“There was quite a commotion. Some people said: “That young fellow’s an anarchist, they’ll shoot him, the sooner the better . . . Can’t let the grass grow under our feet with a war on! . . . But there were others, more patient, who thought I was syphilitic and sincerely insane, they consequently wanted me to be locked up until the war was over or at least for several months, because they, who claimed to be sane and in their right minds, wanted to take care of me while they carried on the war all by themselves. Which proves that if you want people to think you’re normal there’s nothing like having an all-fired nerve. If you’ve got plenty of nerve, you’re all set, because then you’re entitled to do practically anything at all, you’ve got the majority on your side, and it’s the majority who decide what’s crazy and what isn’t.”
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
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Well, as you’ve said, there is validity to some of those more complicated and nuanced diagnostic categories. My dad and I are constantly evaluating our states of mind, almost reflexively, but there’s a strange way I can be even more private than most people, when I don’t know people. It’s probably the whole stigma thing, even though a lot of people don’t view it as being a weakness. My dad’s read so much on psychology that it’s made me almost too ready to analyze things, and I tend to overcompensate in the other direction and not be very open with people I don’t know well. But then, when I do know them, I’ve found I can tend to talk about my feelings and motivations as if I’m almost totally separate and detatched from myself. I guess I’ll get better at some of these things as time goes on.
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