{"id":90648,"date":"2015-10-07T18:52:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T22:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=90648"},"modified":"2015-10-08T10:47:19","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T14:47:19","slug":"got-your-tongue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/07\/got-your-tongue\/","title":{"rendered":"Got Your Tongue"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

From Louis Wain\u2019s schizophrenic cat drawings.<\/p><\/div>\n

From the psychiatrist R. D. Laing\u2019s transcripts of his sessions with Edith E., a young woman he took on as a patient in 1954 and later wrote about in <\/em>The Divided Self<\/a>. Laing, who was born on this day in 1927 and died in 1989, is remembered for his progressive thinking on sanity and madness. He struggled to make sense of Edith, whose schizophrenia was so abstruse that on paper it amounted to \u201can intolerable mass of incoherent data.\u201d To draw her out, he tried to react to her comments as spontaneously as possible, sometimes addressing himself to a doll he\u2019d brought in. Edith admitted to hearing voices that instructed her to disrobe or to go to a certain subway station, where she would, one voice said, see someone beaten to a pulp; she talked at length about mouths, tonsils, and sucking, and once claimed that her mother had cut her into pieces and that Laing was her \u201cnew, good mother.\u201d The case is discussed in further detail in Alan Beveridge\u2019s <\/em>Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man<\/a>, a study of Laing\u2019s early work from which the following exchange is taken.<\/em><\/p>\n

EDITH I\u2019ve no tongue. I\u2019ve a tongue but it\u2019s not my actual tongue.<\/p>\n

LAING You have a tongue in your mouth anyway.<\/p>\n

EDITH Yes, I\u2019ve a tongue in my mouth, but it\u2019s not my actual tongue. I\u2019ve no actual tongue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

(I was a bit lost at this point.? Tongue = nipple (= penis). Tongue = nipple seemed from yesterday to be more important. She had apparently lost her \u201ctongue\u201d hence \u201ccouldn\u2019t speak.\u201d Had she been weaned? Bitten off and swallowed nipple? How lost it? Castrated?) but what level of regression to work on?)<\/em><\/p>\n

LAING Well I\u2019m glad to hear that in a way. One tongue in your mouth is enough for anyone.<\/p>\n

EDITH I\u2019ve a tongue in my mouth. (It peeks out from between her teeth rather coyly.)<\/em><\/p>\n

LAING You won\u2019t lose that tongue. The other tongue never really belonged to you anyway. You must have pinched it from somewhere \u2026 You\u2019ve at least ten nipples anyway.<\/p>\n

EDITH I was married.<\/p>\n

LAING To your father?<\/p>\n

EDITH To Dr Laing \u2026 Dr Laing cut out my tongue in Africa. (I had previously suggested that her mother had cut out her tongue for marrying me in Africa\u2014when she said \u201cDr Laing cut out\u2026\u201d I was completely taken by surprise \u2026 silence for some time.)<\/em><\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

LAING I came here to see you but you were out with your mother and I had to go away. (reassurance)<\/em><\/p>\n

EDITH Yes. They told me there was a hole in the ground. They are going to take my brains out. I have beautiful teeth.<\/p>\n

LAING And no one is going to take a razor to them.<\/p>\n

EDITH I\u2019ve no teeth.<\/p>\n

LAING It\u2019s a terrible thing for a baby to dash her gums against granite breasts.<\/p>\n

EDITH Yes, it\u2019s a terrible thing. I was born in Poland this morning.<\/p>\n

LAING If only you could have pinched your father\u2019s pole. You\u2019re a baby piper.<\/p>\n

EDITH My father gave <\/em>me a kilt.<\/p>\n

LAING And the bone under the kilt?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the psychiatrist R. D. Laing\u2019s transcripts of his sessions with Edith E., a young woman he took on as a patient in 1954 and later wrote about in The Divided Self. Laing, who was born on this day in 1927 and died in 1989, is remembered for his progressive thinking on sanity and madness. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1900],"tags":[19706,7682,19704,5706,19708,12583,8384,14193,179,4420,19705,19707,18666],"class_list":["post-90648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-correspondence","tag-alan-beveridge","tag-diaries","tag-edith","tag-journals","tag-mouths","tag-psychiatry","tag-r-d-laing","tag-schizophrenia","tag-sex","tag-teeth","tag-the-divided-self","tag-tongues","tag-transcripts"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOf Tongues, Teeth, and Mouths: R. D. 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