Mary writes a song

Sunday.
Mary Dunwich writes:

I have spent most of the weekend sitting by the phone and worrying about Dodgson. It's very nice of the psychology department at Magdalen College to be putting so much effort into looking for our dodo, or rather compelling their students to spend their last days of term looking for him, but term ended on Friday and he has not reappeared. If he is still roaming wild in the deer park in this weather then I fear for his health. On the other hand, the porter who followed his tracks is convinced that he has been captured by person or persons unknown. Doctor Brack is sanguine that no undergraduate would harm him (other than feeding him on the normal undergraduate diet of beer and kebabs). As the undergraduates have now presumably all packed their bags and gone home for Christmas, I am worried that whoever has him may have more in mind than a mere undergraduate prank.

To take my mind off my poor little kidnapped dodo I bought a copy of Professor Claridge's book, "Personality and Psychological Disorders" and have started reading it. What I think I have understood so far is the following:

- All of us have a particular personality type;

- Our personality type predisposes us, under certain circumstances (like stress), to a particular form of mental illness.

In other words, we are all on a spectrum, with normality at one end and the insanity of our choice at the other. As to which personality type we are, that seems to be a matter of genetics. Whether we ever become insane ("personality disordered" or even "mentally ill"), that seems to depend on the kind of upbringing that we have experienced.

I studied the list of personality disorders with interest. I could think of at least one member of my family who seemed to personify each one. "Schizotypal" sounds the best fit for James and me. It's a bit worrying to see this described as being "on the schizophrenia spectrum", as I'm pretty sure that schizophrenia isn't a very pleasant thing to have. I really don't fancy a stretch as an inpatient in St Isaac's psychiatric hospital. I therefore read the next bit of the book with great attention.

It said: "in moderate amount the underlying traits predisposing to schizophrenia are perfectly adaptive features of personality; in the same way that mild anxiety traits can be beneficial."

Ooh! So you can be madder than a bucket of frogs (I don't think the good professor uses this actual phrase, but it is clearly what he is driving at) and yet, at the same time, perfectly normal. Have I got this right?

Further on I read: "...fully dimensional theorists have made considerable use of the notion of 'healthy schizotypy' to denote (perhaps the majority of) individuals who are high on the dimension but who show no evidence of illness...".

I considered briefly the idea that fully dimensional theorists meant fat academics. Then I wondered how you knew if you were high on the schizotypy dimension. It sounds like a line from a Hawkwind song.

"I'm ridin' on the schizotypy dimension, (boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-boom)
My eccentricity is manifest
My magic powers are worth special mention
And the Men In Black want me for tests.

I don't get out to parties, cos I have social anxieties,
I hang with the ghosts and the ghouls and the goblins
And I can even talk to my dead gran.
Though she can't get down like the Devil can.

I look like a freak, people call me a geek
They tell me that my head is in the middle of next week
But who needs the sane when I've got the voices in my brain
And my old gran can party like it's 1949

So bring your voices round to my place,
Summon the pixies and the Devil and the elves
We'll all ride high on our schizotypy
Cos these freaky traits are all a healthy part of ourselves

Oh yeah".