Out of Me

Fiona Shaw

Before saying how much I disliked this book I need to make something clear. I know full well that depression is a monstrous disease. Beating depression takes guts and I salute the survivors.

But depressed people - even our loved ones - make for deeply unappealing company. The writer who commits to paper the history of his or her illness risks producing an unappealing book. In Fiona Shaw's case depression overtook her within days of the birth of her second child. Hers was a bad case. She was rapidly hospitalized and given ECT. Her gradual recovery took many months and perhaps even now she is still on the long journey back.

My difficulty with this book is not its subject matter. Nor do I question her suffering (which is described with excruciating vividness). But the author's default setting is intellectual arrogance. She is constantly peeved at the medical staff who are unable and unwilling to explain her condition in philosophical and academic terms. At the same time she mocks nursing staff who are ignorant of American poet who is the subject of her PhD dissertation. She seems to be saying to them "don't do your normal doctoring on me ... I've studied literature, I'm probably cleverer than you".

Perhaps unable to bear the ordinariness of a medical label, she describes herself and other women in the same boat, as suffering not from "baby blues", or "post-natal depression" or even "puerperal psychosis" but prefers "women who despair after childbirth". Any attempt to explain depression in mechanical terms (an aberrant biochemical process, anyone?) is shouted down by the author.

This over-intellectualising her condition is incredibly wearing. In the second half of the book Fiona Shaw, now out of hospital and well on the way to recovery, embarks on a journey of DIY psychiatric discovery. Bequeathed a small amount of money she describes how thrilled she is to be able to purchase psychotherapy, describing it (is this the reaction of any sensible person you know?) as "a conversation I'd always promised myself I'd have when I was very rich".

Sorry to end so unfeelingly but I was left with the sense that the nutter on the bus would be better company.