I have been mulling over the significance of memories and language and the part they played in my first manic psychosis in particular. Also how the temporary brain blip affected how and what I thought about and said, which to listeners may have appeared random but which had meaning to me, like two sides of the same coin – one the utterances, the other my internal logic. In psychiatry, this is referred to as flight of ideas and to me it also links to memories.
Language – translating the code
I have always been interested in words and language – from my pidgin French as a six year-old Londoner, “Polly voo fronsay?” and a few years later the fascination when my Dad went abroad for an intensive language course, returning with an impressive vocabulary I did not understand.
At the age of eleven I wanted to be an interpreter. As soon as I went to secondary school, I was hungry for foreign languages, delighted in the sing-song of French and loved the more harsh and jarring sound of German in comparison. In my third year, Latin provided the etymology of some English and French, although a change of schools meant I then took on the Cambridge Latin scheme, which made me lazy.
During school holidays, visiting relatives inducted me in the science and art of crossword puzzles, which we solved together over cups of tea. I learnt the conventions of anagrams and how to decipher the codes – that “sailor” can be
- AB
- Tar
- Jack
- OS
in a crossword grid. These codes remain mysteries to some of my friends now, who frown at the connections. If you are interested, hop over to the Fifteensquared website for regular autopsies and appreciations of newspaper crosswords.
Psycholinguistics
When studying A Level, we had a new classmate join us, whose Mum was German and we assumed she would have an advantage over us. It wasn’t that simple. As I later found out through study, bilingualism and second language learning are different. However, I have always thought it must be beneficial in brain terms, to see an object and automatically have words in different languages to describe it.
When I later lived in France as an English Assistant, I considered I had truly “arrived” when the language of my dreams evolved into French.
A decade after my diagnosis, Professor Susan Greenfield presented a BBC 2 series The Brain Story and I read the accompanying book which lead me to others about neuroscience. One of these books had a diagram of the newborn and six month-old brain and how synapses are made and connected through early life experiences. The physical formed by the abstract. In recent times as part of bipolar research, I have been asked about my early life too, so I guess this area is getting better understood than it was.
The brain as a Rolodex
During the hospital case conference when my diagnosis was discussed and confirmed, I was asked a series of questions and at that moment I remember my mind became strangely visual – a Rolodex, flipping round till the right index card appeared and I parroted the answer.
I quite like this metaphor of the brain and memory – a partially indexed library, some thoughts and ideas more accessible than others. When solving a crossword it’s not uncommon that the Rolodex spins round a few times before producing the card with the right sequence of letters.
Confusion, metaphors and lyrics
At university I studied Modern Languages with Linguistics as a first year subsidiary – this was wasted on my 18 year old self and quickly dropped. Given my experiences now, I regret this. I’d like to understand better how language, learning, the brain and memory interact and I imagine there are psychologists and linguistics specialists who research this area.
Confusion
In 1991 the ward coffee came in a large jar of Maxwell House, which I instantly associated with the pension scandal of Mirror Newspapers that had just been uncovered. I entered into an internal debate and tied myself in knots as to which was the lesser evil this or Nescafe? One of the nurses, rather cruelly told me his name was Ian Maxwell, which added to my confusion.
My first mania was heralded with a series of linguistic clues. One quiet Saturday afternoon in March I was talking to my sister on the phone, she could tell I was not quite right and invited me to a garden party organised by her local Green Party. Unbeknownst to her, I became fixated during that conversation with the word “green” then out of the blue, exclaimed “Marks and Spencer!”. A seemingly random comment in our conversation, this was my memory of a university essay title a decade before. In full it was:
“Marks and Spencer have done more for the world than either Marx or Spenser. Discuss.”
I failed this one miserably.
Metaphors and semiotics
My sister spun into action and on the Monday we took a taxi to hospital where I told the admissions nurse I thought had a spark plug inside me. She asked why I thought that,
“Because I’m a bright spark”
The toilet door in the admissions area had graffiti scrawled across it
“See you later alligator”
A message directed at me I knew, as my parents’ had jived to Bill Haley and the Comets before I was born.
During the same admission, I breezily sang songs from old films, no doubt to the irritation of other patients – each had its own invisible association, often in contrast to the upbeat words:
Lyrics
- The Ugly Duckling – Danny Kaye – I had been a late bloomer and thought I would never escape the dull market town of my teens, it motivated my academic work. At university I partied to make up for lost time. No regrets.
- Young at Heart – Frank Sinatra (who hinted he lived with bipolar) – Still pining for a lost love, a dream that might yet come true. My most recent psychotic episode also involved me carrying around a CD of Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves with two versions of Forever Young.
- Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah – James Baskett as Uncle Remus – My earliest cinematic memory based on American folk tales of the resourceful Brer Rabbit. This ebullient song reflected the general euphoria of my first manic episode, externally I was on the whole a cheerful and biddable patient.
- When you wish upon a star – Jiminy Cricket – a melancholic tune lyrics of wishful thinking for a better future
What’s in a word – bipolar or manic depression?
To the external audience these lyrics and my verbal punning might have appeared consistent with the euphoria and energy of mania, but to me they disguised grief, life’s failures and disappointments – in that sense the name manic depression, which bipolar was known as when I was diagnosed, better describes the co-existing state for me than alternating depression and mania implied by bipolar disorder i.e. that you are either in one mood state or another.
The word cloud at the top of this post is made from the blog post “The agony and ecstasy of psychosis” which describes my first and only depressive episode. In it words, thoughts and memories tangle in a bewildering way – and yet I recovered from that confusion – I’d love to know how the brain did that.