Schizophrenia and the Politics of Experience in Three Plays by Brian Friel

Schizophrenia and the Politics of Experience in Three Plays by Brian Friel MAUREEN S.G. HAWKINS In Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics, Nancy Scheper-Hughes states that the Irish and Northern Irish have the world's highest rates of hospitalization for schizophrenia, and, to establish that these rates do not merely reflect the availability of beds for treatment, she adds that Irish-Americans and IrishCanadians are more frequently treated for schizophrenia than are members of other ethnic groups. The highest rate of schizophrenia in Ireland, she says, is in the West of Ireland in isolated rural areas dependent on peripheral agriculture and suffering from depopulation, and the most commonly afflicted are celibate males, suggesting that all of these factors are connected with Irish schizophrenia.I Scheper-Hughes's statistics about the Irish rate of schizophrenia suggest that the schizoid condition may be particularly characteristic of the Irish psyche, North and South - an opinion that dramatist Brian Friel, who has called both Northern Ireland and Dublin "schizophrenic,'" appears to share. Furthermore, suggesting that he sees this schizoid split embodied in his work, he speaks of the "projection of some kind of dual personality in a lot of [his] plays,"3 which he thinks reflects an aspect of his self which stems from his membership in the Catholic minority in the divided community of Northern Ireland. The most obvious example of this "dual personality" is the split character of Public Gar and Private Gar in Philadelphia, Here I Come! Gar dramatizes the schizoid state not only through his division into two "selves" but through their interactions with each other and with others, and he repeatedly emphasizes it by asserting that he and everyone else in Ballybeg has been, or will be, driven crazy. Despite his desire for closeness with others, Public Gar strives for the indifference and withdrawal which characterize the schizoid individual. While he is not clinically hallucinated, his vivid reliving of past experiences, such as his Modern Drama, 39 (1996) 465 MAUREEN S.G. HAWKINS last walk with Kate and his interviews with her father and with his Aunt Lizzie , as well as his ability to hear Private Gar, whom no one else hears, suggest hallucinatory states. Although he does not have delusions of persecution or omnipotence, his fantasies verge on both. Furthermore, Private Gar frequently adopts the role of internalized persecutor often found in schizoid individuals. T.P. McKenna points out that "the divided mind of Gar epitomize[sJ not only his own but a whole community'S life.'" Gar's community, whose dominant characteristics he embodies, well fits the pattern which Scheper-Hughes says is associated with schizophrenia in Ireland. Ballybeg is in the West and is connected with peripheral agriculture. Gar (like his motherless family and his friends) is male. Everyone, with the possible exception of Kate, is isolated and celibate, and Gar's impending emigration reflects the depopulation endemic to the region. The schizophrenogenic effect of all of these factors can be traced in Philadelphia , Here I Cornel (and in many of Friel's other plays). Given that Friel has described the Irish community as a family5and that he repeatedly presents these psycho-social problems in the context of a (usually dysfunctional, often motherless) family unit suggests that an analysis of familial/communal interactions may provide clues to the origins of both Gar's schizoid condition and that of his community. R.D. Laing, the Scots psychiatrist, was one of the first to argue that certain patterns of familial interaction can induce schizoid states. These patterns affect what he calls "experience," which he distinguishes from "behaviour." Experience is the way one perceives and comprehends the world, including one's self. Behaviour is the way one acts as aresult of one's experience. Experience , in this sense, conditions and either supports or threatens one's sense of identity which he says, "requires recognition of oneself by others as well as the simple recognition one accords to oneself.,,6 If what Laing calls "significant others" - usually parents, though any members of one's family and/or community who have a strong formative effect on the individual would fit this category - confirm one's experience, they confirm the validity of...