Truly there would be a reason to go mad were it not for music.
Tchaikovsky
Still homebound during the pandemic, to pass the time I’ve been watching movies about mental illness … then I realized May is Mental Health Month. A couple of thought-provoking movies I studied were Grey Gardens and Mad to be Normal. As a woman growing older and realizing the inevitable decline, I’ve avoided the original Grey Gardens documentary about a once wealthy elderly mother and her middle-aged daughter living together in poverty and filth yet within the confines of their once splendid beachfront home in the cozy enclave of East Hampton, New York.
So, I watched the more interesting narrative film version Grey Gardens, starring Jessica Lange as Big Edie and Drew Barrymore as Little Edie. The transformation by hair and body makeup of the two women is shockingly realistic. Then there’s their phenomenal acting. The famous reversal-of-fortune saga made international news in the early 1970s because the women are kin to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Big Edie is the nickname for Edith Bouvier Beale, a beloved aunt of the former First Lady. Big Edie was the sister of Jackie’s father. Little Edie was an older cousin of Jackie.
The interesting storyline features Big Edie’s flamboyant parties at her Grey Gardens estate in the 1930s. Her husband, a New York businessman, argues with his spoiled wife about the times in which they are living, an economic depression. He had to cut his staff including house servants, yet Big Edie parties on, maintaining the center of attention with a pianist on hand and her adequate singing and dancing. Her talent was not important, just her need to entertain, a trait her daughter inherited. The two sing and soft shoe Tea for Two to delight party guests. When Mr. Beale divorces his wife, she is left with a financial pittance. A decade later, her grown sons beg her to sell the house and property and move to Florida, which delights Little Edie, who has been living alone with her mother for years. Nothing doing, Big Edie is emphatic about never leaving Grey Gardens.
Years go by. The home is dilapidated and the women unkempt. They allow numerous cats to reside inside and do not fight off raccoons who leave trails of dookie logs throughout the house. Their phone, electricity and water have been shut off. The city condemned the property. The grocer refused deliveries until they pay their account. Still, Big and Little Edie stay day after day, night after night, decade after decade. They live mainly in a bedroom quarters with two twin beds. We are left to imagine life in a run-down house with no water or lights, no food except cat chow, no refrigeration: just the fresh ocean breeze and the calm constant rhythm of waves against the shore. When a news photographer comes out to sneak a story, the women welcome him inside. They want the world to see how they live. The photo spread goes worldwide. Then Jackie O shows up. [The real story is her sister showed up after the photos and a headline implying Jackie O lives it up while her destitute family lives in squalor.] Jackie almost throws up from the smell when entering the home. The Edies offer her paté and tea which she refuses. Little Edie is jealous about how her younger cousin’s life turned out so fabulously, jet setting with the rich and famous. The next day, a work crew tows off the junked car, removes weathered furniture and ruined rugs despite elderly Big Edie’s angry protests, and slaps fresh paint on the walls. Still the house is in horrible shape though maybe smells better but for a while. Months later a documentary crew asks Big and Little Edie permission to film their lives in Grey Gardens. The film directors obviously wanted to portray the tragedy of two aging destitute women who cannot maintain their home and how society should help people in such dire predicaments. At the home viewing, Little Edie is so proud to have been a part of what she called a work of art while Big Edie smiles and is satisfied with the product. She dies a couple years later and only then does Little Edie leave Grey Gardens to perform a nightclub act in Greenwich Village. She refused to sell Grey Gardens unless the new owner vowed never to demolish the home.
Watching Grey Gardens, either the documentary or the Lange/Barrymore movie, the issue of mental illness comes to mind. Millions of viewers ponder how anyone can live in such squalor and stay for decades. No water, electricity, phone, money, food. How? Why? Recently the women, both deceased, have been studied in retrospect with psychologists theorizing they may have had Asperger’s syndrome. That would explain how they could continue to remain in a dilapidated home without essentials—and never realize or mind the stench. Asperger’s is a unique mental condition in that there are various levels for functioning within society and alone. Sometimes individuals with Asperger’s do not react the same way as a majority of people, a society, would to circumstances or conditions, even to other people’s facial expressions of sorrow, pain, happiness or anger. That stubborn streak to remain in an inhabitable home come hell or high water, the putrid odor, unsanitary bathroom, no medical care, little food, allowing wild animals and too many cats to live indoors. They never sought help or repeatedly sought help. They refused a viable solution by their closest family. The two women spoke of being ‘in love’ with Grey Gardens. And they never saw their beloved home as the dangerous place it had become especially to them, the only two people in the world who wanted to remain in their estate by the sea.
Unlocking a troubled mind
In Mad to be Normal, I learned of psychologist R.D. Laing and his unconventional lifestyle and highly controversial therapies. In the 1960s his book, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, was considered required reading along with On the Road by hipsters and Baby Boomers. Laing’s premise was that the mentally ill should not be controlled by drugs or shock treatment (very common prior to a few key 1970s’ movies instigating societal change in compassionate treatment for the chronically disobedient or the suicidal and depressed). He suggested the mentally ill should not be turned into ‘us’ but allowed to live and participate in society on their own terms. Mental illness is a personal, individual condition—and nothing more. He would believe the state of one’s mental faculties is a private affair and certainly not to be determined by society.
But.
There is the issue of violence. And that’s society’s concern, someone who is a danger to himself and/or others. Not so with Laing, as the movie biopic featured life in his East London hangout for anyone with mental illness along the catatonic, neurotic, schizophrenic and psychotic realms. Anyone was welcome. Each housemate had his or her own bedroom with a door they could open and close or lock. They were free to roam outside alone and into the public.
Laing also was keen on using LSD to treat schizophrenia. Our own psychiatric establishment used LSD in the pre-illegal daze of the 1950s and early ’60s especially in Beverly Hills. Laing dosed himself along with clients and took numerous trips into the inner recesses of his mind. Those who’ve experimented with LSD swear it opens their consciousness. In 1966 LSD became illegal as a dangerous narcotic.
In exploring mental health, I have read and re-read the book The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. Dr. Stout, a Harvard psychologist, wrote the book so the public would know how to determine if someone is a sociopath and how to avoid them. She presented several real-life stories about the common attitudes and behaviors of sociopaths, even asserting a large number of the U.S. population may very well be sociopaths, as many as one in five Americans. It’s that common. Other societies have few citizens who are sociopaths, the author claimed, linking the statistic to older and ancient civilizations who’ve learned to rely on and trust their fellow man and not care so much about ‘getting ahead’ or ‘getting mine’ as our capitalistic foundation promotes to survive and thrive. Ours is an individualistic society. We do glorify the wealthy entrepreneur and celebrity. It is kinda sick when you think about it, and the fascination starts in childhood and lasts throughout adulthood until some wisdom about the grand scheme of things kicks in.
The book was written to help people deal with a sociopath in work, family or romantic relationships. Criminologists and psychologists deem sociopathy as incurable. As I read about individuals who were sociopaths, in incidents told to the psychiatrist by family and former employees who’d been hurt by them, I realized similar traits in a few of my former bosses: pitting one employee against another and then sitting back to watch the fight or fallout; the coldness; the aloofness; the unpredictable disposition, one moment wildly angry then the next rational and calm. An unstable personality is the first clue of a potential conflict, that person who says one thing and does another, someone who is not a straight shooter.
Recently I researched how to work with someone with mental illness, whether a sociopath or a diagnosed condition requiring medication and psychotherapy. What I found is: It’s our problem not theirs. People who believe themselves to have sound mental health must deal with real mental issues every day.
The book recommends several measures employees and others can take to avoid being sucked into a sociopath’s mind game. One is simply quit the job or leave the relationship. Another is to avoid sharing information about yourself because what the sociopath wants to know most of all is our greatest fear. And for me that fear came true, and the sociopath bosses knew it, sensed it, without me saying a word. Despite miserable employee-boss relations, I kept returning to work, fell on my sword when criticized, worked harder, arrived earlier, stayed later, never missed a day. A good sociopath could figure out what really mattered to me: my job. So the jobs were abruptly taken from me. I was shown the door, kicked to the curb. Fortunately, the majority of my past employers have been kind and … emotionally stable. No mind games, no sudden immediate closed-door conferences to discuss presumed or alleged misdeeds, and no bouts of extreme anger and bullying followed by a honeymoon phase of appreciation and work-related praise.
Dr. Laing is right about how we all need to rethink dealing with the mentally ill. They are a small segment of our population, even fewer who pose a real danger to us. But we’re frightened. We’re not psychologists, and we don’t want to deal with another person’s mental illness. But the research I’ve done proves one thing: When it comes to the mentally ill, we are the ones with the problem. We are the ones who must figure out some way to deal with another person who does not fit into our idea of normal. The mentally ill are ill and therefore in need of not necessarily our help but our understanding. Everyone is different. Everyone has a unique backstory, sometimes blocked due to severe emotional pain if ever remembered. The best we can do is remain calm, cool and collected and maintain our own sanity.