Mick Hartley

Sebastian Faulks visits Broadmoor, as research for his new novel “Human Traces“:

In the course of a long tour of the site, including two female wards, I was shown the chapel – high Victorian with painted tiles. It is quite well attended, I was surprised to hear, and there are also Muslim services. And Jewish? I asked. “We have a rabbi, but we don’t have to call on him very often.” “Why not?” “There are hardly any Jewish murderers.” My preliminary thoughts about nature and nurture, organic versus psychological, were immediately thrown. Were we now saying that certain kinds of mental sickness can be controlled by culture and religion?

Then this:

[A] year or so ago, after long and necessarily delicate inquiries, I was introduced to a woman who was herself schizophrenic but was highly interested in her condition and, all things being well, able to explain it. She gave me a Sony Walkman to wear, then said, “Right. Pretend I’m interviewing you for a job.” We did the role play: she asked simple questions, which I tried to answer while a variety of loud voices jeered vilely in my ears. It was distracting, and ultimately so upsetting that I had to take the headphones off. “Right,” she said. “Let’s review the interview. Who was the prime minister before Tony Blair?” “John Major,” I said. “Yes, but you didn’t know that just now.” “I know. I couldn’t concentrate. The voices put me off.” “Do you also realise you were lip-reading me?” “The voices were too loud for me to hear your questions.” “That is what it is like.”

I asked her if she was hearing voices even as we spoke, and she said, “Yes.” “How many?” “Three, four, but if I start to listen I will find what they are saying more urgent and more real than what you are asking me.” I do not think that until that moment I had understood the intensely physical nature of this auditory phenomenon. Her medication had enabled her to be “mad” and “sane” simultaneously. No one reasonable could doubt the presence of an organic element in this woman’s condition; no one in the world could doubt the grace and courage with which she handled it.