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My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf

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It is not easy to challenge scores of other estemmed authors having pinned-the-tale-on-the-donkey, so to speak, in labelling Virgina Woolf as a most seriously, mentally disturbed artistic genius. But with this brilliant work by Thomas Szasz [(Professor of Psychiatry Ermitus at the State Univ. of NY, and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute (along with his many stellar books including: "Lexicon of Lunacy," "Liberation by Oppression," & "Faith in Freedom")] - he most convincingly in this book shatters everthing you have ever read about Virgina Woolf to free her at along last from all the "madness" labels about which she did not deserve; and most tragically contributed, if not was the cause of her suicide. A brave book that takes on the very essence of psychiatry as a "science" even in these so-called modern times. My profound regret is that the brilliant VW did not have this champion when she most certainly needed him most.

In his brilliant new book Thomas Szasz scientifically debunks the mental illness label long attached to Virginia Woolf and other celebrated geniuses. He shows how this great writer, with her eyes wide open, chose a marriage that she knew would box her in emotionally. She mistakenly thought this box would keep her safe.

She married this particular man for the same reason there became no way out of it for her. She wanted the lifestyle of a married women without any emotional commitment to the marriage itself. No normal man would put up with such a charade.

Virginia Woolf did not anticipate the difficulty of day-to-day living with such a warped man. But she was not his victim. Nor was she the victim of manic-depression. She made a Devil's bargain which she could not live up to and she felt powerless to get out of it.

Her fear of powerlessness became a self-prison. Powerlessness itself would have been perfectly okay. But Virginia Woolf was not authentic enough to admit her fear. Admitting her fear of powerlessness, would have left her knowing her marriage was a complete fake, and she could then have made different choices.

The histrionics and ultimate suicide which were subsequently called madness by biographers, were nothing more than ill-advised strategies to avoid facing the truth of her situation. To face the truth she would have had to deal with her fear. For all her genius, this simple fact was beyond her education and her understanding.

Knowing we are powerless is the antidote to fearing we are powerless. For anyone who wants real freedom, this is where it is found. Knowing we are powerless is solid ground, the real human condition that human beings try to avoid seeing by going into all kinds of bizarre histrionics. (You might argue here, but how powerful are we who can neither help being born nor dying?)

When we get to this real human condition, and simply feel our terror and anxiety, we do not offset it onto something or someone else as Virginia Woolf offsetted her existential fear onto her hatred of her husband and those who were her social and intellectual inferiors.

Had she faced her own fear she would have seen that she was all right anyway. And at that point some small, positive action might have presented itself to her rather than the crazy antics and mad language that kept her in the dark and boxed in, forever fighting the box of her own making. Looking always outside of the box for the answer, she thought her madness saved her from her helplessness. In truth, it only saved her from having to see the box and thus be able to take care of herself.


Virginia Woolf made the mistake too many of us are making in this culture. We box ourselves in to feel safe and then claim to be helpless victims of those self-made boxes. Once we are convinced we are helpless we begin to view self-responsibility as dangerous. At this point, those who wish to wield power over us don't have to divest us of our freedom. We willingly give up our freedom in return for assurances of supposed safety. To feel secure in the concern of others, Virginia Woolf preferred to think of herself as helpless or crazy. But, as Thomas Szasz proves, her intellectual failings cannot be accurately or scientifically described as a medical illness. A. B. Curtiss, author of Depression is a Choice.

A knockout! An incredible analysis of how one "becomes" mad.
Tom Szasz superbly documents, through an examination of the life and death of Virginia Woolf, how one learns that role (or perhaps any other role), and uses it, and how the world around one also ascribes such a role and uses it as well. We all, the "mad" and the "normal", gain and loose a great deal through this activity, all at the same time.

Simply stated, life is a tragedy (we all die) with no guarantees, and what we bring to it, including our innate stuff and that which we learn and internalize, determines the games we wind up choosing to play.