1) BACKGROUND
 
I was primed for success. According to all the conventional wisdom - I was bound to succeed!
 
I had enjoyed a happy early childhood in suburban America during one of America´s “golden ages” - which was 1959 through 1967. Largely the “Camelot years” of John F. Kennedy. And the heady, happy years of Beatlemania. And the “summer of love” of 1966 through 1967. My life had been spent in an idyll. I had known no want. I had received straight A grades in grade school. I was smart. I had always been the best student in my class.
 
I was happy in grade school. Especially in grades 1 through 3. For, in those years I was being taught by means of inductive reason. The three years of grade 1 through 3 were the period in which I learned to read. I was lucky enough to have been taught to read by the phonetics method. Not the “modern”, mind-destroying look-say method. I enjoyed school every single day.
 
As I moved up in the grades however - clouds appeared on the horizon. In fourth grade I was obliged to devote some of my precious time to “Social Studies”. This was an element of modern collectivism in my education. And the methods of education in grades 4 through 6 began to include “class projects” where all the kids were supposed to work together to solve some practical problem. These projects were concrete-bound and did not very much involve the systematic use of reason. I did not know it at the time, but my education was becoming less and less “Aristotelian” and more and more “Kantian” (via John Dewey) as I progressed up through the grades towards high school. [See Ayn Rand´s essay The Comprachicos [NOTE 1] in the essay collection Return of the Primitive, for more on this.]
 
And now, in 1967 at the age of 13, my parents were going to guarantee my future success by means of sending me to one of the very best, most elite prep schools in the country! I was going to Milton Academy – an allegedly top-level, “liberal” prep school just outside of Boston. I would allegedly get an excellent secondary education, and then I would probably go on to an Ivy League college. That would be the cherry on the cake. My parents were doing everything according to the rule book. The politically correct rule book of how upper middle-class Americans were supposed to prepare their children for “success” in adulthood!
 
Yet - even though I seemed primed for success - I failed miserably when I progressed into eighth grade. I began attending the private prep school called Milton Academy (located in the town of Milton just outside of Boston) in the fall of 1967. I was in eighth grade. And just two years and three months later, shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday of tenth grade, at the end of November in 1969 - I ran away from Milton Academy and carried out the first of my two seriously intended suicide attempts!
 
I went from a bright future to a miserable failure in just a little over two years! What on earth had gone wrong?
 
Let´s take it from the beginning.
 
My family moved to the USA in the fall of 1959, when I was five years old. I began attending Kindergarten within roughly one week after our arrival. I learned the English language in a few months and was easily communicating with my playmates in the Kindergarten class by the spring of 1960. I learned to read in First Grade (by means of the phonetics method). In grades Four through Six I received straight A´s on eleven out of a total of twelve report cards. My life was off to a great start.
 
My parents only wanted the best for me. So, when I began to attend the local public junior high school they made a, for me, fateful decision. They decided that they could improve my prospects for success in adulthood by means of providing me with the very best education their money could buy. They obtained a handbook with an overview over all the allegedly best prep schools in America at the time. They carefully chose three of what were supposed to be the best of the best of those prep schools, according to “the experts” in the field of education. They had me apply to those three prep schools. I was accepted by Milton Academy.
 
My parents felt certain that this would promote my welfare. What they were woefully unaware of, was the nature of the “education” provided at Milton Academy. Like almost all modern schools in America, Milton Academy did not teach their students valuable truths about reality. Instead, they filled their students´ minds with outrageous falsehoods. Milton Academy, like close to all American secondary schools, indoctrinated their unfortunate students with the lies of modern philosophy. Altruism, egalitarianism, welfare statism, collectivism, subjectivism, nihilism and so forth. Unfortunately, I was not enough of an independent thinker at the time to be able to see through those vicious lies. Instead, I swallowed the intellectual poison - hook, line and sinker.
 
My parents, or rather my mother specifically, contributed to my vulnerability to the incoming indoctrination with false philosophical ideas. A, for me fateful, incident occurred in early 1967 - when my parents were in the process of preparing applications for the prep schools. My mother told me about their plans for me. She informed me about the curricula at the prep schools. I told my mother that I very much wished to study science and, also, the German language.
 
For - at the time I had a burning ambition – I knew (at least - I was convinced of it) that I wished to become a scientist when I grew up. I was especially interested in physics, because that science was to such a great extent logically stringent and steeped in mathematics. My wish to study the German language was due to the circumstance that German was widely regarded to be the premier language, next to English of course, of science.
 
My mother answered me that I would not be permitted to study either science or German at Milton Academy before I reached tenth grade. Instead, I would be coerced into studying only English, French, Latin, Mathematics and one other subject in 8th grade - and the same four first-named subjects plus one different alternative subject in 9th grade. I balked and began to protest.
 
My mother then replied to me that I could not possibly myself know what subjects I should study at my tender age of 12. She told me that I should just trust the “authorities” in the educational system to know what was best for me to study. I asked my mother the obvious question “How could they [i.e., the anonymous strangers in the educational system] know what was best for me to study?”
 
My mother replied by bursting out “They just know!” [“Somehow” they just knew – is what my mother really meant.]
 
I challenged my mother, saying “But I am certain that I ought to study science and German. Those are my personal interests!”
 
My mother silenced me by almost yelling at me, with panic in her voice, “But you don´t know!” I noticed that my mother´s eyes were swimming in terror, when I looked her directly in the face at this point. I did not realize at the time, that my mother was evidently a dyed-in-the-wool second-hander, and that she was trying hard to convince me to be just like her – i.e. to be and, presumably, to remain for the rest of my life, a pathetic and abject second-hander.
 
I had no idea how to answer my mother. After all, I was only twelve years old! And – I was aware of the fact that adults, as a rule, have learned more about the world and about life than mere children of my age. Also, I did not know how to prove, conclusively and objectively, that it would as a matter of fact be better for me to study science and German than to study those other subjects recommended by the “authorities”. Which were of no interest to me. I was on the premise that I would be guilty of subjectivism - which was a premise that I despised, because I knew it to be irrational - if I insisted on pursuing my own personal preferences. I was not aware that it would have been eminently proper for me to pursue those specific values for which I burned with passion.
 
So - I wound up resigning myself to years of studying subjects which held no interest whatsoever for me, which bored me to death and which I perceived to be a sheer waste of the precious, brief years of my youth.
 
And worst of all, my mother had succeeded in undercutting my confidence in the judgment of my own mind! The reason for that was that I had no idea of how to prove my mother wrong. Since I had no idea why the “authorities” had decided that their view of the “proper” curriculum for me was in fact right – I would been trying to prove a negative if I tried to prove them wrong!
 
So - I drew the conclusion that I would not be pursuing any personal purpose, of any perceived value to me, at the prep school. I embraced the premise that I would merely be drifting aimlessly all my time at the school. I had, in effect, resigned myself to five long years of vegetating in the years ahead of me at Milton Academy. Five of the best years of my life!
 
I did know - I was certain of it on some level - that my mother was dead wrong! Knowledge of reality – including values - is possible by means of one´s own individual reason. But I began to doubt myself. I had been softened up – by my own mother of all people - for the cognitive abuse that I would be subjected to at Milton Academy. My own mother had hurt me by means of acting as a “Comprachico” [NOTE 2]!
 
2) MILTON ACADEMY
 
The assault on my mind began already during the summer before I arrived at the prep school. During my summer vacation, before the start of the school year, I was required to read that famous classic of modern literature, The Trial, by Franz Kafka. Unfortunately for me, when I began reading said book, I was on the premise that since the book was required reading by Milton Academy – and, furthermore, since Milton Academy was supposed to be one of the very best secondary schools in America - I took it for granted that the novel The Trial contained some sort of wisdom about the true nature of the reality I lived in.
 
Now, the message of The Trial was, but of course, that the universe we live in is an unintelligible nightmare, in which we human beings are doomed to suffer and die in helpless misery. I was bored stiff during my vacation of 1967 as I forced myself to plough through the rambling tale of how Josef K. was arrested and prosecuted by some undefined sort of government authority for a crime, the nature of which, is never revealed to either him or the reader. I despaired of understanding the meaning of the story as the plot meandered from one logically random event to another logically unconnected event. Finally, after a couple of weeks of forcing myself to read the nonsense I reached the climax of the story at the end. On the eve of Josef K.´s thirty-first birthday two men take Josef from his apartment, lead him to a small quarry outside the city and execute him with a butcher´s knife! And that was the end of the story!
 
I wondered to myself what on Earth it all added up to. I did not have a clue. But - a result of the hellish vision of reality which was projected by The Trial was that I wound up already being depressed by the time that I was due to start my schooling at the prep school. My education at Milton Academy was off to a bad, bad start.
 
My father flew with me from NYC up to Boston and dropped me off at the school in early September of 1967. I felt misapprehension. I sensed that attending Milton Academy was going to prove to be a truly bad, bad idea! But my parents had induced me to believe that getting an education at this allegedly top-level educational institution was my one and only chance to succeed in life. They had convinced me that I would never get another chance if I blew this one. So, I gritted my teeth and resolved that I would “tough it out”. I told myself the lie that just a few years of waste and unhappiness at this prep school would be worth it. I did certainly not look forward to it. But I saw no way out.
 
3) THE NIHILISM OF MODERN LITERATURE
 
When school started, I proceeded to be indoctrinated with modern philosophical premises. Most especially, the English subject in the curriculum indoctrinated me with the doctrine of nihilism.
 
One of the first “classics” of modern English literature which I was required to read in 8th grade was J.D. Salinger´s famous novel The Catcher in the Rye. I was bored stiff with the rambling tale of the sordid exploits of the ne´er-do-well Holden Caulfield just after he had been expelled from his prep school. Just as with The Trial, reading The Catcher in the Rye was a depressing experience for me. I assumed that, since the school which was requiring me to read this piece-of-trash novel was supposed to be one of America´s very best, it simply could not possibly have assigned me to read this story for no sense-making reason at all. I assumed therefore, that The Catcher in the Rye must be saying something true and important about reality. When I read the disgusting incident in which Caulfield tries to hide a soiled condom in the pocket of his trousers, I drew the unhappy conclusion that I had something like that to look forward to in my own attempts at romance in the future. I was devastated.
 
I began to feel chronically unhappy all the time I spent at Milton Academy. A slew of modern “classics” of English literature continued to bombard me as required reading in 8th and 9th grade – all of them carrying the metaphysical message of nihilism, the message that all men are by their nature sordid and depraved, and that the universe we live in is both a nightmare and a sewer.
 
The novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, for example, showed me the horror of how the teenage character Gene Forrester´s envy for his friend, Phineas, causes him to deliberately cause the friend to fall from a tree branch and as a result become crippled. The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding sent me the message that the “natural”, default state of human beings - is that of savagery and evil. The dark novel The Plague by Albert Camus seemed inscrutable to me. All that I could make of it was that life is, for some unstated reason, by its nature hellish - and that we men are helpless to do anything about said fact.
 
My English teachers assigned me a couple of nonfiction books to read as well. One was The Other America by Michael Harrington. I lacked the context of knowledge necessary to evaluate that book critically. So, I was induced to think that there was something horribly wrong with the American society which I had up until then become accustomed to love! Well, I did grasp the basic message of the socialist Michael Harrington´s book (although I did not really agree with said idea) – namely that capitalism was the cause of poverty, and that the solution to poverty was socialism, or at least welfare statism. So, I also developed a feeling of deep, unearned guilt for the mere fact of my being well-off and happy.
 
A second book which I was assigned to read was Black Like Me by John H. Griffin. I cannot recall that the book had a clear meaning. But my takeaway from reading the book was that I should for some unspecified reason feel guilty for the mere fact of being white.
 
So, the content of the “education” in the English class at Milton Academy was evidently an attempt to, on purpose, inculcate guilt in me and, moreover, to destroy my benevolent attitude towards life and reality. (In the terminology of Ayn Rand – “Milton Academy was assaulting my benevolent sense-of-life.”) The benevolent sense-of-life which I had previously been equipped with was reversed into an extremely malevolent sense-of-life. I began to hate everyone and everything around me during my sojourn in Milton Academy. My former benevolt and optimistic attitude towards life had been the natural consequence of my having been immersed in an Aristotelian and genuinely American intellectual and cultural environment during my first ten years of life. It was a tragedy that I had been destined to be plunged into the toxic, Kantian environment of Milton Academy.
 
The English subject was the element of the curriculum at Milton which did the most to indoctrinate me with wrong-headed, harmful philosophical premises. English was the subject in the curriculum which dealt more with philosophical ideas than any of the other subjects. As Ayn Rand has pointed out, the men who “built” progressive education did so for the purpose of destroying the self-esteem of young students. They accomplished this goal by means of convincing the young entrusted to their care that the young ones´ minds are impotent. I.e., are unable to grasp and therefore to deal with, reality. And, additionally, by means of inducing the young to be weighed down by a heavy burden of unearned guilt.
 
Reading the “classics” of modern literature certainly accomplished that goal in my case. The Trial projected a society in which the protagonist of the story, Josef, was an innocent man hounded for no apparent reason by a judicial system with had nothing to do with justice. Was that going to be my fate also, I wondered?
 
The Catcher in the Rye was a winding, plotless story about the teenage boy Holden who was devoid of purpose. Was I presumed to be like him I wondered when I read that book?
 
A Separate Peace projected the vision of a teenage boy who hurts his friend on purpose out of mere, pathetic envy. Was that boy supposed to be me?
 
The Lord of the Flies predicted that young boys, when left to their own devices, would degenerate into cruel and brutal savages. Was that supposed to apply to me and my schoolmates?
 
The Plague described in graphic detail the gory details of an outbreak of bubonic plague. Why was I expected to contemplate all that gore? Why all the detailed descriptions of the doctor´s constant draining of buboes? Was it to be the purpose of my life to drain buboes and to consequently experience the emotion of disgust throughout all of my remaining days on earth?
 
I could not help but ask myself those kinds of questions just because of the simple fact that, tragically, I trusted Milton Academy! I just assumed that if “everyone” said that the school was high-quality, and one of the best in the country - then it must in fact be so. I was too young and innocent to be able to conceive that almost all of the adults around me were, either inadvertantly or on purpose, filling my mind with intellectual poison. The concept of "evil education" was beyond me.
 
So, already in my first year at Milton Academy - already in the first few months of my stay there - I began to experience chronic anxiety and guilt. My sojourn in Milton Academy was emotionally painful.
 
And – the maleducation perpetrated on me by the prep school began to corrupt the most fundamental attribute of my thinking. This “most fundamental attribute of my thinking” was the direction in which I oriented all my thinking. A mentally healthy person orients the preponderance of his thinking outwards - towards “reality out there”. For that is what he, like everyone, must do for the sake of living, and even surviving - in “reality out there”.
 
But - since the “education” foisted on me by my school taught me that the reality I was going to live in for the rest of my life was going to be a hell on earth – I lost my relish for focusing my mind outward – on “reality out there”. I became so depressed by the vision of an allegedly hellish universe that, in desperation, I began to retreat into my own consciousness. So I began directing the preponderance of my thinking inwards - instead of outwards. I became obsessed with the contents of my own consciousness. That was the essence of how my maleducation at Milton corrupted my mind.
 
My motive was that I could make myself feel better by cooking up and immersing myself in, more benevolent, colourful and happy fictional universes in the privacy of my own mind!
 
4) MY ATTEMPT TO ACTUALLY PRACTICE THE MORALITY OF ALTRUISM
 
This state of affairs was made still worse by my own unfortunate choices. My parents and my grade-school teachers had already taught me the morality of altruism. And my “education” at Milton Academy reinforced my mistaken belief in the validity of said moral code.
 
My schoolmates, who but of course, also had been indoctrinated with altruism – they seemed to have no problem at all with it. They cheerfully went about the pursuit of their own happiness anyway.
 
But me, I was more inclined to think than they were. I pondered the question of what kind of actions I would have to engage in, for the sake of qualifying as a “good altruist”. I gave thought to the question of what kind of actions the morality of altruism, in reason, required of me. I realized that the essence of altruism was the idea that moral virtue consisted of self-sacrifice. According to altruism I was supposed to be unselfish. Period. So - I was supposed to sacrifice my values. Period.
 
Well then. I wanted to be a moral person, did I not? I did not wish to be a pathetic hypocrite, like so many of the schoolmates and adults around me, did I? I realized that virtually everyone around me - my schoolmates, my teachers, my own parents etc. They did not practice what they preached - when what they preached was altruism. For, they advocated the morality of self-sacrifice - but they only sacrificed their values some of the time - not all of the time.
 
They did not actually sacrifice more than a tiny, tiny fraction of their values! They kept lots and lots of stuff “for themselves” – i.e., for the sake of serving their own happiness. So, I began to loathe and despise everyone around me. And - fool that I was - I resolved to be “better” than them!
 
I resolved that I would try hard to be a consistent altruist. I would sacrifice as close to every single one of my values as I possibly could. I would engage in systematic self-denial. All for the sake of “morality”! Kant would have approved! For – I had unwittingly “taken his bait”!
 
I proceeded to do it. But - I soon discovered that I simply could not sacrifice more than a small fraction of my values. It was so gosh darn hard!
 
I did deny myself lots and lots of small luxuries which my schoolmates permitted themselves. I never purchased any rock music records. I never travelled into Boston on the weekends for the sake of viewing movies or attending rock concerts. I did not buy myself any unneeded clothes or other “stuff”. As a result of my self-denial – along with the emotional consequences of reading the “classics” of modern literature which my English course required of me – I became acutely unhappy within just a couple of short months after my arrival at the prep school.
 
And – since I was fully aware of the embarrassing fact that I was - notwithstanding my ambition to deny myself as many of my values as possible – notwithstanding said fact I was still “enjoying” (sort of) many personal values anyway. As an inevitable result of all that, I was plagued by a heavy burden of guilt! I could not really enjoy anything at Milton Academy (e.g., tasty food, sports, watching television, horsing around with my schoolmates, whatever) - because anything that made me happy also made me feel guilty (for the “crime” of being concerned with my own “selfish” happiness) at the very same time!
 
5) MISERY AND NEUROSIS
 
So - the time I spent at Milton Academy quickly became filled with misery.
 
The misery was made worse by the realization that my life was not “going anywhere”. My mother had told me that I must hold off on my ambition of pursuing a career as a scientist. She had told me that I could not possibly know what I wanted at such a tender age as 13. So I was on the premise that I had to simply hunker down and wait and wait until one day I would “somehow”, magically, realize what was to be the purpose of my existence.
 
I was bored stiff at Milton - since I was not pursuing any purpose - but was instead just treading water. I saw absolutely no sense in studying the subjects Latin, French and “Comparative Societies” which were the other required subjects - besides English (which subject was worse than meaningless) and Mathematics. (Which was the one single subject that I enjoyed studying. In 8th grade, that is. Albeit not in 9th and 10th grade!)
 
Looking back, I realize that I must have become a literal neurotic already in my first months at Milton. One piece of evidence for this is that I suffered from anorexia. I was obsessed with the importance of “looking good”, probably for the sake of appearing attractive to members of the opposite sex. In order that I “look good”, I felt that I needed to make darn sure that I did not become overweight. And my perception of my body was so unrealistic that I starved myself for the sake of keeping the pounds off. I fell into the habit of only eating the meat, fish and vegetables served at the meals. I said “no thank you” to the carbohydrates which all the other “normal” schoolmates of mine ate as a matter of routine.
 
So, I became abnormally skinny. I was almost like a matchstick figure. My schoolmates must have felt that I was a major jerk and a complete nerd. They tended to avoid me. I wound up without friends at Milton Academy. That was my own fault. I was simply so much less mature than my schoolmates. At an age when my schoolmates all perceived a game of touch football out on the quad as an entertaining spontaneous spare time recreational activity, my idea of fun was to horse around with water pistols!
 
I also failed to make any contact with girls. Milton Academy was an all-boy school at the time. We lived in crowded, run-down dormitories where there were no members whatsoever of the fairer sex. There was, to be sure, a girl´s school which was located across the street from the boy´s school. But we never went there. The only contact between the girl´s school students and us boys was at the Saturday evening school dances which were held somewhere on the premises of the nearby girl´s school. I do not know just where those Saturday evening dances were located, for I was too much of a coward to attend them!
 
On the Saturday evenings that dances were held I would just stay in the boy´s dormitory and feel lonely and sorry for myself. The reason I feared to attend any of the dances was that I was on the premise that I did not know how to dance - and that everyone would therefore laugh at me. Laugh at me if I wound up making a clumsy and pathetic attempt to dance. I was deathly afraid of making a fool of myself and being laughed at.
 
6) STAGNATION
 
As my life slowly passed me by to no avail at Milton Academy, I became more and more introverted. I began living in the inner world of my own thoughts. I would spend my time spinning fantasies in my head, which were to a major extent based on the content of the fantastic science fiction, and the silly swords-and-sorcerer fantasy, paperbacks which I read on my spare time for entertainment. As a relief and escape from the “serious”, and depressing, “classics” of modern literature which my English class required me to read. One concrete which I remember is how, in the spring of 1968 I spent hours of my spare time immersed in useless daydreaming about adventures I might have gotten involved in if I had been a member of a race of miniature human beings who lived in trees, sort of like squirrels (I had read about this bizarre idea in a cheap science fiction/fantasy paperback)! Weird, man, weird! A waste of time if there ever was one!
 
The above paragraph relates the essence of the causation by means of which the mal-education which Milton Academy subjected me to, in combination with the traumatic event which my mother had subjected me to earlier [NOTE 3] - set in motion my descent into a psychosis [NOTE 4].
 
It was a testament to the low academic standards of modern American education that I was granted decent grades in all the subjects at the prep school – even though I was to such a great extent failing to apply myself to my studies. I just could not motivate myself to apply myself to the studies because they seemed so utterly pointless and useless.
 
The one and only subject which I did not experience as useless and pointless was mathematics. When I was in my first year (i.e., when I was in eighth grade), at Milton Academy the mathematics course consisted of instruction in the basics of algebra. Fortunately for me, the algebra instruction was an oasis of rationality and logical reasoning in my education. That was why I enjoyed it. Mathematics was logically enough the subject in which I got my very best grades. I got grades consistently around 95 (out of a maximum score of 100) in algebra.
 
7) DISINTEGRATION
 
Not only the content of my education at Milton contributed to the destruction of my mind and my happiness. Additionally, the methods of “teaching” employed by the school damaged me. One aspect of the method in question was to disintegrate the pieces of “knowledge” which they were, putatively, teaching. There was no unity in the instruction at Milton. The various academic subjects were taught as isolated fiefs. The instruction in English had no connection to the instruction in Comparative Societies, Mathematics and Biology. And, more importantly, I was unable to see any connection between the “knowledge” with which I was, figuratively speaking, being forced-fed - and my own future pursuit of personal values.
 
In 10th grade I entered the Comparative Societies course. I was taught extracts of the lives of, and the cultures of, the members of various societies which had been chosen at random. For example, I remember that in the fall of 1969 we were required to read a book about the lifestyle of the villagers in a French village in the Vaucluse. Why the Vaucluse? I have no idea. My teachers did not make any attempt to explain the purpose of the instruction. One random day we just dived in.
 
It was totally out-of-context. A random concrete chosen arbitrarily. I do not remember anything at all about the instruction except that, in general, we read about the details of the daily lives of the villagers. The everyday cuisine, the dating practices of the teenagers, how they took care of their elderly, whatever. It was a grab bag of factoids about the everyday life of a bunch of French villagers. Almost nothing attached itself to my memory since it was all so pointless and out-of-context. I was lost. I learned close to nothing whatsoever during three entire (wasted) months of instruction in the “Comparative Societies” subject.
 
But - there was one concrete about the practices of the villagers of the Vaucluse which did attach itself to my memory. Said concrete was the (reported by the book) interesting (to a teen-age boy like me) fact that many of the teen-age boys and girls in the village being studied engaged in pre-marital sex. And – this (wouldn´t you know it?) is all that I remember of the entire three months of Comparative Societies instruction of the fall of 1969 – those naughty teen-agers of the Vaucluse had developed the practice of engaging in anal sex rather than vaginal sex for the sake of avoiding unwanted pregnancies! Haw, haw, haw!
 
As the days of 10th grade slowly passed me by, I became more and more depressed and full of guilt. For, the English class taught me nihilism. And the other subject matters seemed to be completely devoid of purpose! I felt that I was making nada progress with my life. And since I was practicing self-denial in a misguided attempt to be morally upright - I never enjoyed myself. The worst thing was that since I knew that I was not practicing the morality of altruism consistently, I felt weighed down by unearned guilt – for I realized that I was a miserable hypocrite. I felt bad all the time. I was acutely unhappy. But my parents had told me that getting a “good” education at Milton Academy was my one and only chance to succeed in life. So, I resolved to tough it out and continue at Milton. "It will be over soon, anyway!" I told myself. But I was beginning to fear that life in college would be just as miserable too!
 
In 10th grade I was subjected to what must have been symbolic logic in the Mathematics class. The teacher stood in front of the class prattling about “If q is a function of p, and if r is a function of q, then is r a function of p?” And there was no attempt to explain what “something” out there in reality the symbols p, q and r were supposed to represent. Or even what the word “function” was supposed to mean! There was no connection of the symbols with reality! Just symbols being manipulated in a vacuum. That was apparently supposed to teach me how to reason logically. But I had no idea of what the heck the teacher was talking about! Since I had been blessed with an “Aristotelian” instruction in grade school - I was too cognitively healthy to understand "logic" without content! I was unable to comprehend what thinking logically about nothing would mean!
 
8) CRISIS
 
Unfortunately, I blamed myself for the fact that I did not understand any of the content of my “education”. So, I began to feel even more guilty and depressed than before. I eventually reached the conclusion that I was a lazy, and a simply bad - nay worthless - student! I came to be on the premise that I was letting everyone - my parents, my teachers and myself - down. I became so unhappy during the first months of 10th grade, in the fall of 1969, that I phoned my parents on a Saturday evening - roughly two weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday. And I told them explicitly that I wished to quit Milton Academy and just return home. I just could not take it any longer. But my parents were alarmed by the thought of me failing to get a “good education”. So - they advised me to hold off until I came home to them on the Thanksgiving weekend. Surely there was no need to act precipitously – that was what they must have been thinking?
 
So – against my better judgment and, also, against my gut feeling - I procrastinated. But I was feeling so bad on the last Wednesday evening before the Thanksgiving holiday that I, in desperation, decided all of a sudden to take things into my own hands immediately.
 
I packed a few of my things, snuck off the campus after classes late in the afternoon without being seen and took a tram to the Boston Airport (Logan Airport, I believe that it was called). I paid about 25 dollars for a plane ticket to New York. I remember looking down on the lights of Boston as the plane banked after taking off around 6:00 P.M. I thought to myself that at long last I had taken some initiative. I felt a little bit better. I was taking decisive action. I therefore felt a measure of relief. At least I was no longer just letting bad things happen to me.
 
But it turned out that when I had finally tried to do something about my fate, it was too late!
 
9) GOING HOME
 
Around 7:00 P.M. I found myself debarking from the plane at LaGuardia Airport. I did not know which bus I should take for the sake of getting home, in New Jersey - and I did not have enough money for a cab. After some aimless roaming around at the airport, I found a bus headed to Grand Central Station and climbed aboard. When I finally got to Grand Central Station - I surmised that I should travel in a generally northward direction. So - I got on a subway train going north. I did not have any idea of which station I should get off at. I got off at a station which I chose at random. I found myself on a street in a rather rundown area.
 
There were a lot of blacks on the sidewalks. They stared at me. I knew enough local geography to walk westwards. After a while I came to the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan, maybe a mile south of George Washington Bridge, which I could see in the distance. I was lucky not to have been mugged. I began walking towards the bridge, alongside the expressway.
 
Later in the evening I reached the bridge, without mishap. I walked across the bridge. As I walked, I considered the option of jumping off, for the sake of committing suicide. But I was too chicken! When I finally reached the New Jersey side of the bridge it was almost midnight. I began walking north along the New Jersey Turnpike (if I remember correctly that was the name of the highway, but my geographical knowledge is shaky).
 
I soon came to a gas station. Since I was hungry, I went in and bought myself an ice cream sandwich. I left the gas station, eating the ice cream sandwich. Notwithstanding the fact that it was freezing cold outside! After perhaps twenty minutes of walking alongside the highway, a police car pulled up beside me and an officer asked me who I was and what I was doing.
 
Apparently one of the employees at the gas station had wondered who the heck I was - a kid wandering around all alone along the turnpike at midnight of all things! And he had called the police. I told the officer why I was out there walking along the highway, and I gave him my parents´ address. The police officer drove me home.
 
My parents must have been shocked to see me turn up in the company of a policeman without forewarning in the middle of the night. But I had already talked to them two weeks earlier on the phone about going home, so they probably were not totally mystified. I went straight to bed since I was dog-tired. I woke up late the next morning. My father had left for work. My mother was up and said that everything would be alright, and that she would make breakfast for me.
 
While she was down in the kitchen making breakfast, I wandered around upstairs. I went into my parents´ bedroom. I thought to myself that now I had no future. Since that is what my parents had told me would be the case if I messed up my “only chance” to get a “good” education. I thought to myself that now I had wasted some of the best years of my life! That thought depressed me! And I did not know what to do now to make up for the meaningless waste of more than two years. I had no purpose in life – no hope - nothing to live for. So, on the spur of the moment, I decided to commit suicide by swallowing the entirety of my mother´s medicines – which I happened to find in a cabinet in my parents´ bathroom.
 
10) ATTEMPTED SUICIDE
 
I found several jars of medicines in said cabinet in my parents´ bathroom. They were medicines which my mother was taking. I had no idea what she took them for. But - I just I gulped down the medicines! Which was difficult, given that there were so many of them. They tasted horribly bitter! A few moments after I swallowed the medicines, I began to feel as if needles and pins were pricking the inside my head. Then I passed out.
 
When I woke up, I was in a hospital ward, being fed intravenously. What had happened was apparently, that my mother had heard some noise from the bedroom, had rushed up, had found me unconscious and had called an ambulance. I must have had my stomach pumped. I think that it took something like one or two weeks before I had recovered physically from the suicide attempt. I was then placed in a mental ward. But of course, the doctors had judged me to be mentally ill! I was in the mental ward for about one month. I remember only one of my fellow patients. She was a bone thin, anorectic girl, who had ugly marks on her arms from having tried to slash her wrists – well - her entire lower arms, actually! I felt sad whenever I encountered her in the small confines of said mental ward.
 
The hospital I was in was Mt. Sinai Hospital on Manhattan. After a month in the ward, where I attended classes which were supposed to be a surrogate for regular school, I returned to live with my parents on Creston Avenue. I began attending the public high school in Tenafly. My academic performance was mediocre. I did not have any sense of purpose at all - and I did not have any personal values. So – logically enough I just stagnated. After a month or two I became depressed again, since I felt that I was “going nowhere” in life. And I was going nowhere! So - on an impulse, I went down to the cellar one evening and drank a bottle of my father´s liquor, which I found in a closet. I hoped that getting drunk would make me happy!
 
I blacked out and later woke up in a hospital ward. I learned that I had made a second suicide attempt. I had no memory of what had happened. But years later, I have been told that I had attempted to take my life by making use of electricity in some way. I do not know exactly what I did with said “electricity”. Since I do not recall having any burn marks on my body when I woke up, my educated guess now is that maybe I had merely been about to make a suicide attempt with said electricity - but had been stopped by my parents in time.
 
At any rate, I was placed in another mental ward in Mt. Sinai Hospital. I was placed in an environment which I perceived as being “totalitarian”. It was namely the case that I was kept under surveillance 24-hours-around-the-clock, for the sake of ensuring that I did not hurt myself. A young Afro-American man who, as I remember him - had a major problem with pimples, watched over me. He sat beside my bed when I slept at night. Even when I paid a visit to the bathroom, he watched me. The bathroom stalls did not have any doors, because he was supposed to watch me as I did my ablutions - and subsequently wiped myself! All for the sake of ensuring that I did not hurt myself.
 
I thoroughly hated the psychiatrist who was assigned to me, because my perception was that he was attempting to tell me “What my own good consisted of” when he talked to me/lectured me. He tried to convince me that it was intrinsically wrong to try to commit suicide. I argued back and said that it was up to me to decide the issue of whether I should continue to live. I had a right to run my own life! That was my attitude. He would, once every few days, have a half hour meeting with me. We would sit and argue back and forth. I simply refused to adjust my views to his.
 
After all, it was my life. So why should I not have a right to decide for myself whether or not to end it? I was inclined to be an independent thinker. So, I rejected the psychiatrist´s Kantian idea that life is an intrinsic value – and that consequently suicide is always wrong, no matter what the context. During the very last meeting which we had before I was released from the mental ward, I persisted in arguing with him. Right up to the end I still defended my position that I had a right to decide for myself whether to commit suicide. The psychiatrist lost his temper, slammed the flat of his right hand down on his desk and exclaimed – “You are the most stubborn patient that I have ever had!”
 
I felt immensely proud of myself when I heard those words. For, I had practiced the virtue of intellectual independence in relation to an authority figure! And - I perceived the psychiatrist as being a power-luster! A moral monster who had nursed the ambition of forcing my consciousness! [NOTE 5]
 
11) A PASSIVE EXISTENCE
 
When my parents and I walked out of the hospital to their car, which was waiting at the curb - I contemplated the option of making still another suicide attempt. I thought to myself that I could just throw myself out into the street, in front of the cars. But I did not have the requisite courage - and so I just climbed into my parents´ car and we drove back to Tenafly. I did not wish to live. But I was afraid of death.
 
I continued to attend the public high school for a couple of months. The only subject which even mildly interested me was Geometry. Because the instruction in it was of the “Euclidean” kind. I enjoyed the logical reasoning.
 
When April came, I decided to drop out of school. I had nada interest in my studies any longer and I had no ambition to do anything with my life. I went to some sort of secretary or administrator in an office in the big senior high school building on my 16th birthday and signed some papers which said that I was quitting school. Sixteen years was the minimum age at which a person in New Jersey was legally permitted to quit school. I quit school as soon as I possibly could! I wanted out! I had changed radically over the course of just barely more than two years at Milton Academy. The influence of nihilism and the morality of altruism had destroyed me – for the time being, at least [see NOTE 6]
 
I spent about a month living with my parents in their house, doing close to nothing whatsoever during the daytime. I would just spend my time taking walks with my mother and watching stupid television programs (such as Dark Shadows). My parents must have been distraught at seeing me failing in life. After about a month, my father sent me back to Sweden.
 
Apparently, my parents thought that I would wind up living a better life in the Swedish welfare state, given that I had dropped out of school. I beg to differ. It would certainly have been better if I had just tried to get a job in America. But I had not made any attempt to go to work while still in America. So – it stands to reason that I would have had to endure a hellish struggle if I had stayed in America. But – at least I might have been spared the awful fate which awaited me in Sweden! [NOTE 7]
 
12) MY RETURN TO SWEDEN - 1970-1971
 
When I returned to Sweden, my father accompanied me on the flight over the Atlantic. We landed at Arlanda Airport, outside of Stockholm - and moved into a hotel apartment in the central city. We stayed in Stockholm about a week. We did some sightseeing together. About a week after I arrived in Stockholm my uncle Sten drove down to Stockholm from a town further north called Ockelbo, where he lived. My father stayed in Stockholm - and then returned to America. My uncle Sten drove me up to Ockelbo. I was to live with him for the time being. The drive took several hours. I saw lots of fallen trees alongside the highway. My uncle told me that there had been a really big storm the previous winter, which had felled many trees and hurt the Swedish forestry industry.
 
The town of Ockelbo lay something like 50 miles outside of Gävle, which was a medium-sized city. Ockelbo probably had less than 1.000 inhabitants at the time. It lay in a forest district. My uncle Sten was the CEO in a small forestry company called Kopparfors. He arranged for me to work as a gardener at the headquarters of Kopparfors, which lay a short walk from his house. I would get up at 6:00 in the morning, eat the breakfast which Aunt Ingrid made for me and then walk to the headquarters for the sake of working. The headquarters had a sprawling lawn and large gardens where flowers and vegetables grew. So, there was plenty of work to do, raking leaves and weeding the vegetable gardens. It was healthy outdoor work, in the fresh air. In the evenings, I would often take a bicycle and make long trips out on the roads that wound through the forests in the area. I especially liked to bicycle up to the top of a small mountain, from where I could see all the way to Gävle, on the coast of the Baltic Sea. I developed a crush on my blonde cousin, Kristina, who lived in the house and was about two years younger than me. However, Kristina rebuffed my advances!
 
I received a low wage - but I did not spend it. The money was simply deposited in a bank account for me. I had nada awareness of issues concerning my private economy. I was not fit to take care of myself.
 
After about two months, my father returned to Sweden. He arranged for me to get a job at the chemical laboratory at an iron ore mine in Bergslagen, a mining district in central Sweden. He drove me to the town of Storå, which was about one mile from the iron ore mine. There he introduced me to a family with whom I was going to board. The father of this family worked as a draftsman at the iron ore mine, which was the only large industry in the area. He had a sixteen-year old son, an eight-year old daughter and a wife. My father paid this family to let me board with them. The family lived in a large house. I got to work as an apprentice at the chemical laboratory attached to the mine. I learned to perform quantitative analyses on iron ore samples, using wet chemistry. I would typically determine the amounts of iron, silicon, aluminum, phosphorus and “volatiles” in numerous iron ore samples.
 
The chief chemist at the laboratory was a German, by the name of Josef. He had gotten an excellent education in chemistry in his youth in Germany. He had fought for the Nazis in the Second World War, operating an anti-aircraft gun. But he was a very kind man. He was around 60 at the time I first met him, as was his wife, Irmgaard. She also worked in the laboratory, carrying out chemical analyses. Josef and Irmgaard had no children. Which they regretted. So, they became very fond of me. Josef and Irmgaard taught me how to carry out chemical analyses from scratch. I had no previous experience in this field.
 
I really enjoyed the work and for the first time in years I felt mildly happy! I would be woken up at 6:00 A.M., I would eat breakfast and then I would bicycle the mile or so to the iron ore mine, which was up on the top of a small mountain. The mine lay in a town called Stråssa. The area between Storå and Stråssa was full of pine forests. The nature was utterly unspoiled and beautiful.
 
I would work in the chemical laboratory for 8 hours, 5 days a week. I enjoyed the work. And - I enjoyed the coffee breaks! I developed a taste for coffee - since I drank coffee at every break in the morning – and, also in the afternoon. I would often buy baked goods to eat with the coffee. During the lunch breaks I had the opportunity to eat from a smorgåsbord that was prepared by a cook who was employed fulltime by the iron ore mining company. Life was good.
 
I received a wage of roughly 150 dollars a month, after tax. I did not spend much at all of said money. I just gradually accumulated some modest savings in a bank account.
 
During the evenings there was not so much for me to do, as I did not have any social life. I would watch television. Though not often - as there was not much to see on the Swedish television. The reason for this was that it was run by a government-sponsored monopoly called Sveriges Radio. The television was full of Communist propaganda at the time. (This was during the early 1970s - i.e. the era which was the heyday of the New Left) But I was hardly affected intellectually - as I had nada interest in politics. And, also since my mind was utterly introverted. [NOTE 8]
 
I sometimes spent a couple of hours of the evening wandering around on the roads in the forests surrounding Storå. Sometimes I would even venture into the forests themselves. I also made long bicycle trips around the area. I spent many evenings reading science fiction paperbacks in my bedroom. I did not do anything which was meaningful - in the sense of furthering any long-range goals. The only studying which I undertook was to take one brief course in the art of typewriting. Which I succeeded at learning - to my great benefit a few yers later.
 
I noticed, during my time in Storå, that I spent a lot of time lost in my fantasies. This was the first time that I became myself consciously aware of the fact that I lived largely in the inner world of my consciousness - and that I therefore was not truly normal. I grasped in some terms that the people around me were more engaged in external reality than I was. I had at least an inkling of the fact that it was not truly healthy to live all the time in my inner, private fantasy worlds. But I could not really help it. I would get lost in fantasies when I took hourlong walks in the forests in the evenings - or during the daytime on weekends. I suspect that the family I was boarding with must have thought that I was a rather odd character.
 
I felt mildly unhappy about the fact that I was not experiencing any romantic adventures with girls. I had no contact with girls of my own age at all! And - I hardly had any contacts with the boys of my age in the area either, for that matter. I was a loner. After I had boarded with the kind family in Storå about eight months or so - the mother of the household found, in the spring of 1971, that it was too tiring for her to do the extra housework that having a boarder entailed. So - she and her husband asked my father to terminate the boarding agreement. My father arranged for me to board with the German chemist family in Stråssa instead.
 
So, in May of 1971, I moved in with the German chemist couple in their house in Stråssa. Irmgaard had dog-raising as a hobby. She raised poodles. The poodles lived in the garage. I lived in a bedroom in the cellar, next to the garage. I enjoyed living with the chemists. I liked the chemist couple much more than I liked my own parents - for whom I no longer felt any real affection.
 
My life in Stråssa was pretty much like it had been in Storå. I would work 40 hours a week. And I would spend most of my spare time wandering around in the forests surrounding the area utterly lost in my fantasies. I did a lot of exploring, trekking around rather aimlessly in the local forests. On Saturdays and Sundays, I would often bicycle many miles to neighbouring towns (it was a sparsely populated area). During the summer I would occasionally take a swim in a small lake that lay in the neighbouring forest.
 
I would also spend time watching television. I discovered several programs which I really enjoyed. Such as a French detective series, which I believe was titled “The Gentleman Thief”. The Swedish Communists hated that TV series because they thought that it glorified the upper classes. I just thought that the series was entertaining. Another TV show which I loved was Monty Python´s Flying Circus. That show brightened up my life. I also enjoyed an American comedy called “The Persuaders”. Tony Curtis and Roger Moore starred in it. They portrayed a stylish pair of millionaires who fought, in a literal, physical sense - for “good causes”. I also spent time reading science fiction and listening to pop and rock music. I had perhaps all of ten vinyl LPs - including a couple of Jimi Hendrix albums and a couple of Santana albums.
 
I would have liked to have continued working at the laboratory permanently - and to have made chemistry my career. But I was not permitted to. I could not work as a “real” chemical analyst since I had no formal education in chemistry. It did not matter that I carried out, close to precisely the same types of work as the “real” chemists did. And neither could I continue to work at the laboratory as an apprentice on a permanent basis. So, I had to leave that job at the end of 1971 and move home to my parents. Who by now had returned to Sweden together with my sister and were living in a house in a suburb of Stockholm called Lidingö. My father arranged for me to work as an apprentice at a laboratory at a university in Stockholm called KTH.
 
I soon found myself becoming depressed again. For, I had no values whatsoever. I had begun to be weaned off the habit of pursuing personal values during my two years and a few months at Milton Academy [NOTE 9]. And now, stranded all alone in the alien environment of the suburb of Stockholm which was Lidingö - I had no friends, no work which I valued, no girlfriend, no recreational values (I did not even enjoy watching television with my parents in the evenings, after work.), no hobbies, no intellectual pursuits, absolutely nothing. My life was absolutely, totally empty! I found myself vegetating in a “value-vacuum”. [NOTE 10]
 
13) AN HYPOTHESIS - THE METAPHYSICS OF INTROVERSION
 
Since I had no values “out there” – i.e., in reality - I was not motivated to think about anything “out there” in reality. I became even more introverted than before. I almost literally began to live in the parallel universes which I constructed in the inner sanctum of my own mind. These parallel universes, these imaginary societies - they were much more exciting and colorful than the drab reality which I felt that I was trapped in. I was in fact aware that the world “out there” was real and that my fantasy worlds were not. But I cared not for reality anyway. For, my fantasies were so much more entertaining! To retreat from reality into my useless daydreams was for me a welcome relief from the tedium of daily life.
 
Since I no longer pursued any values out there in reality my mind became more, and then still more, divorced from reality. My tendency to introversion had begun at Milton Academy several years before. At Milton Academy the “classics” of modern literature which had been required reading in the English course – had started to push me away from reality already during the summer vacation of 1967 - before Eighth grade even had begun. Those “classics” of modern literature had constituted the “second force” which “pushed” me in the direction of introversion. The “first force” which had really started the “pushing” - and which thereby had initiated my descent into psychosis had been, but of course - that incident in which my own mother functioned as a “Comprachico”! [NOTE 11]
 
Roughly two or three months after my move to Lidingö, I began to have a thought which worried me to no end. The thought recurred to me over, and over, and over again - every single weekday of the week. Whenever I left home for the sake of going to work in the morning, I would think to myself:
 
“How can I be sure that the house I live in will still be there when I get back from work this afternoon? After all, the fact that the house is there in the morning does not necessarily mean that it will still be there in the afternoon – does it? Maybe the house will just vanish into thin air when I am away at work – and when I come home in the afternoon I will have nowhere to go - and so I will be left to starve or freeze to death out on the sidewalk!”
 
This thought caused me to feel sick with chronic anxiety. I wound up plagued with anxiety for the duration of the entire day. For, I took this bizarre thought seriously! I could not for the life of me see the necessity of the continued existence of the house which I lived in when I was away from it - and therefore was not watching it. I seriously believed that an entire house was capable of just vanishing into thin air for no reason “when I was not looking”.
 
Why did I develop this bizarre thought? The answer must in reason lie in the arcane subject matter which is philosophy – specifically, in the branch of philosophy which goes by the name of metaphysics. My loss of confidence in the reliability of my own mind had caused me to move from a healthy premise in metaphysics to an unhealthy one.
 
The healthy premise can be stated as “Existence is Identity”. The unhealthy premise which I had developed in its place can be stated as “Existence is Not Identity”.
 
Let me explain the meaning of these two metaphysical premises. “Existence is Identity” states that for a thing – i.e., any entity, any existent which is found in reality – to exist, it must be something specific. It must be something. As Ayn Rand put it: “To be nothing in particular is to be nothing.” Each, and every, “thing” which exists in reality - whatsoever such a thing is - it is what it is and is nothing else. Period. Two consequences follow from this metaphysical axiom (i.e., from the Axiom of Identity). No entity which exists can morph arbitrarily into some other kind of entity. And no entity which exists can morph into nothing. No entity can just disappear and become non-existent.
 
The elements of reality can be rearranged, but matter cannot go out of existence. And the basic constituents of matter, whatever they may be (Quarks? Strings? Energy puffs?), cannot arbitrarily morph into anything else.
 
There is, to be sure, the phenomenon called change in the reality we live in. An acorn can grow into an oak tree. Water can freeze - and in doing so become ice. A clear sky can become cloudy. But thanks to the Axiom of Identity, every single change in reality - without exception - occurs in accordance with the immutable laws of nature. So, the Axiom of Identity gives rise to the Law of Causality. Since reality is always [NOTE 12] causal, no entity (e.g. the house I lived in) can ever just go out of existence for no reason.
 
But – what if Existence were not Identity? Well, in that case houses would be capable of just vanishing into thin air at any random moment in time.
 
You see – because of the fact, that I had ceased to believe in the Axiom of Identity, I had come to believe that I lived in a universe in which there was no causality. I felt – in my bones – that literally anything, no matter how illogical, no matter how crazy, could happen - and might happen - in “reality out there”. I felt that I lived in a hellish universe in which everything flowed and nothing abided. I felt that I lived in the kind of universe which was so famously hypothesized by such highly esteemed - and highly irrational - philosophers as Heraclitus and David Hume!
 
How had I come to this sorry state? The answer to this question lay in the assault on my mind which I had been subjected to for more than two years at Milton Academy. The content of the “education” at the prep school had been designed to convey the message that reality is a hellish, chaotic flux and a hell on earth. According to the modern philosophy, which was contained in the instruction at Milton, nothing in reality made any sense. Such “classics” of modern literature as The Trial by Kafka, which had been required reading at Milton in eighth grade, had pounded that idea into my consciousness.
 
My notion that I could not depend on my home to still be there in the evening, when I got home from work, was an expression of the insanity which I had developed as a result of the prep school´s concerted assault on my mind. My loss of confidence in the validity of my rational faculty took the concrete form of a screwed-up metaphysics. I seriously believed in the metaphysics of David Hume! I no longer trusted the Axiom of Identity to apply in the reality which I lived in.
 
The fact that I felt in my bones that I lived in a universe in which everything flowed and nothing abided – exacerbated by the fact that I was immersed in the nihilistic culture of modern-day Sweden - caused me to feel an extreme psychological distress. I felt just awful! That was one of two possible causes of my psychosis. My screwed-up metaphysics. Which had been induced in me by the influence of the philosophical content of the maleducation I had been subjected to at one of the allegedly very best prep schools in all of America.
 
My psychosis could also have flowed from the feeling that I was trapped in an unintelligible and malevolent universe. My metaphysics had been made to become malevolent. I felt that the universe which I existed in was “against me”. This was the ultimate consequence of modern philosophy in my life. Ayn Rand was right. Modern philosophy destroys minds.
 
14) BUT WHY ONLY ME?
 
But: if my attempt to live by the morality of altruism was a major factor in driving me insane (see sections 4, 5 and 6 of this Chapter One) – then why was I apparently the only one of my many schoolmates to become psychotic? And - if just about everyone and his brother and his sister embraces the morality of altruism - why then does not everyone, and their brothers and their sisters, wind up in suicidal depressions and psychoses? Why was I close to the only single embracer of the morality of altruism among my schoolmates at Milton Academy - and among the many, many persons around me - first in Tenafly - and then in Sweden - who became suicidal and psychotic?
 
One-time Objectivist Nathaniel Branden had the answer: “Hypocrisy is to be man´s protector against his professed moral convictions [when his convictions are those of the morality of altruism, that is]” [quote from the essay “Mental Health versus Mysticism and Self-Sacrifice” in The Virtue of Selfishness]. The simple fact of the matter is that no man who wishes to live and who embraces the morality of altruism will prove able to practice consistently what he preaches.
 
For - men who say that their code of morality is altruism will, virtually without exception, cheat on it. For - otherwise they would not be able to survive. They do, necessarily, in fact gain and keep numerous values for themselves as long as they choose to keep themselves alive at all. The typical pattern is that altruists practice the morality of egoism on the sly and in the breach. For, as I will demonstrate in Chapter 8 - they would not remain alive if they did not cheat on their professed moral principles!
 
How do altruists go about the sordid business of not practicing what they preach? The answer is: they do not figure out what altruism really requires of them. They do not think that far.
 
When they say that “unselfishness is the good” they do not really understand exactly what they are saying when they enunciate the concept “unselfishness”. The concept “unselfishness” is at best a woozy approximation in their minds. They associate said concept with such trivial concretes as giving one´s own children toys for Christmas, helping little old ladies across the street, giving an occasional dime to a beggar or to a charity – that sort of thing. They do not realize that to be truly unselfish means to give up all of one´s values. The reason for which many men are capable of coexisting (sort of) with the morality of altruism - is the fact that they are protected from its ravages by a veil of ignorance concerning its true nature.
 
The difference between me and most of my fellow men was the fact that when I entered my teen-age years I made a point of attaching meanings to words. Even to highly abstract concepts. When I was at the age of 13 years, I began to figure out the fact that what altruism required of me was that I renounce every single one of those personal values which made me happy.
 
But unfortunately, I was not sufficiently independent to drop the morality of altruism like a hot potato as soon as I figured out said fact about altruism. Which is what I should have done! So - the character trait which did me in was the one that I was more of a thinker, and more of an honest thinker, than close to each and every one of my fellow members of mankind. But that at the same time I was not strong enough to draw out and act on the full consequences of the results of my thinking. Altruism made use of my virtues in combination with one of my weaknesses to destroy me!
 
15) THE MENTAL HOSPITAL
 
In the early summer of 1972, my condition had evidently deteriorated so much that an ambulance came to our house on Lidingö early one morning and fetched me to the mental hospital called Ulleråkers which was outside of the town Uppsala. I did not understand why I was being “taken away” from my home. But I did not make a fuss, for I was totally, utterly passive and unconcerned with reality around me. I was in fact psychotic! My diagnosis was schizophrenia.
 
[However, I am nowadays on the fence concerning the issue of whether I was suffering from schizophrenia specifically. I am no longer prepared to take any psychiatrist at his or her word. For – every individual person, without exception, is fallible. And – said principle applies to psychiatrists and psychologists as well as to everyone else. More about this issue in Chapter 11]
 
I was committed to Ulleråkers Mental Hospital during the three summer months of 1972. Then I went back to live back with my parents during the last months of 1972. I did not, however, get better. So - in January 1973 I was recommitted to Ulleråkers.
 
I spent the entire year of 1973 in Ulleråkers Mental Hospital. During my time there I enjoyed a “quiet” kind of happiness. Or, at least, of contentment. I was utterly passive. I would wander around the corridors in the mental ward for hours at a time all wrapped up in my bizarre fantasies. (See Chapter Five for details on these fantasies´ content.) I spent most of my days in the hospital doing almost nothing. I was not required to study or to work. For that I was grateful. Indolence suited my mental state. I did not wish to need to focus on anything “out there in reality”.
 
For - I felt no need or desire to pursue any values “out there” in reality. Factors in my environment (specifically, my earlier maleducation!) combined with my own volition had “turned off” my concern for “reality out there”!
 
Still - the mental ward was full of attractive young female nurses! At any given time there were at least a dozen of them in the ward. (The mental ward contained roughly thirty or forty of us patients.) The nurses were very friendly. I became fond of them. So - I was not completely out of touch with reality!
 
I was also asked to meet with a roughly forty year-old male psychiatrist every now and then. He would talk to me and prescribe medications. I doubt that he had any clue to what was the cause of my psychosis. His only means of dealing with my psychosis seemed to be the medications he prescribed for me. He was a one-trick pony. Not much of a psychiatrist, in my book.
 
I perceived this psychiatrist as being an “oddball” because of the weird things he said to me. I remember one question in particular which he kept asking me. “Henrik, which do you think goes faster – the train or the clock?” He seemed to expect a straight answer from me. I realized that the question had no straight answer - since he was asking me to compare incommensurables. But I felt intimidated by the circumstance that he seemed to be expecting a straight answer from me.
 
So therefore, being intimidated, I blurted out “The train.” The psychiatrist probably concluded from this that my cognitive functions were impaired. Which was a mistaken conclusion – since I answered as I did only because I felt intimidated. Ask a stupid question and you get a stupid answer . . . I never told the psychiatrist about my weird fantasies. And he never pressured me to tell him. Like most conventional psychiatrists in the modern era he did not know what he was doing. [NOTE 13]
 
But – my cognitive functions were definitely impaired – just not in such a way that I was unable to tell that the psychiatrist´s trick question was in fact a trick question! I was in fact able to think logically. My cognitive impairment consisted of the circumstance that I was almost completely unable to follow a lengthy and purposeful train of thought. My cognition was a hash. I could not concentrate on anything “out there in reality” after the mauling which my mind had been subjected to at Milton Academy. I was only capable of useless daydreaming about fictitious events in the inner world of my own consciousness.
 
During the three months of the summer of the year 1972 I spent some of my time in the hospital reading science fiction paperbacks (I reread the entirety of my favourite science fiction novel – Dune!) and loafing. During the first half year of 1973 I would spend the early morning every day reading the two leading daily newspapers of Sweden – both of which were available in the mental ward.
 
After a month or so in early 1973 I was also permitted to go out for walks into the centre of the local town called Uppsala. I would walk through the hospital grounds to a canal and walk for perhaps one kilometre alongside the canal, until I came to a bridge which crossed the canal and took me into Uppsala. There in Uppsala I would purchase one copy each of the latest Newsweek and Time magazines. I took them back to the hospital for the sake of having something (anything!) to read. I followed with a mild interest such dramas of the world as the Watergate scandal and, in the fall, the Yom Kippur war and the oil crisis. So - I was beginning to develop some significant interest in what went on in the world around me. I possessed some measure of the attribute of curiosity.
 
Since I was now (during 1973) reading news about “the world out there” – instead of immersing myself in the fantasy worlds of “pulp science fiction” (as in the summer of 1972) I was evidently beginning to (slowly) recover my mental health.
 
As the year 1973 wore on I began to spend time listening to rock music occasionally - and playing card games with other patients. I did nothing productive during my time in the hospital. But the idleness seemed to suit me. In the latter half of 1973 I began to take still more and more notice of reality around me. This was, I am nowadays certain, due to a certain choice I made in the early summer of 1973, plus perhaps also the circumstance that the psychiatrist put me on chlorpromazine at roughly the same time. [NOTE 14]
 
The psychiatrist had tried out several different medications on me during my first year of being a certified psychotic (i.e. during the second half of 1972 and during the first half of 1973). But as far as I can remember he did not try chlorpromazine on me until the beginning of the summer of 1973.
 
And - at the end of 1973, after half a year on chlorpromazine - I finally was deemed well enough to be released from the hospital. I did not feel anything special when that happened. Being released from the hospital environment was in no way dramatic. For - I had felt comfortable with the inactivity I had experienced throughout the entirety of my stay in the hospital!
 
16) HOW I WOKE UP AND SAVED MYSELF
 
As I said before, my psychosis was caused mostly by my having developed a screwed-up metaphysics, having become habituated to radical cognitive introversion and having been influenced by the morality of altruism. Eventually, however, I woke up from the fallacy of altruism – and as a result begun to recover my mental health. This cognitive event played a key role in enabling me to recover from my psychosis. Therefore, I will devote an extended section of this chapter to an account of exactly what happened when I changed my mind about altruism.
 
There was one specific act of volition on my part which made the difference between my sanity and my psychosis. In the summer of the year 1973, at which time I had a lot of spare time which I could devote to thinking, I reconsidered the morality of altruism.
 
The background is that I had been instructed by the hospital personnel to participate in a make-work program which bored me to death. The program was arranged by the government. I was assigned this work therapy by the hospital staff. The “work” was mind-numbingly boring. I worked on an assembly line, in a delapidated building on the hospital grounds, putting together doodads.
 
For example, on my first day in this “work therapy” I was ordered to sit next to a table on which there was a continuously moving plastic belt conveying a steady stream of decals past me. I was expected to stay alert for something like three hours straight, without a break - in order so that I would manage to scoop up one out of every four, or maybe six, decals which passed me by. I was supposed to dip each decal which I managed to scoop up in time in a white, starchy glue in a tub on the table. And – I was supposed to subsequently fasten the decal to a piece of cardboard. If I remember correctly, I was then supposed to quickly, quickly stuff the decal cum cardboard substrate into a transparent plastic bag. These decals were, I suppose, peddled to tourists to Sweden from abroad - in tourist traps all over Sweden - which were in some way associated with the government agency intended to promote tourism.
 
I was paid almost nothing for the “work”. The wage I was paid was about four Swedish Crowns per hour (roughly 80 US cents at that time´s exchange rate). The normal, “standard” wage for a Swedish industrial worker at the time was around fifteen Crowns per hour. Since it was not a living wage or market wage - I felt that I was unrewarded for my effort.
 
I went to said “work” early in the morning, for two or three days in a row. I was on the premise that I owed my fellow men my productive efforts, as a form of “payback” for nothing in particular. (Or - was I supposed to be grateful for the “education” which “society” had “blessed” me with? The “education” which had come close to destroying my mind and destroying my life?) I had been brainwashed in childhood to believe in the morality of altruism. And that I therefore had a duty to work for a miserly wage - and subsequently donate my money to charity for the sake of benefiting my fellow men. Otherwise, I would not be a decent human being. That was the content of the altruist morality I had been taught!
 
Such were my thoughts. So - I was torn between two sentiments. On the one hand, I felt that I had a duty to work, for the sake of not being a parasite. And since I was on the premise of altruism, I also felt that I should live by the principle of not keeping my money “for myself”. But should instead donate it – all of it - to charity for the sake of alleviating the suffering of people who were even “less fortunate” than me!
 
I loathed and despised the work. For - I was bored utterly to death! I was acutely unhappy all the time I was engaged in said make-work. It was like a form of torture! But on the second day of the make-work, my sense of duty induced me to drag myself to the workplace anyway. The six hours of work dragged on and on. All the time I was dreaming of the longed-for end of the workday when I would be permitted to return to the mental ward and where I would have the option of going to bed and just going to sleep!
 
But early on the third morning I just could not take it any longer. Before going off to work that morning I thought long and hard about the idea that I owed it to my fellow men to sacrifice myself for their sake. And - I wised up!
 
I asked myself why should I suffer misery for the sake of making other men happy? Why was their happiness, a value - but not mine? Why should there be a double standard between me and those “others”? I focused my mind on this question - and I reflected and reflected – for this issue was crucially important to me. And finally – after much hard thinking - I concluded that my sacrificing myself for others just did not make any sense!
 
My own life and my own happiness must, in reason, be an equal value to me – as the value of their happiness was to those others. So- why should my happiness be cannibalized for the sake of making others happy? Why should morality advocate a form of figuratively speaking cannibalism? This thought struck me as important and profound. So - I refused to go off to work that morning! For the first time in years, I gave higher priority to my own interests and my own happiness – on principle – than to the interests and happiness of others!
 
That single act of rebellion against the altruist ethics was a turning point in my life. I had made a pivotal choice. I began to regain my happiness after said incident. For, I had asserted myself! I had placed myself first in the hierarchy of my own values. I had decided that my life belonged to me – and was my responsibility. I owed it to myself to pursue my own happiness. So - I had acted on the premise of selfishness. I subsequently began to enjoy personal values - for the first time in years - without having my enjoyment poisoned by guilt! And because I began pursuing values “out there in reality” I began focusing my mind on things “out there in reality”. Which enabled me to regain my implicit confidence in the Axiom of Identity – so that I crossed back over the line from psychosis to sanity!
 
I began to enjoy the activity which was playing card games with my fellow patients. I began to enjoy the activity which was listening to rock music records on the record player in the hospital - and on my sister´s stereo at home on Lidingö during the weekends. I began to enjoy indulging myself in such small luxuries as tasty servings of ice cream and pastries in the cafés in Uppsala. Later – after my release from the mental hospital - I proceeded to live a “normal” life involving work and recreational pursuits on my spare time. And – I was free at long last from the chronic pangs of guilt which had plagued me while I was on the premise of altruism!
 
After this “ominous choice” of mine (“Ominous” meaning: It was a choice which became a turning point in my life.) – it took only six months until my mental health was deemed to be radically improved by the psychiatrist who was responsible for diagnosing me. So much improved that he decided to release me from the mental hospital and let me go live at home with my parents again!
 
For – it was one day in early January of the year 1974. The head psychiatrist at the Ulleråkers Mental Hospital told me that there was no longer any need for me to stay in the hospital. And so – he told me – that when my dad drove up to the hospital from Lidingö next Friday evening, he would not take me home to Lidingö merely for the weekend. He would not drive me back up to the hospital again on the following Sunday afternoon. Instead - I would begin living with my parents and sister again on a permanent basis!
 
NOTE 1 "The Comprachicos" is an essay by Ayn Rand, published in the essay collection Return of the Primitive, which analyses and exposes the evil of modern education in America. This book is edited by Peter Schwartz and is available from both Amazon and The Ayn Rand Bookstore.
 
NOTE 2 See Ayn Rand´s essay "The Comprachicos" for an explanation of the meaning of the concept "comprachico".
 
NOTE 3 The traumatic event was my mother´s urging me, in the spring of 1967, not to trust the judgment of my own mind.
 
NOTE 4 But of course my own mother contributed to the causation of my psychosis when she urged me not to trust the judgment of my own mind. For - by doing so she was actively undermining my confidence in my mind´s ability to grasp reality!
 
NOTE 5 The psychiatrist had, figuratively speaking and not literally, attempted to force my consciousness. For, he had pressured me to believe that I was insane. Whereas I insisted that I was not. I perceived the psychiatrist´s argumentation as amounting to: "Maybe you are insane. Prove that you aren´t!" So - the shrink was trying to pressure me into believing that my mind was not valid (for the time being). I perceived that as being an assault on my self-esteem.
 
NOTE 6 I had no motivation whatsoever to pursue any important values in my life after the maleducation I had undergone at Milton Academy.
 
NOTE 7 Returning to Sweden in the first years of the 1970s was a gut-wrenching experience for me because I found myself immersed in a culture steeped in the nihilism, schaadenfreude and envy of the "New Left". The New Left´s nihilism devastated my psychology.
 
NOTE 8 See Chapters Two and Three of this book for an account of how I became utterly introverted.
 
NOTE 9 Sections 3,4,5,6 and 7 in this chapter detail the steps by which my maleducation at Milton discouraged me from pursuing values.
 
NOTE 10 By "living in a value-vacuum" I mean that I experienced a total privation of personal values. I did not value anything "out there in reality" - for, the morality of altruism taught me that I had a duty to be selfless.
 
NOTE 11 See Ayn Rand´s essay "The Comprachicos" in the essay collection "Return of the Primitive".
 
NOTE 12 Volition is not an exception to causality. Volition is one of the two sub-categories of causality. The sub-category of causlity which applies to conceptual consciousness. The other two sub-categories of causality are mechanical determinism - which applies to inanimate matter. And goal-directed deterministism - which applies to all living organisms except for those equipped with conceptual consciousness (i.e. human beings).
 
NOTE 13 Many psychiatrists today have their understanding of the science of psychology all screwed-up by the Kantian philosophical premises which they were indoctrinated with in college/medical school. See "Return of the Primitive" for details.
 
NOTE 14 See Chapter Four in this book for more details concerning my view of what caused my recovery from my psychosis.