From Breakdown to Breakthrough: Subversive Visions of Schizophrenia in Doris Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell

• Main Authors: Ya-wen Kuo, 郭雅文
• Other Authors: Rose Hsiu-li Juan
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/44056563926208285246

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 外國語文學系 === 87 === Schizophrenics are interned and silenced in our society. Despite the fact that the definition of schizophrenia remains ambivalent, clinical psychiatrists in practice have labeled thousands of persons as schizophrenic. Once individuals are attached with this label, they are dealt with stereotypically; little attention is paid to what they say. They then exist as stereotyped images without voice. The aim of this study is to point out this oversimplification of schizophrenic worldhood by demonstrating how Briefing for a Descent into Hell gives a voice to schizophrenia in a specifically literary way, and what that voice appeals for our society. Lessing’s protagonist is a schizophrenic by the clinical psychiatric criteria, “poor reality testing,” “loss of ego boundaries,” and “world catastrophe.” Yet his inner life is amazingly rich, but neglected by his doctors. The first chapter of this thesis explores the protagonist’s highly self-conscious mental activities, which rebut the regression theory. The second chapter reinterprets in a positive way the three aforesaid criteria as derealization, ego-loss, and ontological indeterminacy. Derealization counterattacks our rigid sense of “reality” by emphasizing its contingent aspects; ego-loss represents a break from social power that constructs each subject in a fixed ego-identity; ontological indeterminacy penetrates the pretension of a stable and steady world on the ontological level. The third chapter illustrates how the structure and language of Briefing are tightly joined with the theme of schizophrenia. The three chapters, therefore, strive to undermine our habitual thinking of reality, ego-identity, and sanity.