As promised, I read Karen Armstrong’s follow up to “Through the Narrow Gate” for the Plum Dragon book club. The book is titled “Beginning the World” and opens about two weeks after Armstrong’s initial memoir about life in a convent closes. I had a lot more trouble reading this title then I did the first one. In fact I would go so far as to say I was more than just irritated, I was pissed off at the author.
In “Beginning the World,” Armstrong confronts the physical and psychological difficulties she faced in the three years following convent life. She talks about her anorexia nervosa, suicide attempt, cutting behavior, as well as her eventual diagnosis of frontal lobe epilepsy.
As someone with experience with the field of mental health (see “Mental Health” on the right for my year of blogging about mental health issues in 2014), I have some first-hand knowledge about her situation.
In “Through the Narrow Gate” I was taken into a world that most of us know very little about. When it comes to convents, she really was my introduction. But when it comes to mental health and mental health care we are in an area in which I am extremely well informed. Quite frankly there’s not a lot she can put past me, and not a lot that she did.
As is typical with many people who exhibit self injurious behavior, particularly anorexia, she sought out excuses for her behavior and ways in which to normalize it. Where she really went over the top, however, was at the end of the book where she found a medical doctor who proclaimed her “remarkably sane” and made her promise him that she would never see another psychiatrist.
Shazzam! The anorexic patient finds a doctor who makes her swear she’ll never again be treated for, or have to face, her self injurious behavior. In finding a diagnosis of frontal lobe epilepsy, she whips out a magic wand that makes all of her other problems disappear. It was disappointing, and very typical of someone with mental health issues.
I had somehow thought that Armstrong, who has exhibited so much self knowledge about her years in the convent, would have just as much insight into her own mental health. I found that simply wasn’t true. She reminded me of other young women I’ve met in psychiatric wards, ill, under 90 pounds, and arrogant as all get out about how nothing was really wrong with them and how everybody secretly wanted to be them, because to them thinness is such an overwhelmingly good thing they don’t even see that they’re dying from it and can’t comprehend that other prople aren’t, in point of fact, admiring their suicide. It’s just a thing with anorexics that I’ve noticed – and this is certainly not a vetted medical opinion – they tend to have a more difficult time facing their issues.
You tend to meet fewer obese people who walk around going “Yup, everything is fine here, all great, porking out at 300 pounds and there ain’t a thing in the world wrong with me.” Armstrong was no exception among anorexics, but it was extremely disappointing after I had admired her self revelations about convent life so much.
There was another thing about “Beginning the World” was that really bothered me, but this is a little trickier. It has to do with power relationships and how Armstrong situates herself within them.
She talks a lot about her vow of obedience, and how that translates into a difficulty with authority figures. Where she fails is in taking responsibility for her half of those relationships. I’m a firm believer in the “it takes two to tango” theory of how most human relationships work. I don’t make an exception for relationships where there is a recognized power inequity. Power inequity on it’s own does not necessarily equate violence, abuse, or justification for one party to blame the other.
Armstrong consistently puts herself in situations where she doesn’t have as much institutional, situational, or personal power, and then blames the other party for things not going her way. To be blunt, I have trouble respecting that. If you have willingly joined a relationship where there is an unequal balance of power, and choose to stay there, without force, it is my opinion that you need to take responsibility for what happens between you and that other person. Or, leave the relationship. But when you leave that relationship, years worth of trash talking the other party doesn’t impress me.
As I was once taught by a very wise friend, there’s a good phrase to use in situations where things didn’t quite work out the way you wanted and yet in point of fact there’s no one to blame. “That wasn’t as much fun as I thought it was going to be.” Armstrong could’ve learned something from my friend.
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