1) INTRODUCTION
 
In the summer of the year 1973 I noticed a marked change in my cognitive behaviour. Ever since the beginning of my commitment to Ulleraakers Mental Hospital in June of 1972 I had been extremely introverted. During the months of the entire year up until the early summer of 1973 I had been continually obsessed with my weird fantasies – i.e. my private little parallel universe in which I, figuratively speaking, lived.
 
But during the summer months of 1973 my mind began to gradually focus more and more on events and entities “out there in reality” around me. I began to spend more time reading, quite intently, daily newspapers and weekly magazines. I had developed an interest in the current events out there in the big, wide world!
 
I also began to interact more extensively with my fellow patients. I began to spend a few hours almost every day playing card games with three or four of my fellow patients at a time. We would alternate between playing whist – and, additionally, a Swedish card game which went by the name of “plump”. These card games required me to concentrate on the game and to think hard about how to play my hand.
 
In addition, I began to devote a significant amount of time to listening to rock music (i.e. I focused on something "out there in reality" - the music which was playing). I did this by dint of playing LPs on the record player we patients shared in the mental ward. And, also by dint of playing my sister´s rock music LPs on her stereo system at home – since I always spent the weekends at home in my parents´ and sister´s house on Lidingö. I was especially strongly inclined to listen to my sister´s two albums with rock music by the heavy metal band Blue Öyster Cult. BÖC were by far my favourite rock band at the time.
 
There were two possible alternative causes of this beginning of my recovery from my alleged schizophrenia.
 
2) ONE POSSIBLE CAUSE OF MY RECOVERY – CHLORPROMAZINE
 
One possible cause of my recovery was the medications which the hospital´s psychiatrists had put me on for the first time in the early summer of 1973. The psychiatrists had been testing one medication after another on me ever since I was first committed to the hospital in June of 1972. Around the beginning of the month of June 1973 they finally got around to testing chlorpromazine on me.
 
At almost the exact same time that I began taking chlorpromazine I noticed a change in the state of my consciousness. Instead of focusing almost all my time - for days on end - on my useless daydreams, I began to focus on activities “out there in reality” – such as reading newspapers and magazines, playing card games with my fellow patients and listening to rock music LPs. The temporal correlation between the prescription of chlorpromazine and my diminished introversion might have been a causal relation.
 
3) A MORE LIKELY POSSIBLE CAUSE OF MY RECOVERY – AN ACT OF VOLITION
 
However, there was a possible alternative causal factor. Said alternative causal factor was a difficult choice which I made in the late spring of 1973.
 
The background to my choice was that in the late spring of 1973 the hospital authorities required of me that I begin participating in a “work therapy” program. I suppose that their intentions were good. The people running the hospital must have reasoned that it would serve the interests of my health if I became involved in some kind of productive work instead of just spending all my days in the hospital idling. The problem was, however, that I was not fit to carry out any productive work worthy of the name. And the people who ran the mental hospital, for natural reasons, did not have the skill sets required to establish and run a genuinely productive enterprise. All they were capable of doing was to provide me with meaningless make-work.
 
So – in the late spring of 1973 – the mental ward personnel simply announced to me early one Monday morning that I was supposed to get dressed and immediately after finishing breakfast walk over to a separate building on the hospital grounds where there would be “work” waiting for me. I had no say in the matter. No written contract or document regulating this work was shown to me. Since I was a passive mental patient I was expected to just do as I was told.
 
When, after breakfast, I walked over to the workplace I found out that I was going to work on something resembling an assembly line. I had to sit down next to a long table on which there was placed a travelling band. The travelling band carried medium-sized decals backwards from the front, where a forewoman loaded it with the decals. Several of us mental patients were sitting along the sides of the long table. As the travelling band carried the decals past us we were supposed to pick up one of them at a time, dip the back side of the decal in a thick glue and paste said decal onto a piece of cardboard. We were then supposed to stuff the cardboard with the decal into a transparent plastic bag and seal the bag. Apparently, the government (which ran the mental hospital) would then distribute these decals in plastic bags to shops all over Sweden which would peddle the cheap decals to tourists in Sweden´s numerous “tourist traps”.
 
I perceived this “work” as being deadly boring. And it was also stressful to boot. I and the other patients/workers simply could not keep up with the travelling band. Lots and lots of decals wound up being dumped into a bin at the end of the band. Because we patients/workers did not manage to scoop them up in time and package them successfully in the plastic bags. As far as I can remember we only had one break every hour during which we could rest and/or visit the WC. By lunch time, after three hours of morning work, I was already all worn out and dog-tired. After a one-hour lunchbreak I was required to work three more hours on the deadly boring “assembly line” thing. At the end of said afternoon I was exhausted. I utterly hated the “work”!
 
The next day I had to drag myself to the workplace in the morning. I really did not want to go. But I went anyway because of the circumstance that I was on the premise of the morality of altruism. I thought that the morality of altruism held that “I was supposed to sacrifice myself for others” and not “that others were supposed to sacrifice themselves for me”. So – I reasoned – I was morally obliged to try to sacrifice as a way of paying my way through life – instead of having others make sacrifices by dint of taking care of me. I felt twinges of guilt for the fact that others were feeding and taking care of me while I was a patient in the mental hospital. For – according to the conventional view of altruism – the morally proper state-of-affairs was that I was supposed to sacrifice for others – and not the other way around.
 
Therefore - I felt myself duty-bound to drag myself off to the “work” the next day. Notwithstanding the fact that I perceived said work as being literal torture. The “work” that day was in essence the same as the day before. So, I was dog-tired and bored stiff for six hours straight, barring a brief pause for lunch. I longed desperately for a bed to lie down on and just sleep. I suffered and suffered, psychologically, over the entire course of that six-hour workday. It felt like sleep-deprivation torture.
 
On the morning of the third day, I cracked. Or rather – I began thinking! According to the altruist ethics which I had been taught since early childhood – I was morally obligated to serve others. And to make sacrifices for their sake. So, I thought to myself – “Henrik, you are supposed to do things for others – and not have them do things for you. You should not consume the production of others – by dint of living a life of indolence as a patient in the mental hospital. No, Henrik! You are supposed to work for a living and then let others consume your production! You are not supposed to be selfish and serve your own happiness. For some reason you are supposed to serve the happiness of others instead, Henrik.”
 
I thought and I thought. “Why were others entitled to happiness – at my expense? While I, at the same time, had a duty to exist in misery that others might be happy? Was not that a cannibalistic code of morality? Why in the world was it a moral ideal that others should enjoy happiness at the price of my misery? Why was the happiness of others a value – with me being the only blessed soul in the universe whose happiness was not a value?
 
The more I thought about it (“it” being the morality of self-sacrifice/altruism) - the more clearly I came to see that said morality did not make sense. Eventually I reached the point where I decided that I simply would not honour a morality which foisted suffering on me for no reason that made any sense!
 
So – I decided that it would be perfectly OK for me to pursue my own happiness instead of pursuing self-sacrifice. That morning, I did not set off for the workplace after having eaten breakfast. Instead, I simply stayed right there in the premises of the mental hospital ward! My doing so felt like an immense relief. At the time I only knew that I had saved myself from six hours of misery on that particular day. But, in fact, I had turned my entire remaining life around!
 
4) CONCLUSION SO FAR
 
Nowadays, when I look back, I realize that I “fixed up” my mental health issues long-range to boot by dint of that one act of volition. For – it stands to reason that the emotional suffering perpetrated on me by my embracement of the morality of self-sacrifice/altruism had been the most major part of the cause of my mental illness! And – when I chose to remove said cause of my mental illness – the mental illness itself began to fade away!
 
So – my conclusion is that just as a combination of bad philosophy, and bad choices, had been the causes of my psychosis – so also better philosophical ideas, and better choices, which were supported by the physical effects on my brain of my medications (i.e. chlorpromazine) were the causes of my recovery!
 
Actually – I didn´t succeed at fixing up my mental health issues completely until roughly fifteen years later than the summer of 1973. Not until the latter years of the 1980s, after I had discovered the philosophy of Ayn Rand, did I discover that what I really needed in order to flourish was not just one healthy idea (namely, “the virtue of selfishness”) - and one healthy choice (namely, the rejection of self-sacrifice on one single occasion) – but an entire philosophy of reason cum egoism, and the adoption of the way of life consonant with said philosophy.
 
The philosophy of Objectivism is the key to good mental health – and a multitude of other precious values as well, everybody! I know that because I learned it the hard way!
 
5) MUSIC AS THERAPY BY DINT OF MOTIVATION
 
The choice I made in the early summer of 1973 – my choice to embrace the principle of selfishness and to reject the morality of altruism – was an “ominous choice”. It was a turning point in my life. It was a choice which changed my life – and improved my mental health. Possibly, it was the factor which set me on the path of recovery from my psychosis.
 
My recovery from psychosis consisted, in essence, of me developing a habit of focusing more and more on “reality out there”, and less and less on the contents of my consciousness. This process began when I made my “ominous choice” in the early summer of 1973. Said choice "liberated" me from the feelings of guilt which the prospect of pursuing values "out there in reality" had caused me. Now I could pursue personal values without being haunted by guilt. During the latter half of 1973 my re-orientation towards external reality consisted of choosing to spend more, and more time - while still in the hospital - on such “outwards-oriented” activities as playing card games with fellow patients, listening to rock music on the communal record player and reading newspapers and magazines. I was beginning to enjoy life more, and more!
 
In January of 1974 I began spending all my time every day at home in our villa on Lidingö. I was motivated to focus on something “out there in reality” while at home – namely the all-together weird rock music of Blue Öyster Cult. Blue Öyster Cult had released two LPs when I “discovered” them in February of 1973. In the summer of the year 1973 I began to be not just fascinated – but obsessed with these two albums. I would listen to their songs, over and over, and over again - virtually non-stop, for hours on end. Why Blue Öyster Cult, specifically? Because their songs were so goshdarned weird! They were almost all of them written in minor keys – and the lyrics were surrealistic and unintelligible. I would wonder, and wonder what the heck the songs were about all the time I listened to them intently.
 
So – during the first half of the year 1974 I would get up in the morning, spend two or three hours reading the morning newspaper - which fascinated me - and drinking instant coffee with milk. Then, in the afternoon I would seclude myself in the recreation room in the basement of our villa and spend several hours playing and replaying those same two Blue Öyster Cult records on my sister´s high quality stereo. And – I would sing along with Erik Bloom - or whoever else was handling the vocals on the song in question. I had learned the lyrics to all the 18 BÖC songs on the first two albums by heart!
 
Well – the music of Blue Öyster Cult played a significant role in my recovery from psychosis. For – their weird music motivated me to do the work involved in focusing my mind on something “out there in reality” instead of on my useless daydreams. That “something” out there in reality – the BÖC´s songs – were themselves in fact equally useless as my daydreams. But it was a start!
 
In the summer of the year 1973 I was sufficiently recovered so that I could begin to spend half the day in a government-arranged make-work program – as an assistant to a researcher at a scientific laboratory. I would work in the laboratory during the morning and spend the afternoons at home on Lidingö – listening to rock music. I had begun to “branch out” now – and so I listened to some other rock music artists besides BÖC.
 
6) MY SECOND “OMINOUS CHOICE”
 
One afternoon on a sunny day in the summer of 1974 I went down to the recreation room in the basement of the villa on Lidingö. I intended to spend the afternoon listening to rock records. But, for some reason, I did not put on any LP immediately. Instead, I relaxed on the bed in the recreation room – and began thinking. Specifically, I began thinking about myself and about how my life was going.
 
I thought to myself that I sure did daydream an awful lot. And I knew that said habit of mine set me apart from most other people. I thought to myself:
 
“Henke, you enjoy daydreaming more than everyone else. You do it all the time. The reason you daydream is the fact that daydreaming feels easy for you. Thinking about specific things in reality – such as work – takes effort and concentration. You have a hard time concentrating on things `out there in reality´, Henke. You don´t enjoy it. You prefer to just let your mind spin idle fantasies.
 
“Sure – it´s easy to just let your mind spin fantasies. You enjoy daydreaming. But what´s the point, Henke? What does daydreaming accomplish? If you spend the rest of your life just daydreaming, then your life will go nowhere.”
 
I thought and I thought. I reached the conclusion that I could “take things easy” over the course of my life and just spend the rest of my days daydreaming. That was the “easy” alternative. Or – I could apply myself to some goal “out there in reality” – by dint of concentrating my mind on some species of purposeful thinking. That would be the “hard” alternative. But if I chose the “hard” alternative rather than the “easy” alternative – then I might very well accomplish something of value. I realized that I would wind up more satisfied – happier – in the long run if I achieved something difficult.
 
After perhaps fifteen minutes of thinking I made up my mind. I would choose the “hard road”. I would apply my mind to some important value “out there in reality” – even if doing so entailed some major discomfort initially. For – I did not want to waste my life – by dint of devoting it to daydreaming. I wanted my life to amount to something!
 
Well – what value did I wish to pursue? At the time – namely in the early 1970s – liberty was under attack in Sweden. The Swedish welfare state was growing, and growing. I was worried that the liberty of the individual was being hemmed in more, and more. And I was worried by the aggressive New Left which dominated the mass media. Without meeting any opposition worthy of the name. I found the political and cultural state of Sweden at the time to be mighty depressing.
 
So – I decided that I wished to fight back and promote that wonderful value which is individual liberty. I realized that the means of promoting liberty was intellectual activism – for the sake of persuading people that liberty was a precious value. I decided that I needed to give my fellow Swedes arguments in favour of liberty – in debate articles and letters to the editor which I could write to newspapers and magazines.
 
But – I realized that I did not know what to say! What, specifically, were the arguments in favour of liberty? I thought to myself that I needed to begin by finding out!
 
So – in the afternoon of that sunny summer day I decided that I would go to the trouble of seeking out, and reading, those books which presented the rational case for liberty. Which explained just why liberty was a precious value. I had no idea which those books were and who might have written them. But I was resolved to find out!
 
So – now I had a long-range purpose. I had decided that I would try to develop myself into an intellectual activist who fought for liberty! And - I realized that I would be more effective as a pro-liberty intellectual activist if I had a platform of my own in which to express myself. It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I could start a pro-liberty magazine of my own – if I accumulated enough money. That way I would be able to write whatever the heck I wished and know that it would be published.
 
I dreamed that I might be able to build up a private fortune of my own by earning a wage, saving money patiently year after year and making “smart” investments in publicly quoted Swedish stocks. I seriously believed that if I developed a career as a stock investor - I might be able to develop an ability to “beat the market”. I was inclined to be optimistic.
 
I did not just make said decision that afternoon. I followed it up. During the next few years, I embarked on a “career” of reading books concerning the subject of liberty. Since I initially had no idea where such books might be found, I asked people around me to recommend me good books which argued the case for liberty. I also embarked on a career of saving money and investing said money in stocks. I had become a "young man with a couple of purposes”!
 
The first reading recommendation I got was “The Road to Serfdom” by Friedrich Hayek. My dad recommended that book to me. I read it during the year 1975. But it did not satisfy me at all. For – I realized that Hayek contradicted the principle of liberty all over the place in said book. The next allegedly pro-liberty book I read was “Capitalism and Freedom” by Milton Friedman during the year 1976. I purchased and read that book because the Swedish mass media was filled with mentions of Milton Friedman at the time - since he had won the Nobel prize for economics in the year 1976. But Friedman did not satisfy me – for his advocacy of liberty was haphazard and unsystematic. The next book I read was “Midnight at Noon” by Arthur Koestler during the year 1977. Said book struck me as being a good screed against Communism – but nothing more.
 
My “career” of reading was extremely difficult for me. Due to my strong inclination to daydream I simply could not read books with any decent degree of “efficiency”. The typical pattern was that I would read one or two paragraphs at a time. I could concentrate sufficiently to accomplish that. But after having read just one or two paragraphs I would lose my concentration. Then I would succumb to an apparently irresistible temptation to spend several minutes daydreaming instead. After a few minutes of daydreaming I would be able to, with effort, refocus my mind and read another paragraph or two. And then I would need to daydream a few minutes again! Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
 
I would typically not be able to read more than just three or four pages of a book per evening. Reading an entire book felt like torture to me. But I persevered - and I did succeed at reading just a few pro-liberty books over the course of the next four or five years. I persevered because I was hellbent on doing something meaningful with my life instead of wasting it on “easy” daydreaming.
 
Eventually however – my herculean effort did pay off. During the summer of 1979 I saw an article in a Swedish newspaper which mentioned that someone named “Ayn Rand” was the intellectual who had provided the philosophical foundation for the so-called “Swing to the Right” which was occurring in American politics at the time. I pricked up my ears, figuratively speaking. In the early fall of the year 1979 I visited a large bookstore in central Stockholm whose specialty was “intellectual” and “academic” literature, for the sake of checking whether they had any books by this person whom I had never heard of before – Ayn Rand.
 
Sure enough – this bookstore had roughly half a dozen titles by Ayn Rand! One title on their bookshelf in particular leapt out at me. When I noticed the thin book with the title The Virtue of Selfishness I did a double take. I thought to myself “What the . . .? This Ayn Rand claims that selfishness is a virtue, and not a vice? Seriously? I´ve got to check that out!”
 
So – I wound up leaving that bookstore the same day equipped with two books by Ayn Rand. The above-mentioned “The Virtue of Selfishness” plus “Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal”. I chose those two books because I was fascinated by their titles. It turned out to be a good thing for me that I chose to practice the virtue of open-mindedness that day in the fall of the year 1979.
 
For - not only had I found the philosophy which corresponded to the facts of reality. I had also found the radical antidote to my remaining psychological problems.
 
And – but of course – I had been looking for years for the intellectual foundation of liberty – had I not? Well, this – the philosophy of Ayn Rand, Objectivism – was it! The intellectual foundation of liberty.
 
I began to read the works of Ayn Rand during the years which followed. My mental health – and my happiness – improved as a result. I had invested a lot of effort in reading book after book without any payoff in the short run. I had practiced the virtue of patience. I was on the premise of acting on principle and on living long-range. I have ever since the early 1980s been mighty proud of myself for having discovered Objectivism not by dint of serendipity – like most other Objectivists – but because I was deliberately searching for it. (“It” being “the rational answers, to the essential and fundamental questions in life, which I myself was unable to answer!")
 
Reading more and more of the Objectivist literature as the years of the 1980s decade went by not only “paid me the dividend” of providing me with precious knowledge. It also improved my mental health – and my cognitive functioning. When I set out on my intellectual journey back in 1974 – trying to read just one book felt like torture to me. Because I constantly had to try to “beat down” my inclination to break off the reading for the sake of relaxing with some useless daydreaming. But - I began experiencing that my ability to concentrate on reading extended passages in books did improve to a minor extent when I read unworthy tracts on liberty by such mediocre and phony intellectuals as Hayek and Friedman.
 
And - when I began reading the works of Ayn Rand I found that the reading process became enormously easier and easier with every individual book I completed. It seemed that reading Rand´s books – which taught me philosophical truths by means of inductive logic - helped me to develop a better ability to think – which carried with it an increased ability to concentrate as a bonus.
 
So – just as my mental health had benefitted by the way-out-of-left-field means of listening to Blue Öyster Cult´s weird rock music back in the middle of the 1970s – so also my mental health benefitted by means of my reading the works of a philosopher who most people pass off as being some sort of crank. Well – it pays to have an open mind – and to be an independent thinker. Even if you have - as I had and still have – mental health issues! [NOTE 1]
 
7) EXISTENTIAL ASPECTS OF MY RECOVERY - INTRODUCTION
 
My recovery from my psychosis had existential aspects as well as the intellectual and psychological ones. Soon after my release from Ulleråkers Mental Hospital I began working. Specifically, I began working as an assistant in a scientific laboratory in Stockholm in the spring of 1974. This work was a part of a government make-work program for people suffering from handicapps – such as the after-effects of mental illnesses. Nevertheless, the job I got did require that I focus on “reality out there” to some, limited extent.
 
So - now I not only had the weird music of Blue Öyster Cult influencing me to reduce the degree of my habitual introspection. I was also motivated to pay attention to “reality out there” by a job. I held the job at the scientific laboratory until roughly the beginning of the summer of the year 1975. At that moment in time, I began to become distressed by recurring attacks of anxiety. These attacks motivated me to contact the mental health care system in Stockholm and ask for assistance.
 
8) MY SEXBOMB OF A SHRINK
 
I became an out-patient at the psychiatric ward of St. Görans Hospital in Stockholm. On a Monday morning in the early summer of the year 1975 I travelled to the hospital by subway for the sake of meeting a psychiatrist whom I had been assigned to. The psychiatric ward was a twelve-story structure on the sprawling hospital grounds. The psychiatrist´s office was on the fourth floor. So, I took the elevator up to said floor and walked into the psychiatrist´s office. I was expecting to meet an old man. But I was instead bowled over when I discovered that “my” new psychiatrist was a young woman. Judging by her physical appearance she was only three or four or five years older than me. (I was 21 years old at the time.)
 
And – she was drop dead gorgeous! I thought to myself that this female psychiatrist could have developed a career as a fashion model if she had been that way inclined! For – she was so beautiful! Well – said psychiatrist turned out to be the best one I ever had. And I say that not because of the circumstance that I developed a crush on her!
 
You could say that I developed a “shrink fetish” during the following three months – during which I remained under her care – as an out-patient of said mental hospital. A really, really unusual fetish! Heh, heh! I would look forward to traveling into Stockholm by subway early every weekday morning and then spending the rest of the day on the fourth floor of the building of the psychiatric ward. So – for a period of three months I took a pause from working and just relaxed.
 
For some reason or other my anxiety attacks stopped. Towards the end of said summer the female psychiatrist told me that she thought it would be best if I “broke out of the habit” of working in government make-work programs. She recommended that I not return to the job of laboratory assistant at the scientific lab – but instead begin attending a “work training” program at a place called “Edsberg” run by the Stockholm County government. I had no objection to her suggestion.
 
9) GETTING MYSELF INTO THE OPEN JOB MARKET
 
So - in the fall of the year 1975 I began attending a “work training” program. The “Edsberg” institution was a large, modern, one-story building which housed numerous halls filled with machines and equipment for light manufacturing work. It was located in a suburb of Stockholm named "Edsberg". (Logically enough!)
 
There were machine tools, welding equipment, areas with tables and benches for the assembly of light electric and electronic equipment – and so forth. The “Edsberg” place also employed numerous non-handicapped instructors to teach us handicapped “clients” how to work. Well – I cannot say that I really learned much at all at Edsberg. For – I did not have time to study and practice any specific, individual trade for more than a few days. I attended Edsberg during the entire fall of the year 1975. The workday began at 8:00 AM and continued until 4:30 PM. So, it was my first full-time job since my happy period at the chemical laboratory during the years 1970 and 1971. All the same time that I was supposed to be learning “how to work” - I was also investing a significant amount of time and effort in the task of looking for a job on the open job market – with the assistance of Edsberg´s personnel. For - the purpose of Edsberg was supposed to be to enable handicapped persons get a “real” job, i.e. a job on the open labour market.
 
I decided that my best chance of getting a “real” job, given my disability (i.e. the after-effects of an alleged bout of schizophrenia) would be to seek a job in an industry which was physically unpleasant – in an industry which was dirty, smelly, in which the work was heavy, etc. The best candidate in this category of industry which I could think of was the iron and steel foundry industry. So, I began seeking a job in various iron and steel foundries in the Stockholm region. I got lucky and met with success rather quickly.
 
In January of the year 1976 I was hired to work as an apprentice in an iron foundry in the Stockholm suburb called Sundbyberg. My job was to learn how to be a “core-maker” (“kärnmakare” is the Swedish language name for this occupation). “Cores” are small “thingies” which I formed by hand from moist sand, which were subsequently dried in a special room filled with intense heat. In this particular foundry the heat came from braziers along the walls which contained burning coke. These cores were hard and sturdy after they had been dried, and they were employed together with forms made from moist sand for the sake of producing cast iron goods.
 
For safety reasons, I was not permitted to ever go anywhere near the area where the molten iron was poured into the forms - not when the pouring was being carried out. Almost all the workday I would work in a different part of the foundry building – in a room with bins filled with moist sand, and with tables on which I would perform the work. It was not difficult. All I had to do, in essence, was to stuff moist sand into hollow molds made from wood. I would use my bare hands to stuff the moist sand into the molds, poke a hole into the sand with a long and thin steel rod (this was for the sake of letting the water vapour out of the cores when they were dried) and then finally, with care I would pull the twin halves of the mold apart from each other in order to “release” the finished core. Which would then be ready for drying.
 
I felt privileged to be blessed with the opportunity to work in that iron foundry. For – it was literally a relic from the “childhood” of the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century. The foundry – named Sundbybergs Gjuteri (“Sundbybergs Foundry” in English) had been established in the suburb of Stockholm called Sundbyberg at some point in the middle of the 1800s. And – this foundry employed the very same primitive technology when I worked there which it had employed back in the 19th century.
 
The workplace was dirty! There was soot all over the place. For – they employed the burning of coke to provide the intense heat energy required to melt pieces of scrap iron and steel for the sake of getting molten iron to pour into the moulds! The floor of the space where they poured the molten iron into the moulds was covered with dirty, black sand. The workers explained to me that this was an important safety measure. For – there was a real risk that someone might spill molten iron onto the floor when pouring the molten iron into the moulds. If the floor had been made of bare concrete instead of being covered with sand – then the molten iron would have quickly spread out over the floor – and the workers might have been burned by molten iron! This foundry was a workplace for “real men”!
 
Unfortunately (that´s how I felt about it at the time) I only had this first real job for one single month, the month of January of the year 1976. For – I was employed as a mere apprentice – and the foundry was short on profits at the time. So, they could not afford to employ me for more than one single month. Still – the foundry blessed me with a positive evaluation of my “quality” as a worker when I left them. Partly due my good "report card" from Sundbyberg´s Gjuteri I was able to get myself a second “real” job at another iron- and steel foundry a few months later – in the early summer of 1976.
 
10) MY CAREER MEETS WITH MORE SUCCESS
 
My second “real” job was with a larger iron and steel foundry than the one in Sundbyberg. This foundry was situated in a large town close to 100 kilometres north of Stockholm, called Norrtälje. The foundry´s owner decided to hire me because Sundbyberg´s Foundry had written a favourable evaluation of me at the end of the month I worked for them. They remarked that I was very fastidious about always arriving for work on time in the morning. Apparently that remark was what clinched the foundry owner´s decision to take me on. I had to move to Norrtälje for the sake of taking this job. So, for the very first time in my life I lived in an apartment of my own – instead of living with my parents, or other guardians. I was on my own now!
 
This new employer of mine had more than 100 employees, and several buildings in which work was done. But of course, I did not work in the section of the facility where molten iron was poured into moulds. Instead, I worked in a different building altogether. A building in which roughly a half dozen of us employees worked full time with the task of deburring the cast iron goods for the sake of rendering them fit to be delivered to the customers. The work consisted of grinding the rather thick burrs off the goods with handheld grinding machines which were powered by compressed air. It was rather heavy and dirty work. The grinding of the metal burrs produced a lot of small particles. We were all very dirty and sweaty by the end of the day. I held that job for seven months – from June 1976 through January 1977. I became closely acquainted with the other guys who worked in the same building, with deburring. But I did not really become friends with them. We had nothing in common as far as values were concerned. I garnered from talking with them on the coffee and lunch breaks that they were all of them either Social Democrats or Communists. I had not really embraced any political ideology strongly – but I leaned towards laissez-faire capitalism. And - in contradistinction from virtually all Social Democrats and Communists I utterly loathed and despised the psychological attribute of envy.So, I was not really a “buddy” or friend of my workmates. Although we were on cordial terms.
 
I was quite lonely all the seven months that I lived and worked in Norrtälje. But I did not mind. I would just bicycle from my apartment to the workplace early in the morning, spend the next nine hours of the day working at the foundry and then bicycle home around 4:00 PM. I would shower at the workplace before going home. Absolutely necessary – given how dirty and sweaty I would always be at the end of the workday!
 
I would almost always spend the entire evening all by myself at home. After eating dinner, I would typically sit on the sofa in my living room – listening to rock music on my stereo (often, but no longer exclusively, the music of Blue Öyster Cult) and reading books on political theory and/or articles in business magazines! The only exception from this routine was that every now and then I would treat myself to a cup of coffee and a baked good/pastry at some café in Norrtälje before I got home. I tried hard to minimize my consumption expenditures so that I would be able to save as much of my wage as possible every month. I was hellbent on getting rich!
 
Even while I was working – I would focus my consciousness “in on itself” a lot. For - the work I was performing was menial and unskilled. So, it did not require intense concentration. When you read about the contents of my fantasies in chapters Five, Six and Seven you will probably do a face palm. My fantasies were stone cold crazy! What would my workmates in the foundry have thought of me if they had been able to read my mind as I was working alongside them?
 
During the seven months I lived on my own in Norrtälje my parents were concerned for me. They insisted that I visit them in their home on Lidingö every single weekend. After work late every Friday afternoon I would go to the bus station in central Norrtälje and get on board a regional bus which would drive me to Stockholm city. In Stockholm city I would use the mass transit system to travel from the bus stop to my parents´ home. I would arrive late in the evening, eat dinner and go to bed. I would relax with my parents and my sister the entire Saturday – and, also, Sunday morning. Then, on Sunday afternoon I would travel back to Norrtälje by means of public mass transit.
 
Even though I was myself not troubled by my lonely, isolated existence during the time I lived and worked in Norrtälje – my parents were worried. I suppose that they were afraid that I was “stagnating” – especially in social terms – not having any friends or social life at all while living in Norrtälje.
 
So, at the end of 1976 my parents told me that it would make them happy if I would agree to quit the job in Norrtälje and take another job which happened to be available on Lidingö. Then I could move back into their villa on Lidingö and live with them and my sister. The job on Lidingö which was available was that of “machine-tender” in a big food processing plant - a margarine factory, specifically - which happened to be situated there – in an island suburb of Stockholm of all places!
 
11) EARNING SOME GOOD MONEY FOR THE FIRST TIME
 
Apparently, my parents had learned that the margarine factory on Lidingö needed to hire unskilled blue-collar workers. With my parents´ encouragement I applied for a job at the factory. Also, apparently, the company which owned and ran the factory did not have a surfeit of applicants for their jobs – given that Lidingö was an upper middle-class suburb of Stockholm – without any large “proletarian” labour pool.
 
So, I was hired for the task of tending some of the machines which packaged margarine automatically. The machines were middling-sized – and they packaged margarine continuously – sixteen hours a day. There was a morning shift and an afternoon/evening shift. I began working in the margarine factory in February of 1977. At first, I alternated between the morning shift and the afternoon/evening shift – just as almost all of the machine tenders did. I worked the morning shift for one week, then the afternoon/evening shift the following week. However, I had enormous difficulty getting up early enough in the morning for the morning shift. So, after just a few months, I asked for permission to work the afternoon/evening shift all the time. And, luckily for me, the permission was granted.
 
I earned more money than I ever had before in my life! And since I nursed the ambition of building up a fortune of my own – I worked as much overtime as I possibly could. During the entirety of the year 1978 and up until April of 1979 I would volunteer to work overtime whenever the employer needed such volunteers for “extra” production which was often scheduled for Saturdays. I earned roughly 5,000 SEK per month, after tax – and I saved roughly 2,500 SEK of that money. Every three months I would invest roughly 7,500 SEK in publicly quoted Swedish stocks. So, I began patiently accumulating stocks by means of the “dollar averaging” method. During a period in time in which the Swedish stock market was depressed. That was one of the best moves I ever made in my entire life!
 
The margarine packaging machines were situated in a big hall. I worked standing behind a machine and facing a wall which consisted of just big transparent windows – which let in plenty of light during the daytime. Since the machines were operating continuously, I was not permitted to leave the machine – except when another worker came to relieve me. The machines must be manned all the time that they were operating. The work was easy. I just had to keep an eye on the machine and quickly intervene if, and when, anything began to go wrong.
 
When something went wrong I would typically press a button to switch the machine off and fix up whatever the snafu was. I was supposed to try hard to minimize the downtime of the machine. Another part of my job was to feed packaging material into the machine while it was operating. The factory had a system which entailed that there would be a few extra machine tenders in every shift in order so that we could relieve each other. I would never need to work for more than forty-five minutes straight until I was relieved and could take a coffee break.
 
So, for a period of a little more than two years I had a job which I really liked, and which paid well, by my standards. It was a happy period in my life. And – I would daydream and daydream all the time that I was working. It seemed to me that I just could not suppress my fantasies even if I tried! My work did not demand my full attention. You can read about the content of my fantasies in chapter Five. If only my workmates had known!
 
My time at the margarine factory came to an end in April of 1979. I had decided in the early months of 1979 that I would like to get myself a daytime job – instead of working from 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM every single weekday. That way, I reasoned, I could get myself a “normal” social life.
 
If you are interested, you can read about the rest of my life in my other book on this website "Autobiography of a Wasted Life".
 
[NOTE 1] See Chapters One and Two of this book for a detailed account of my mental health issues.