“Almost no one knows — including Sophie and Stingo — that Nathan is schizophrenic.” From the Wikipedia entry on “Sophie’s Choice”.
The question is, if no one knows that Nathan is a schizophrenic, how does anyone know he is a schizophrenic?
First, I do want to make it clear that I think “Sophie’s Choice” is a fine book by a fine author. But I find this little episode silly. We’re supposed to give knowing nods to each other, aren’t we? Ahhhh! He’s a schizophrenic! No wonder. We were fooled because he was self-medicating.
In fact, Nathan has just been labeled. Nobody has to prove that he is anything now: he has a label. That is sufficient. A label is what you use when you can’t be troubled to find any specific facts or evidence for your belief. [In an unusually contrived episode of West Wing, that could only have been written by a writer with an unnatural dependence on his therapist, “Noel”, Josh Lyman is similarly glibly labeled as “PTSD”.]
So how would you know if it’s true– if you were a character in this fiction. How would you know if Nathan is a schizophrenic? Author William Styron needs the label for dramatic tension so he glosses over the question.
Is there some tattoo somewhere on his body that tells the discerning acquaintance: schizophrenic? No– some person with a degree on his wall, who may be a genius or an idiot– we’ll never know, for both of them have an equal chance of getting the degree (the Nazi party was full of degrees)– this person, by virtue of society’s capitulation to the pseudo-sciences, has decreed: Nathan is a schizophrenic.
You can lock him up now. Anything he says in his own defense is to be regarded as further proof of his insanity. The more justly he becomes angry at your attempts to pigeon-hole him, the crazier he is. But no one may question the sanity of the man with the diploma on his wall. He has science on his side. He had the audacity to give the first label, thereby shifting the burden of proof on the labeled. Nathan is deprived of the presumption of sanity.
If only it was science, or something, anything more credible. In my view, most of what passes for “psychology” is a religion in drag; it’s a religion that tries to hide it’s assumptions behind a veil of mangled statistics and manipulative language that always manages to give a plausible answer to the wrong question.
There is no greater arrogance in the entire world than to sit in judgment of another person’s sanity. Anyone who would do this should get his head examined.
And if only Nathan had had the foresight to get his diploma first– he, also, was a genius– he could have decreed his brother as delusional instead of the other way around. Just imagine the scene in which the brother informs Stingo that Nathan is insane. Imagine, if you will, that Stingo has been told in advance by Nathan that the brother is delusional: the scene would work perfectly, and the brother would come off as no less creepy, least of all for inviting a perfect stranger to secretly report to him on the private activities of his brother.
So the lesson is this: be the first to get your diploma, so that you can deem all those who offend your prurient sense of good order and propriety insane.
The power of labels. Stingo is too naive to actually question whether a label means anything. He assumes that psychiatrists have some magical powers that allow them to reduce the sum of a person’s behaviors to a syndrome which, like all good labels– including the star of David– shall subsequently determine the context in which all other behaviors are regarded. Nathan’s rage at an unjust world– a world with lynch mobs, or HUAC, or the inquisition, or Salem’s magistrates, or a KGB — around every corner– is the result, say the doctors, of his schizophrenia.
Or maybe it’s the only sane reaction to a world gone mad. To a world that shows no signs of learning from it’s mistakes. From a world that still embraces the passions of the mob.
[Upon re-reading this, it has occurred to me that someone might say, well, would you rather Nathan be allowed to do whatever he wants, including harm himself or others? That’s always the rejoinder, isn’t it? If you dare to challenge social orthodoxy, then you’re responsible for bad things that happen, even though these people never take responsibility for the failures of their own ministrations. So, just to clarify for the easily confused: no, I’m not advocating that people do nothing. I’m just saying that we often use labels to avoid grappling with complexity, and, in many cases, to justify drastic actions that end up doing more harm than good.]
