From "Diaries" (1936 - 1946)
During my long stays in the asylum I have been
surprised at how nothing is done to cure the psyche or how no effort is
made to uncover sentiments or what is left of rational thought of the
poor patients. I often wonder how the gramophone could substitute the
missing cure of the psyche.
(1936)
Some thoughts, although I'm scientifically ignorant : Checks made on patients
and departments by psychiatric teams, quick, initial diagnosis caused
by overwork and overcrowding caused long years of internmen. Checks that
confuse the real patients with the legal and political patients and those
who could be helped but for social incompetence. A large number of people
are never seen again by the doctors or nurses. The more harmless they
are the more they are forgotten or abbandoned by the outside world.
(1939)
Try to image 250 poor devils shut up in an enclosed courtyard or in two
rooms for months, years, decades on end. Try to imagine the feelings that
stagnates there.
(1939)
The signs of goodness, the energetic activity and the loyalty I have found
make me cry. I studied and drew these things and they took away all my
joy of life forever.
(1942 - 1943)
I haven't studied mental illness and neither do I have the knowledge to
give the most general advice but ... I can't help asking myself why such
poor creatures should be kept for the use of depraved men. or in an undescribable
barbaricmoral condition.
(1943)
Maybe the serioussness that comes from the heart could completely change
the general idea of madness, brain damage, nervous collapse, nervous breakdowns;
psychosis . helps to convince us a little at a time that there is little
to laugh about or look down our noses about at the silly madmen when we
are all made of the same fragile clay.
(1944)
Image yourself living for years in the same two or three rooms and in
winter in the almost unbreathable atmosphere. You must listen to the constant
sound of voices all day, even though your brain is very tired. You must
sit at table with some poor man with brain damage who dribbles everything,
an epilectic who has a crisis and falls down rigid on the floor.
(1945)
For years I had to learn to restrain my displays of anger in a state of
frenetic gnawing impotence and continual use of manacles and leg-irons.
I had to let myself meekly be reviled as if I couldn't care less. It took
years and years to find the right balance for myself and the lunatics
among whom I was buried.
(1945)
What I am going through is more than I can stand and I have had to pity
myself in order to be able to pity others.
(1947)
I suffer as an animal and as a soul. I suffer loneliness cruelly. I often
think of death.
(1952)
