DNA and Mental Health

DegeNerAtion

In the early 20th century mental illness was considered a symptom of the degeneration of a persons DNA or makeup. Usual sufferers where 'foreigners and criminals'. They then pass on those genes to their offspring causing them to have moral insanity. Theo Hyslop, a neurologist/nerve specialist believed that these degenerates should be prevented by law from having children in order that the vigour of the race be preserved. Degeneration was based on class and race. He sounds to me as though he was the one suffering from mental health issues. 

Mental illness in women was considered to be hysteria or neurasthenia. These women of hysteria must be overtly sexual and morally wrong, suffering from erotomania or moral insanity. Of course once again this applied to the lower classes. The upper classes were lucky they had neurasthenia a more modest complaint, mainly I suspect because they could afford to see a doctor and he didn't want to lose his clients no matter what their morals. . . Yet who decides our morals for us. Those that would judge should look to themselves first. 

Virginia Woolf had neurasthenia and came from an upper middle class family of outstanding intellects.  People of outstanding intellect or genius are more inclined to neurotic illness, depression and breakdowns. Brilliance by its very nature is considered unstable. It was thought that neurasthenia was all in the mind but caused the nervous system to lose its normal electrical charges over time, hence depression. 

Virginia Woolf believed that the human soul realigns itself every now and then. I believe she may have been coining the phrase Collective Unconscious for the first time. In her book The Pilgrimage, she used the term 'stream of consciousness' in her bid to describe it. She recognised the power of the mind 'plaiting incessantly the many coloured and innumerable threads of life and the resulting sharpness of perception and sense of a greater truth being experienced and achieved.' What a perfect description of the fabric of life both vertical and horizontal that The I Ching presents. 

“Nothing budges me from my determination to go on, so whatever happens, though the surface be agitated, the centre is secure”. Virginia Woolf in Jacobs Room. That sense of determination helped her to succeed despite her obvious health problems. Unfortunately for her the centre was not secure.  

Virginia believed that the shape of our brains determined what we could perceive. Does this return us to what we are born with is what we have to offer or do we adapt  and change as we go through life, we must do or humanity would not improve it would just create the same things over and over again without improvements. 

Strong women intellectuals in the early part of the 20th century were not welcomed. Her need to write was suppressed by society but she battled on and succeeded, maybe you need to have mental health problems to fight so strongly for what you believe in. 

  

Does Mr Hyslop wish to tell me that the mind of a woman like Virginia Woolf, as close to the edge as it was at times, is not worthy of reproduction then you would have been a fool. How one person copes can be very different to another and so the human race evolves. To evolve is to be lost in translation. Eugenics is a dangerous concept indeed.

We must learn to understand the mind of the melancholic not judge it. We are all what we are from the extrapolation of our lives through our ancestors as we journey on into the future blindly. There is no blame. DNA degeneration is happening to all of us, all of the time, with many changes during a lifetime. One in four of us will suffer with mental health problems during our lives. 

Out of damage comes fragility,

Out of fragility comes growth,

Out of growth comes strength.

Entelechy – The realisation of potential. The principle that guides the development and function of an organism from within, or our driving force to achieve that which we feel we are meant to with a little help from within. What lies within is something different to each of us, a guiding light for example. Entelechy operating in us stops us becoming inert, something special operating inside us, keeping us alive.

Immortal memory is bestowed upon those that create a lasting legacy.