is an excerpt from a 1982 Nursing Note from Lori’s records. Formally, it represents a kind of purposeful disruption in the overall narrative that Schilling has built. Whereas the bulk of the book is composed of deeply personal and intimate testimony from herself and those close to her, this Nursing Note is written with a degree of scientific coldness and remoteness. It therefore demonstrates the manner in which, while the experience of schizophrenia is deeply personal for Lori and those around her, it is also treated as an empirical data point by clinicians.

“But when she looked at me, it was always with a secret in her eyes. ‘I know something you don’t know’, her eyes were telling me. It was a knowing, superior look, a look that had in it great distance, and great pity, and at the same time, an enormous amount of suffering. ‘I can hear something you can’t hear,’ her eyes were saying…I had seen those eyes before. Not on Lori. No, my memories of those vacant eyes were much older than that. I had seen eyes like that—distant, remote, pitying, all-knowing, superior, preoccupied eyes—all the time when I was growing up. I had seen eyes like that on my mother.”

This quote is told from the perspective of Nancy. It marks the moment in which she finally sees the similarities between her mother and Lori, and can begin to piece together the reality of her mother’s illness. Because the full reality her mother’s schizophrenia was hidden from her as a child, and it seems that her whole family persisted in its ignorance of the full gravity of her mother’s condition, Nancy can see the similarity between Lori and her mother in this moment, and it serves as a kind of lightning bolt revelation. The reality of Lori’s genetic predisposition for the disease will also come to both increase Nancy’s knowledge and ability to understand what is happening to her daughter. But it will also increase Nancy’s fears for Lori’s younger brothers.

“What did I remember from the hospital? I remembered the attendants assigned to be close to me at all times. I remembered the formal gardens, one of the few pleasures I was allowed while I was there. I remembered bingo and pizza nights in the hospital auditorium. But as for the rest, all I had was a mass of fuzzy impressions that bounced around in my head: Sound. Absence of sound. Jiggling keys. The dinner bell. Whispering. Yells. Tranquilizers. Visiting. Out of control. Showers. Walks. Sunshine. Reflections from outside off a freshly plowed snow bank. Mom. Dad. MEDICATION! MEDICATION! Cheek those pills. Tip the scale every Wednesday. Lithium vampires drawing my blood Tuesdays. Faces watching from the nursing station. Two packs a day. The final chapter. Nothing to do. Carly Simon. Babies crying. Me crying. Tears of a clown. Forever and a day. Keys. Escape. Alcatraz. Nothing to do about nothing. A post office mug. Coffee in the morning? Spelled with two Fs, two Es. No thank you. And you’re welcome. Blaring silence. Bomber planes. Sky blue. I love you. SHUT THE FUCK UP. Smiling faces. The sixties. Bouncing laughter. Can’t breathe. This planet. Too terrified. Charles Manson. To die, they say. To die. Help me. Help me. Help me. Please. Tick. Tick. Tick. Goodbye. Smash that window. I can fly.”

This quote is written as a stream of consciousness. Formally, it echoes Lori’s internal experience with her disease. While it starts out intelligibly, it devolves into a manic set of images, impressions and commands, seemingly from medical staff, Lori’s own self-berating, and from the Voices. The stream of consciousness form helps the reader to gain a glimpse into Lori’s broken and pained psyche. It also blurs the line between suicide and delusion; when the familiar refrain of “I can fly” appears at the end, it is both an invocation of Lori’s suicidal thoughts, and also of the great power of her delusional thinking.

“All I was trying to do was to feel better. Those medications they gave me in the hospital were useless. I took them because people told me they would make me feel better. But lots of times I didn’t know why I bothered. The only thing those fistfuls of stupid pills did was make me feel fuzzy and disoriented, as if I were at the bottom of a swimming pool. And the Voices still raged away at me, mocking the drugs, the doctors and me.

“Cocaine, on the other hand, helped me ignore the Voices. For as long as it lasted, cocaine made me feel alive. It made my senses feel sharp and clear again. When I did a line, I felt good, I felt real, I felt vital in a way that I hadn’t since long before the Voices entered my life. Cocaine directed my attention outside of myself. As long as I was high, I had enough strength to ignore those Voices calling me back into their world.”

Here, Lori gives us detailed insight into what the psychiatric medications made her feel like, and also demonstrates why she turned to cocaine at this point in her life. These medications do not quell the Voices or the internal issues that drive them. However, Lori still has a drive to live despite the Voices, and to experience vitality. Cocaine also clearly helps her to escape herself and her illness, which leads to her brief dependency upon it. We will later see that removing cocaine from her life is another step in her journey toward recovery. But here, we are asked to have compassion for her, and to see why she turned to it, even if it ultimately impeded her recovery.

“Mom and Dad were trying hard to help me. But being around them wasn’t fun either. Dad wanted so much for me to be well. He was always lecturing me, questioning me, pushing me, encouraging me. I wanted so much to be well for his sake that being with him was a constant effort. I had to hold myself in, watch myself, control my actions and impulses. It was hard work.

And I was so consumed with self-hatred that it was hard for me to do anything with my mom. How could I go shopping with her when looking in the mirror made me sick? How could I go to the country club with her when I knew I was so fat and ugly? I couldn’t stand to be around my beautiful, trim outgoing mother.”

In this quote, Lori voices a prominent theme within the book: her desire to please her parents and earn their love by being the perfect, ideal daughter is at the root of many of her symptoms, and also at the root of her initial denials of the seriousness of her illness. Here, we see Lori still extremely attached to achieving validation and a sense of self through the praise of her parents, and by hewing to what she feels they expect and demand of her—to be controlled, composed, and beautiful. Her sense of shame for her inability to meet with her parents’ expectations is still causing her to fight tooth-and-nail to master herself in front of her father, and to feel inadequate and ugly in the eyes of her mother.

“So finally I agreed. I signed myself back in to New York Hospital. Within a week of my admission, Mom and Dad brought me a letter—from New York Hospital. They were offering me the job I had applied for before as a mental health worker. Sure I’ll take it, I thought. Why not? After all, I’m already here. And I laughed and laughed and laughed.”

In this quote, Lori has been offered a job at the very hospital that she has agreed to commit herself to. This is clearly a twist of bitter irony. However, it also demonstrates Lori’s strength and testifies to her determination and the functionality that she is still able to wrest from herself, despite her illness. In a sense, the reader is directly let into the knowledge that while Lori has a serious illness, she still does possess great intelligence and stamina.

“But I thought of the Quiet Room as the Punishment Room. And so did my Voices. They taunted me, and teased me, and threw my confinement in my face. No sooner had I quieted down enough to leave, they would begin to torture me again. I wanted to put an end to their torment, so I lashed out again. And back I’d go to the Quiet Room again.

“It was as if I was stuck and unable to break myself from the chain of commands of the Voices. Within several hours, the pattern repeated. Sometimes even on my way from the Quiet Room back to my own room I would fall apart and have to turn right around and go back. Over and over the cycle repeated.”

At this point in the book, Lori has not yet found a hospital or a treatment program that is successful. This passage demonstrates some of the reasons why the treatment that she was undergoing at the time was not working. At this hospital, The Quiet Room is a place of tyrannical authority, domination, punishment, and control. Lori views it as a horrific place where she goes in order to be punished for failing to master the Voices, and it has no therapeutic benefit to her. In a way, it adds to her torment. These details are especially important because once Lori enrolls in the program at 3 South, The Quiet Room and its place in her treatment and life will completely metamorphose. At 3 South, with the help of an entire staff with an empathic and friendly—rather than punitive—approach, The Quiet Room will actually have a therapeutic benefit for Lori. Here, though, we see, rendered in wrenching detail, how The Quiet Room was far from that in Lori’s previous experiences of it.

“I was laughing hysterically. But there was nothing funny about it. I was cold, freezing cold. My teeth began chattering frantically as if they were the Voices speaking. I was going to die a shivery Arctic death and the Voices were going to have the last cold icy laugh. My whole body was frozen.

Cold-pack protocol mandated a full two hours as this freezing mummy. The attending person sitting by my side regularly checked my vital signs on my feet or on my neck. I tried to refuse to let anyone take my temperature. It was my final effort.”

In this quote, Lori details her feelings as she is being cold-packed. This procedure, reserved for the most out-of-control patients, involves medical staff soaking sheets in ice water, stripping the patient entirely, and binding them with the sheets in a tank of cold water. The purpose is to sap the patient’s energy with the effort of keeping themselves warm, so that they can no longer act or lash out. It is essentially torture. For Lori, added onto that torture is the perennial torture of the Voices. The readers are therefore afforded an intimate glimpse into the pain and terror that Lori endured—both as a person suffering from schizophrenia alone, and also one who must endure this almost medieval form of “treatment.” We also see that Lori is still acting from a place of defiance, and, given the brutal nature of this medical practice, justifiably so.

“I was shaking. Lori had told me about this kind of thing before but I hadn’t realized what she had meant until I had seen it myself. Sometimes that kind of thing happened to her too, I realized. All the old fears resurfaced. That commotion I had just seen could have been my sister.

“It could have been me.

“I didn’t stop shaking until I got home. And somewhere along the way I realized that if this was the reality, I still couldn’t face it. If someone was going to find a cure for Lori, it wasn’t going to be me.”

In this quote, Steven has just witnessed an older patient lashing out, and several medical staff rushing to the scene to subdue her. It is a chaotic and violent scene. Prior to witnessing this, Steven had been considering studying psychiatry in order to find a cure for his sister. But after seeing the reality of Lori’s life, and of her treatment—fully knowing that the incident he witnessed could have had Lori at the center, or even himself, if he should develop schizophrenia, deeply spooks him. Here, we see two important insights into Steven’s character. Firstly, we see his great love for his sister. It is moving that he would want to dedicate his own life and his studies to finding a cure for her. Secondly, we see the stark reality of Lori’s illness, and the depth to which it affects her family members; it invokes great compassion, but it also produces great fear, and operates as a looming threat over the young Steven, who is at the age at which he could begin to develop the disorder. 

“Give me a little more time, I begged them. Just a little more time to get used to going outside, to make some plans, to find somewhere to go. I was resentful, fearful, almost panicked at the thought of being pushed out of the hospital. But somewhere deep inside me there was born the tiny, flickering germ of some insight. Perhaps I was sick after all. Perhaps I did need some help.”

At this point, Lori has been threatened with ejection from her current hospital program due to her behavior. Staff have also been threatening her with placement in the state hospital. Lori views the state hospital as the end of the line—a depressing and bleak place that people do not leave. Every time she has been threatened with the state hospital, she fights hard to compose herself, but something inevitably comes bursting forward. This quote, however, marks the first time that Lori acknowledges the seriousness of her illness, and of the necessity for help. It is a crucial turning point for her, as her active denial and resistance of treatment has impeded her from fully investing in her treatment and recovery. This quote therefore sets the stage for Lori’s ultimate (though of course, not total) triumph.

“I mean, how many times can you listen to ‘The Impossible Dream’? ‘Oklahoma’? ‘If I Were a Rich Man’? The King and I? West Side Story? And Annie. By the end of the day, I wanted to smack that twerp Annie.

When I got my turn, I put on the most intense songs I could think of, like Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” fierce music about rebellion, pain, suicide and death. I played them loud, until she finally left the room with her Pollyanna music and gave me more quality time with my own wild strange brand of tunes.”

In this quote, Lori is ridiculing her roommate at Futura House for her “Pollyanna” music tastes. She contrasts them with her own taste for darkness. Particularly, the part about smacking “that twerp Annie” resonates with Lori’s sometimes sardonic and biting perspective, and adds depth to her character. Moments such as these remind us that Lori is not simply a victim or a patient, but a full human being with a range of emotions and expressions. 

“Once again a suicide attempt had blown the lid off the seething bubbling kettle that was my brain. And once again, the Voices placated, I was visited by a strange calm. It was in this calm that I decided to make another go at nursing school…I had even decided I’d go directly into a special master’s program they offered, but my entrance scores were too low. What a joke! I could hardly believe I was the same person who had graduated with honors from Tufts just five years ago. Tufts University? A real grind school? Impossible. These days I could barely put together two consecutive thoughts.”

In this quote, Lori articulates the dance that she does with the Voices. When she obeys their entreaties to hurt herself, they calm down. This speaks to the root of her illness: intense and extreme self-loathing combined with the chemical and physiological. However, it’s important to not that, throughout the narrative, Lori focuses more on the “soft” aspects of her illness: its emotional and psychological roots, rather than its more hard, scientific elements. Passages such as this reveal her emphasis. Too, the quote reveals her great sorrow, disappointment, and shame at the heights from which she has fallen, all of which represent barriers to her recovery. Until she can accept the complete totality of her illness, and of the loss of her former life, she cannot fully begin to embark on recovery. 

“Still, the attempt was taking its toll. The effort of fighting back my symptoms was weakening me. The temporary calm was ebbing. I was holding back the Voices by dint of superhuman control. But they wouldn’t be contained for much longer. […] You can only hold your breath for so long.”

In this quote, Lori speaks about how she works, on her own, to contain the Voices. She does so by sheer force of will but such control, for her, cannot last, as the disease and the Voices are entirely too powerful for her to control on her own. She finds herself frayed by her solitary efforts. This is also important insight into her struggle, and sets the stage for her ultimate acceptance of the help and support of others.

“Sally’s reaction surprised me. It wasn’t that it was kind—I knew that Sally was a good-hearted person. No, it was that it was so matter-of-fact. Sally had simply seen Lori and taken her for what she was. I, on the other hand, had been devastated by what I had seen. For it was at that Thanksgiving dinner I really realized for the first time that Lori was terribly sick. And that realization was jolting.”

In this selection, Mark writes about his Thanksgiving visit home. After much resistance and evasion, he has brought his fiancée, Sally, to his family home. (He has been putting if off because he is afraid of facing Lori’s condition). Surprisingly, Sally has suggested that Lori be a bridesmaid at their wedding. The passage reveals the unique difficulty that Lori’s family members have with accepting her condition. Because Mark knew her as a rock and a bastion of achievement, warmth, and intelligence, it devastates him to see a weakened Lori, in the grips of an illness that has taken her former identity away. In contrast, Sally simply accepts Lori—out of both kindness and a lack of context for how far she has fallen. However, too, this passage represents the lightning-bolt moment that each of Lori’s family members have, at different points, during the course of her treatment. He has understood the gravity and depth of Lori’s illness, and is beginning to let go of his former expectations of her, which cannot apply now that she is undeniably unwell.

“Dr. Fischer, though, seemed much younger. She was petite and pretty, a perfect size four with long curly black hair. She was chic, always wearing fashionable clothes. Dr. Fischer wasn’t my sister. She was me. She was the me that I had left behind ten years ago. She was the me buried deep under these pounds of fat. She was the me cowering in terror under the Voices’ assaults. She was the me I wanted to reclaim but couldn’t. She had everything I wanted but didn’t have. She was everything I wanted to be but couldn’t be. Everything she was, I was the opposite. I couldn’t stand her. I hated her. I loved her. I wanted her to die. I wanted her to like me. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to be her.”

In this quote, Lori speaks about Dr. Fischer, her first therapist at 3 South. While her work with Dr. Fischer will mark a major transformation in both herself and her approach to her own treatment, Lori here reveals that she also struggles with complex emotions around the doctor. Importantly, too, this quote continues Lori’s aim to depict the “softer” (as opposed to scientific) aspects of her illness. Lori will come to have murderous fantasies about Dr. Fischer and the Voices will rail against her. Here, she reveals why: Lori harbors intense jealousy of Dr. Fischer, because she is and possesses everything that Lori had expected to become, prior to the onset of her illness. The viciousness with which the Voices and her psyche treat Dr. Fischer is therefore grounded in both that jealousy and Lori’s own self-loathing and disappointment in herself.

“While I was sitting with Dr. Doller, I’d be in constant fights with the Voices. There were two of them in particular who were my enemies and hers. There they were, the two of them, howling warnings to me about her. But where the voices usually yelled at me to kill someone before that person killed me, this time even though they said Dr. Doller was going to hurt me, I could tell that the Voices were yelling at me to protect them…they were frightened. The Voices were actually frightened. She was the doctor with the power to destroy them.”

This passage marks an important turning point in Lori’s recovery and treatment. Instead of merely treating the Voices as things to be fought and not understood, she is now allowing herself to identify their roots. Instead of just trying to silence or overcome the Voices that taunt and warn her about Dr. Doller, she understands that they are doing that because they fear the prospect of their elimination, which is perhaps another way of saying that Lori herself has made huge strides in self-awareness of the roots of the Voices.

“And as I became willing to consider the possibility, I began to be able to see—faintly at first—that the Voices had real emotions behind them. Once I began to be able to tell my doctors what the Voices were saying about them, they began to help me look more closely at what the Voices were saying and why. I would tell Dr. Fischer that the Voices were telling me to strangle her. ‘Is it possible that you are feeling angry with me?’ She would say. And slowly, gradually, I would begin to be able to realize that I had been angry because she had been late to session, or jealous because I had seen her talking to another patient.”

This passage represents a culmination of all of the gradual steps that Lori has taken toward her recovery. Whereas before she was only seeing faint glimmers of clarity, this passage depicts a full, intelligible and coherent insight about the roots of her illness. With the help of Dr. Fischer’s gentle yet matter-of-fact approach, Lori is able to both pinpoint and articulate her feelings of anger and jealousy. This marks a major milestone, as Lori has spent years within the grips of her volatile and dangerous illness. She has literally been to the brink of death, several times. It is therefore triumphant and poignant that she has reached this point of true insight, which will play a vital part in allowing her to ultimately bring her disease under control enough to have a semi-normal, stable life.