I will now turn the floor over to
Dr. Clair Williams.
******************************
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My
name
is Clair Williams and I am the resident psychologist at a nursing
home. I usually help patients deal with depression, come to terms with
their impending death, mend relationships with their loved
ones, and also deal with Alzheimer's and psychosis.
It is a particular case
of psychosis I am here to discuss with you today.
In this case, my patient was not afraid of his own death;
instead he was upset by his conviction that death would
never come for him. My patient, Walter, believed he was immortal. At
first I tried to reason with him by showing Walter how much he had aged
over the years. Walter readily admitted to this and told me that his
aging was further proof of his condition. I asked his what condition he
spoke of and I was surprised by the answer.
Walter told me he was a Struldbrug,
possibly the last. I knew this word somewhere in the back of my mind,
but at the time I could not recall it. I asked Walter what a Struldbrug
was and what made him believe he could be one. Walter then pulled out a
copy of Gulliver's Travels that had been sitting on his night stand.
Once I saw his book I immediately remembered that Struldbrugs
were immortal characters Gulliver encountered on one of his voyages.
For those of you not familiar with this story I will give you some
background.
Gulliver is an Englishman who
travels the world uncovering fantastical places and
never-before-heard-of societies. In Luggnagg, which is one of those
countries, there are Struldbrugs
amongst the population. Struldbrugs are immortal people who
are not blessed with eternal youth. They continue to age but never die.
They are not a completely different species from the other Luggnaggians, but rather born with
this strange immortal
condition. There is no way to know who will be born this way and who
won't. There are, however, clear signs of who has this eternal life. As
Gulliver learns in the novel, Struldbrugs are born with a
distinctive red birthmark above their left eyebrow. Struldbrugs
have eternal life, but not youth or happiness. By midlife most Struldbrugs
become depressed and by eighty they are pronounced legally dead. This
prevents them from ever taking over Luggnagg and most are so miserable
by then they don't care. Struldbrugs are given never-ending
life, but they wish for the death that they see all around them. They
are
envious, or even resentful, of those who can die.
Walter pointed to a spot above his
left eyebrow, telling me it marked him as one of them. He also showed
me his impressive medical file. Walter had suffered two heart attacks
and an embolism on top of being a lung cancer survivor. Walter was
convinced that having survived all these illnesses was further proof of
his immortality. Walter longed
to be with his poor wife who had died of the common flu. He had a list
of all the patients who had checked into the nursing home after him who
had already died. He was so convinced he could not die that he
confessed to me that sometimes he would skip his medications for a week
and then take all the pills on the seventh day. Walter's psychosis was
so strong that I was unable to rationalize with his that this was
simply a fictional story. He was most likely reading Gulliver's Travels
when his psychotic condition developed, making him unable to
distinguish fiction from
real life.
I assure you that, although Walter
lived a long time and survived many medical afflictions, he was not a Struldbrug.
Walter died in his sleep three weeks after our first meeting.
*******************************************************************************************************************************
Author's Note: In Gulliver's Travels Gulliver is told about Struldbrugs
by a Luggnaggian. In my version Dr. Clair
Williams is telling the people at her lecture about them. In Swift's
version Gulliver thinks, at first, that eternal life would be a
blessing. Gulliver thinks about all the things he would do if he could
live forever. In Gulliver's mind he mostly focuses on accruing wealth.
This, however, would not be possible in Luggnagg due to the laws made
to prevent it. The Struldbrugs also continue to age making their bodies
unfit for life after a certain point. It is only after meeting the
Struldbrugs that Gulliver decides that immortality without youth would
actually be a curse. In my version, Walter is already old and already
feels living on is not a blessing at all. Walter never fantasizes about
what he might do with his life, but instead feels depressed about
being eternally separated from his wife. While the Struldbrugs live
forever, Walter is not truly one of them and dies at the end. I
kept the
information about the Struldbrugs true to Swift's story; I
just made it fit within my frametale of a psychological
convention by adding on Walter's character and his psychosis.
Coverpage
Introduction
Dr. Joshua Gates Explores the Dreams of Mrs. X
Abby Heart Tells of Matt's Hallucination
Dr. Steve Knocks Talks about Sarah's Dissociative Fugue
Gulliver's Travels
by Jonathan Swift (1726). Web source.
Introduction
Dr. Joshua Gates Explores the Dreams of Mrs. X
Abby Heart Tells of Matt's Hallucination
Dr. Steve Knocks Talks about Sarah's Dissociative Fugue