In her book The Collected Schizophrenia, the author, Esmé Weijun Wang writes:
..employment remains the primary marker of someone who is high-functioning, as having a job is the most reliable sign that you can pass in the world as normal. Most critically, a capitalist society values productivity in its citizens above all else, and those with severe mental illness are much less likely to be productive in ways considered valuable: by adding to the cycle of production and profit.
And Esmé Weijun is one of those, who despite her condition, can hold down a full time job and be productive in a socially acceptable way. She describes her conundrum with brutal honesty when she says:
Because I am capable of achievement, I find myself uncomfortable around those who are visibly psychotic and audibly disorganized. I’m uncomfortable because I don’t want to be lumped in with the screaming man on the bus, or the woman who claims that she’s the reincarnation of God. I’m uncomfortably uncomfortable because I know that these are my people in ways that those who have never experienced psychosis can’t understand, and to shun them is to shun a large part of myself. In my mind, there is a line between me and those like Jane and Laura; to others, that line is thin, or so negligible as not to be a line at all.
This idea of being just a bit apart or "better" than the collective of people who are much the same as you can go beyond those who share a similar mental illness. As the author describes, the line if any that separates "us" from "them" may not even exist even if we believe that it does. It is ironic that society decides who falls into the out-group and also draws these lines that folks assigned to the out-group are no hesitant to cross. It would beg the question why those who have already been set aside would care about further classifications within the cast-away pile. Yet, we seem to need such boxes and lines.
..employment remains the primary marker of someone who is high-functioning, as having a job is the most reliable sign that you can pass in the world as normal. Most critically, a capitalist society values productivity in its citizens above all else, and those with severe mental illness are much less likely to be productive in ways considered valuable: by adding to the cycle of production and profit.
And Esmé Weijun is one of those, who despite her condition, can hold down a full time job and be productive in a socially acceptable way. She describes her conundrum with brutal honesty when she says:
Because I am capable of achievement, I find myself uncomfortable around those who are visibly psychotic and audibly disorganized. I’m uncomfortable because I don’t want to be lumped in with the screaming man on the bus, or the woman who claims that she’s the reincarnation of God. I’m uncomfortably uncomfortable because I know that these are my people in ways that those who have never experienced psychosis can’t understand, and to shun them is to shun a large part of myself. In my mind, there is a line between me and those like Jane and Laura; to others, that line is thin, or so negligible as not to be a line at all.
This idea of being just a bit apart or "better" than the collective of people who are much the same as you can go beyond those who share a similar mental illness. As the author describes, the line if any that separates "us" from "them" may not even exist even if we believe that it does. It is ironic that society decides who falls into the out-group and also draws these lines that folks assigned to the out-group are no hesitant to cross. It would beg the question why those who have already been set aside would care about further classifications within the cast-away pile. Yet, we seem to need such boxes and lines.
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