in the tracks of
the psychotic other

 

He had the looks and physique of some First Division Football player and was certainly wearing the gear to match that type of income. In the event, he did not prove to be all that sporty. Recreational drugs were more his scene. He had tried them all, apart from the hard stuff. He was finding, however, that the hash was tending, more and more, to make him paranoiac just like his acid.

His father had just been, successfully, through some sort of detoxification programme for his drinking problem and was at long last in favour with Tom's (m)Other his wife. Tom was amazed, he could never ever remember having seen his parents interact in the manner that was now common place between them. He wanted some of it, but he was still stuck in d-atmoi da mode and having difficulties with his girlfriend, a close friend of his sisters.

The next I knew, he was banging on my door, late one Saturday night, seeking protection from one of my colleagues, who had tried earlier that evening to section him. He had tricked him, though, managing to climb through his parents' bedroom window, just as the ambulance was arriving to take him to Royal Cornhill Hospital, our local mental institution. He had lost it, cold and blue, forever checking over his shoulder, blurting out his story on my doorstep, late that Saturday evening, pleading for help. His eyes psychotic way beyond reason now, Cornhill the only safe place. I admitted him, checking over my shoulder, though, that he had remained in the ambulance, before locking my door.

Five weeks passed, before Tom and I met again. In the interim, I had checked with my colleague as to what had happened on the Saturday of Tom's paranoia It had been the ma (m)Other, (M)Other Rat who had called him in. He found Tom crouching at the feet of his da(f)Other holding onto one of his ankles, petrified and wailing, " Dinnae leave me Dad. Dinnae. Dinnae leave. Where are they now, where are they. Look there's one. Fuck off Mum. Fuck off. Fuck off and leave us alone" At first my colleague could not work out who "They" could possibly be , but he soon realised that they were the rats big rats, sons and daughters of (M)Other Rat. The house was overflowing, she was breeding at an obscene rate. Tom had spent the whole of that morning stuffing plug holes, taping windows and doors, covering air vents with plastic bin liners to keep them out...."offensive little bastards, who didn't know their place" He was beside himself or rather beside his (f)Other everywhere that (f)Other went, Tom went too. He refused absolutely to budge from his side. But his (f)Other was encouraging him into hospital just like (M)Other Rat He was off, broke through the bedroom window and headed for nowhere nowhere in particular which happened to pass by my way.

He handed me the discharge summary barely legible "Acute Paranoiac Schizophrenia, possibly Drug induced" was the diagnosis. I sighed. "Any voices now" I asked. "No" he replied. "The ECT had fairly fixed that." I slowly pieced together his version of the story. At the time of his original presentation he was becoming more and more reclusive. His (f)Other the new-born favourite of his (m)Other and his new-born rival (She had been going on at him for years to get something done about his drinking, and he had finally gone out and done so), his elder brother, his Dad's favourite farm servant, and his sister, who was nipping his head about giving her best friend a hard time. All were beginning to get to him. On the Friday before his breakdown he had barred his (m)Other from his flat, fed up with her perpetual interference in the running of his own home. He had also split with his girlfriend that night, considering himself not nearly good enough to be with the likes of her, she an accountancy graduate and he only an apprentice carpet fitter. He had got stoned, E'd and gone dancing later that night. He awoke the following morning disturbed and in crisis. On collecting his morning papers, he had the feeling that everybody was looking at him. He was in High Street when they first sounded off, in second person singular, "Look at you. You're bad. You're no good. You're the World's worst and you're going to die quiet soon. So watch out you little shit. You're for the fuckin' chop." He drove speedily to his folks for protection, but his head was no sooner through the door and they were both nipping his head about dropping Jane, his girlfriend, Big (M)Other Rat and little sister (b)Other rat the pair of them over in the corner

When in hospital his voices persisted and he could not break free of his Dad the thoughts and hallucinations were persistently homosexual in nature and he had lost count of how many times he had been buggered by him long before his first dose of ECT. It was even his own (f)Other who had managed to persuade him to accept ECT on the advice of the Consultant female (m)Other Psychiatrist, and it was he also, who had led him down for his first electrical encounter The son repeatedly, reciting by his Dad's side " Me is you. Sometimes I have it. I've got it now and I am it. Me is you. Sometimes I have it. I've got it now and I am it." Having gone full circle from pre-Oedipal d-atmoi da to Oedipal d-atmoi'' and released a noisy sixteen-fold tribe of peaceful and wrathful Imagos all in the course of a three hour period, late one sunny Saturday afternoon. He was later silenced and shocked at the flick of a ma (m)Other's switch on the stroke of twelve, early one frosty forgettable Friday afternoon.

Flat lined and compliant now, regularly popping his pills in the passive manner typical of all psychiatric subjects, he has long left me wondering as to how his brain biochemistry can be any different from mine and who, in the future, will be the one to d-atmoi da and d-atmoi'' me at the flick of their switch and on what sort of day.