Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family’s Schizophrenia
Product Description
In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story, Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and solve the mystery of his Irish-American family’s multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia.
For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an occasion to revisit their family’s roots. But for Patrick Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to confront the genealogical my… More >>
Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family’s Schizophrenia
John L Murphy posted: 29 Jul at 8:17 am
Since my family comes from around the same area as Tracey’s in the Irish west, I was curious to follow Bostonian native while “searching for the roots of my family’s schizophrenia.” It’s what he defines poetically as “an apocalyptic form of madness because it robs its victim of our most precious human gift: the ability to separate the real world from the unreal and to trust one’s own thoughts as true.” (10)
Two of his sisters, his uncle, his grandmother, and her grandmother in turn had been struck by this affliction in their young adulthood. Mixing his personal saga with encounters with those who share the illness and those who argue– variously– how to cope with its assaults, Tracey witnesses New Age-aligned healers, medical professionals (who turn out to know much less than one might expect), and those who guard their own family’s similar secrets. He follows the history of the disease in Ireland, and integrates smoothly much of the nation’s history and trauma on an island-wide level with the impact felt on the domestic and institutional fronts over centuries. Tracey wonders if the legend that the Irish have been so cursed more than other peoples can be validated by genetic research, so he embarks on a quest to Ireland to investigate.
He begins his account with a look at his two sisters and what he knows of his family’s previous incidents; he blends his own memoir with a commendable combination of tact and candor. He’s excellent at gleaning what separates Irish Americans, in turn, from those born there, and his chapter about a night in a Co. Roscommon pub masterfully sums up the cultural and attitudinal gaps between those from America who assume that a surname and a few half-remembered first names from an withered family tree will somehow open up vistas of happy long-lost cousins eager to shower affection and land upon the Returning Yank. Such sharp observations throughout the book demonstrate Tracey’s experience as a journalist able to probe and hold back according to the flow of the conversation with those he interviews.
As mental illness makes such an unlikely icebreaker to raise in talking to those to whom Tracey suspects, on the scant evidence extant, he may be related, the search for his family’s direct roots proves less than certain. Along the way, he does a more valuable service for his readers wanting to know if there’s some genetic bubble in the Irish gene pool. Earlier scholars and popular gossip appear, Tracey concludes after a tour of the experts, who themselves to date still find little to confirm their own conflicting hypotheses, that every people has the disease at the same rate. However, he does note that while “correlation is not causation,” you can find four common links within populations of schizophrenics worldwide: “emigration, famine, substance abuse, and older fathers.” (199) Nancy Scheper-Hughes controversially earlier investigated the supposed ties between the malady and and peasants in her 1979 “Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland.” Very strangely, this study’s not mentioned by Tracey.
This gap confused me. I also wondered why, in discussions of the shamanistic parallels or those of left-brain language vs. right brain evolution, why Julian Jaynes’ bicameral mind theory– however lambasted by the establishment it may have been– was not raised in context. Tracey does give endnotes for his sources, but these too prove somewhat scattershot. For example, he cites “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” with page numbers without editions, contrary to scholarly convention, so no reader could easily find these quotes, albeit well-chosen ones.
He errs in small details such as giving the pronunciation for Cruachan Ai but he does not give the second word of the ancient place name to match the parenthetical reference; while his rendering of Irish-language words generally fares better, he conveys the well-known phonetic sounds for the Gaelic words for whiskey without the actual Irish original. He also misspells “An Gorta Mór” and leaves a few accents out. I’m not sure that historians would label all of the admittedly heinous Black & Tans recruited by the British Army after WWI to hunt Irish rebels as “Scottish thugs”– Tracey may be conflating their wearing of the tam-o’shanter by Constabulary auxilaries with an assumed unified origin in Britain. You won’t find any County “Wickford” on a map, either.
Still, these minor quibbles do not detract from the success of a narrative that draws vividly Tracey’s own “lace curtain” family dynamic. While at the end the tone does soften from the previously formidable punch of personal drama and demographic devastation, it’s an understandable retreat into a measure of carefully distilled hope after a couple hundred pages of often dispiriting reports, as even the world’s brightest minds appear as befuddled as medieval monks when dealing with this perplexing set of shifting symptoms.
One of his sisters bears “positive” traits that spin her manically. The other, “negative,” crumples under catatonia. Here’s a dramatic example from sister Chelle, who hears voices telling her she’s a bride of Christ. “The eleven-o’clock Mass is under way, most pews filled, as Chelle strides, fully naked but with perfect aplomb, up the center aisle. Nearly to the altar, she spins around to face the shocked congregation. ‘You bastards,’ she snarlsm ‘that’s my husband you’re worshipping.’” (43)
He’s skilled at telling enough to illuminate while stepping back into the shadows when tact demands. I recognize a lot, especially the passive-aggressive silences that represent for a certain generation of Irish Americans parental communication. I’d have liked to hear much more about his mother the lawyer, his father the religious-goods wheeler-dealer, and the author’s own period down and out in Boston, DC, and London, but that may have to wait for a fuller sequel, perhaps. He’s a nimble storyteller, refusing to bow to any clichés of mad drunks or plastic Paddies. I look forward to hearing more from him.
Rating: 4 / 5
M. Hertzler posted: 29 Jul at 10:20 am
I am so thoroughly enjoying this book, even though my heart breaks on each page. Tracey has researched farther back than I could even fathom tracing my own family tree. His tales about his family are interesting and so well told that I can see the houses. I feel as if I know the great-grandmother, I can almost feel her pain.
He describes schizophrenia in words that I have never heard before. It has opened another level of understanding. The horror that is losing someone in the blink of an eye, having them replaced with a different person, is terrifying. I found myself checking my age versus the statistics, wondering if my own children are safe.
My heart goes out to him for all of his tragedy. But I do so appreciate his ability to put it into words and on paper for everyone to experience.
Rating: 5 / 5
Rick Shaq Goldstein posted: 29 Jul at 10:46 am
This is the heartbreaking story of Patrick Tracey’s family history of schizophrenia. So many times when an introduction to a book review starts out saying its “heartbreaking”, the ending of that sentence normally will also say “uplifting”. Unfortunately that is not the case here… but in the place of uplifting… the story is definitely the next best thing… EDUCATIONAL. The author’s Irish family on his Mother’s side has been cursed with this dreaded disease. From his Great- Great Grandmother Mary Egan, to his Grandmother May Sweeney, to his Uncle Robbie, and to his two sweet and loving sisters, Chell and Austine. The reader will be taken on an educational and scenic trip from Boston to Ireland and back. The reader will… if not shed tears… will definitely feel pangs of sadness and dread in the gut of their soul… as names of victims become real to you… and you can feel the actual utter helplessness… that healthy family members… are reduced to. Along the way you will learn about the tragic speed in which this mind controlling, life-changing, dreaded, curse of a disease attacks.
“Schizophrenia is the hearing of voices, but the hallucinations can be seen, felt, and smelled as well as heard. It’s fright night for life for many, an all-consuming terror that never ends.” The author’s healthy Grandmother, May Sweeney went out one day and came back late. Her husband was worried sick. When she came back to their house, he met her at the gate, “her slow grin says it all: every tooth has been wrenched from May’s head – her gums a swollen and bloody mess.” “What has become of your damn teeth?” “May it turns out, was nobody’s victim. She had gladly paid for the dental surgery, she said, to stop the voices in her head. The voices had grown in power and strength until she could no longer bear them. The voices told her they would go, happily, if she would free them from her dental cavities. Whether extensions of her mind or enemies in her head, these strange voices lied, though; they were still chattering, her empty gums still bleeding, as May collapsed into my Grandfather’s arms.”
After schizophrenia attacks his Uncle and his two sisters, Patrick decides to depart on a trip to his ancestral homeland in Ireland, to try to trace down his family tree and investigate possible causes of his family’s medical and mental dilemma. Along the way many myths are refuted. The author delves deep into the effects of the many famines in Ireland… he investigates the effects of alcohol… explores the mysterious and magical “fairy-caves”… and he visits the sights of old and new mental institutions… which held patients that not too long ago were openly called “LUNATICS”. His investigative journey brings him upon a Dr. Dermot Walsh an epidemiologist “whose work, with Dr. Kenneth Kendler, led to the discovery of the first-ever schizophrenia-gene-link. Walsh reveals that questions of causes and cures still tax him. Despite his press, and all the excitement about the abnormality in the dysbindin gene, he is nonplussed. “Yes”, he says of the gene marker, that’s our discovery. But it’s quite clear that its effect, like some other genes that have been discovered, is quite small and you will only get this effect in a small proportion of individuals. How it works and how it operates is another day’s work. We don’t know much about it.”
“OF COURSE, IT’S NOT JUST GENES,” HE SAYS. “THERE ARE ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AS WELL – AGAIN, ABOUT WHICH WE KNOW VERY LITTLE – BUT WE HAVE SUSPICIONS ABOUT THIS OR THAT OR THE OTHER. BUT OVERALL, IT’S PROBABLY TRUE TO SAY THAT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ORIGINS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA IS STILL QUITE LIMITED.”
There are a few “main” types of delusional schizophrenic characteristics; one of which is “religious-delusions.” Patrick asked Walsh: “ONE OF MY SISTERS HAD IT IN HER HEAD THAT SHE WAS MARRYING JESUS. WOULD YOU KNOW WHY?’ “NO, WE DON’T. WE DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHY PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE THESE EXPERIENCES.”
The author sadly summarizes: `THE FUTURE IS UNIMPRESSIVE, WE NOW CAN SAY. SCIENCE CAN LOOK BACK THIRTEEN BILLION YEARS TO THE BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE, BUT IT STILL CAN’T HEAR THE VOICES IN MY SISTERS’ HEADS. SOME THINGS TAKE MORE THAN A LIFETIME TO KNOW, AND IT MAY BE THAT I’LL NEVER LEARN THE NATURE OF THIS DARK THING THAT MUGS US.”
At the time of the publishing of this book there are 35-40,000 schizophrenics in Ireland and approximately 2.4 million American adults, or about 1.1 percent of the population age 18 and older in a given year, that have schizophrenia. After reading this book… I will never look at one of those poor tortured souls… talking to themselves on a street corner… in the same way again.
Rating: 4 / 5
R. Murphy posted: 29 Jul at 11:36 am
For Patrick Tracey, madness is the genetic legacy from his Irish immigrant forbearers. Severe schizophrenia struck down his grandmother, his uncle, and two of his four sisters. In this deeply personal and fascinating memoir, Tracey travels to Ireland, exploring the myths and history of madness on Irish shores, tracing its roots, incarnations, and finally the hopes for future treatments.
Rating: 4 / 5
Maryellen O’Leary posted: 29 Jul at 12:03 pm
I really enjoyed this book immensely. It was so sad and it hit home with my own feelings. I was impressed with his writing and the history was great and the best part was his love for his sisters. It was shared already with several people that have children affected by this disease by far the worst disease on earth. It robs young people of a life. I enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it.
Rating: 5 / 5