Free Quipu by Damien Broderick

responsibility.
    Of course I realize that you find me the opposite of responsible. But responsibility can only manifest itself by reference to one’s private set of values, one’s general understanding of the world and how it works. I wish now to try to elucidate some of my views that have had a bearing on my relationship with Caroline and with both of you. Wherever feasible, I will borrow the concepts of specialists whose competence and experience can be acknowledged as professional and expert, where my own are (as you have pointed out) clearly amateur, limited by inexperience, and biased by involvement.
    My principal source is Dr. R. D. Laing, of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. He has written a number of influential books on the causes and treatment of mental illness. I emphasize Laing’s authority because I am sensitive to Mrs. Muir’s assertion of my own callowness; that, as she put it, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
    We are, however, morally required to base our decisions on such information as we have to hand. Of course my interpretation of psychologists like Laing may be grievously in error. My actions may derive more from my defects than my understanding. But that is the human condition. The best that can be expected of us is sincerity guided, to the best of our intelligence, by up-to-date information.
    Laing sees madness as a state of disrupted communication occurring in a social context. He lets us see that Caroline’s madness is (quite literally) just another kind of lunacy in a world which is so pervasively disordered that none of us can use words and mean what we say, make plans for the future and have any genuine confidence that they will be realized.
    But mental disorder is always particular. We are not all sedated in hospitals, waiting for the next electric shock treatment. We might all to some extent be deranged, but some (Caroline, sadly, among them) are strikingly so. Why are these people mad?
    Laing’s answer is this:
    “To the best of my knowledge, no schizophrenic has been studied whose disturbed pattern of communication has not been shown to be a reflection of, and reaction to, the disturbed and disturbing pattern characterizing his or her family of origin.”
    I have long since overstepped the limits of propriety, but it is Caroline, after all, whom my letter is all about. As her psychiatrist has told us, Caroline is psychotic at the moment, probably schizophrenic. If this is not the case, my course of action has been gravely in error.
    We can multiply ‘ifs.’ Perhaps Dr. Laing’s account is wrong. Perhaps it is right, but I have been partly instrumental in bringing about Caroline’s condition (by being, myself, one half of a ‘double-bind,’ an insoluble tussle).
    Since there can be no question that, long before I ever met her, Caroline was well advanced into her particular unhappy state (whatever we decide to call it), at most I can only have aggravated a situation that was already serious. To be quite frank, I feel that the relationship between Caroline and me served to delay her precipitation into psychosis—if that is a true description of what has happened to her, though I hope it is not.
    The first time I met Caroline, I sensed something profoundly wrong. But, as Mrs. Muir insists, I am a pessimist, I over-analyze people. Being aware of this, I did not jump to any immediate conclusion. I came to see Caroline’s feyness as charming. What is more, I’ve noticed that because they are ipso facto ‘different,’ many creative, intelligent and sensitive people at university tend to be prey to prolonged bouts of depression, self-doubt and even ‘suicidal’ moods. However, as Caroline and I got to know one another, she very tentatively revealed more disturbing facts. For instance, that she often had visual illusions which were compelling, seductive and frightening.
    You told me this afternoon that I had no right to offer opinions about Caroline,