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Relative stranger: a life after death Mary Loudon, Bond Street Books; 2006; 335 pp $32.95 ISBN 0–385–66127–4
This book, by English author Mary Loudon, documents the author's quest to understand her sister, long estranged by schizophrenia.
The main feeling that I experienced as I read Loudon's Relative Stranger: A Life After Death was ambivalence. What was curious to me about this feeling was that Eugen Bleuler, who first coined the term “schizophrenia” in 1911, named Ambivalence as one of the four A's of the condition. (The others were flattened Affect, Autism and loosening of Associations.) My ambivalence was about whether to consider this book to be a personal memoir, as the author's means of coming to terms with the life of her sister, or whether the book filled some void in the general literature related to schizophrenia or mental illness.
As I read the text, I also sensed some ambivalence in the author herself. She seemed to struggle with the extent to which she should examine her sister's life and the extent to which she should leave it be. She began her enquiries into the latter years of her sister's life after her sister's death from cancer. Her sister, Catherine Loudon, was a woman whose mental illness had cut her off from her family. She had had no meaningful contact with her family for many years at the time of her death. Estrangement often occurs when a family member suffers from a mental illness and schizophrenia in particular. Mary Loudon chronicles with compassion her sister's “disappearance” from her family.
Certainly, for anyone unfamiliar with schizophrenia, the book captures the havoc this illness can wreak in the sufferer's life and relationships. The author documents how, over the years, family members are rendered helpless in providing assistance and support, while at the same time the sufferer becomes less able to use family support. In the Loudon family, as in other families touched by schizophrenia, relationships are permanently affected because of the impact that disordered thinking has on day-to-day interactions.
In any family memoir, members of a family take a great risk in assisting the author in the story being told. Who wants their actions and those of their family members to be examined and possibly judged by the reader, who is not necessarily sympathetic or empathetic? One of the greatest risks in this story is that taken by Catherine Louden's father, a physician. He allowed the author to publish a portion of his diary, written to record his attempt to convince his very unwell daughter to return home from India for treatment.
Picture this father travelling alone to an unfamiliar environment, frightened for his child's life, with the task of trying to convince that child to return home with him so that she can receive treatment. He is encouraged by others to force his adult child into returning to England but absolutely refuses to compromise his daughter's dignity despite the heartache it causes him. He returns home alone, more worried than he had been before he saw his child. It takes unspeakable courage to expose such a difficult time in one's life to a reading audience. This is the act of a physician and father determined to teach the reader how schizophrenia affects both the sufferer and his or her family.
After I read these excerpts from Dr. Louden's diary, I knew immediately to whom I would recommend this book. This is a book for those who doubt the impact of mental illness, both on the sufferer and his or her family. This is a book that can educate the reader about the myths surrounding mental illness and about the stigma that still exists regarding mental illness and especially schizophrenia.
This book forces the reader to reflect on his or her own views of mental illness and the dignity that can be lost when one suffers from a mental illness. Mary Louden's own reflection and remembrance demand this from the reader. As I read this account of a sister's reunion in spirit, I found myself reflecting on some of my patients and their families. Relative stranger: a life after death has heightened my awareness of the impact of mental illness.