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Confessions of a Hypergraphic
After reading Alice Flaherty’s book The Midnight Disease, I knew I had the symptoms, although mine was
more like a five-in-the-morning condition.
As a Harvard neurologist, Flaherty describes hypergraphia, the ‘midnight
disease’, as a compulsive need to write from an emotional impulse, an
irresistible urge An extreme of case of
hypergraphia is a schizophrenic whose hypergraphic writing, like speech, does
not make sense. Then there are lighter
cases who compulsively write letters, notes, journals, novels, essays. Hypergraphia leads to isolative behaviour,
removed from people and community.
Flaherty describes how hypergraphics may be bad writers, or
talented writers like Dostoevsky. Van
Gogh, although a painter, is another suspected hypergraphic with his daily
letters to his brother Theo. With his
creative psychotic bursts, Van Gogh produced a painting every thirty-six
hours. This led to speculation that
great pieces of art and literature originate out of an abnormal emotional state
-- this might explain why five out of the seven noble prize winning American
authors were alcoholic.
What confirmed my hypergraphia condition is that hypergraphics
have a tendency to be hyper-philosophical or hyper-religious. In hypergraphic writing, little things in
life take on great cosmic importance. The profile fits as for the last
twenty-five years I have been writing six hours seven days a week about
religious and philosophical issues. Although my hypergraphic condition has led
to isolation from friends and community, I have accepted my fate to travel into
an inner world that few people dare to travel.
I suspect that if Dr. Flaherty took a digital scan of my
brain, she might find hypothalamus size differences -- as is the case with
hypergraphic brains, a physiological explanation for an abnormal
condition. And perhaps here is where
caution is advised when medical high priests and priestesses declare a new word
to describe people’s abnormal behaviour. With gusto science is keen to be the
authority of our reality, techno-science as our new religion. Yet we need to be careful when people claim
knowledge about soul. “Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach you
about soul,”
Voltaire writes. In the same way, four thousand volumes of
neurological texts will not teach you about the mysterious nature of human
consciousness.
A hypergraphic has a tendency to be
hyper-philosophical. Does this mean
that people who have a deep emotional need to find meaning in life – might be
mentally disabled? Is this somehow part of the official definition of mental
health? For life is a cerebration of
individuality; we all have our sui
generis, our individual expression.
Writing may be a person’s mythos as a spiritual quest, an expression of
their religiosity, a path in the quest to find ultimate meaning. Through words and images, hypergraphics may
be weaving into an unexplored realm of inner-space -- into uncharted territory
unfamiliar to others. Perhaps what
drives people to pursue writing originates out of the same unconscious impulse
as what drives a Buddhist monk to sit in meditation five hours each day. A man may remove himself form the world as a
monk in a cave; or through hypergraphic writing – which is more
dysfunctional?
What drives people to spew words about religious and
philosophical issues? Is it because
some people are more in-tune to the human condition? The corruption, disease, starvation, the hypocrisy, sensitized to
the existential angst hovering over humanity.
Sensitized to see problems in
the inner lives of others; how many are struggling in psychological fears; the
fear of losing one’s job; fear of failure in love; fear of poverty, the list
goes onward, the fear of being ugly, fear of old age, and the mother of all
fears – fear of death. Hypergraphia is
a form of catharsis channeling of emotions, originating out of a need to know
what is behind the veil behind the human predicament. Who are we? Where did we
come from? Why all the suffering?
Aristotle asked:
“Why is it that all men who have become outstanding in philosophy,
statesmanship, poetry, and the arts are melancholic?” Is it because
traditionally, they have identified themselves with the little people; the
suffering plight of the masses, and not the lives of a privileged few. And could it be that through disciplined
study and writing, the process itself begins to alter perception about the
world and oneself. Such changes may
relate to Flaherty’s physiological explanation as to the temporal lobe changes
in hypergraphic brain.
I remember the time, when I met an elderly man in his late
seventies; we were on a bus rolling down to Los
Angeles. He was
a seasoned scholar with an incisive mind who spent most of his life in a
library – pursuing knowledge and interested in the lives of writers. And he said that most writers eventually go
loony tune one way or another. After
years of reflection, I’ve come to understand what he meant. Hypergraphia has
two sides, the creative and destructive.
Writing is one of the most powerful communication tools of
humanity; and words have a transcontinental nature by which a man may peek into
another world spinning inside this one. The power of the word. Words may resonate with spirit; certain
books “touch” people’s lives. In
history, we find how words altered civilizations. Words proved their might; people kill over words; people fall in
love over words. Hypergraphics are
engaged in the most ancient and most powerful of all mediums. What drives a person to write is a means to
understand oneself and the world.
Writing becomes a mirror reflecting the nakedness of one’s soul.
However, hypergraphia may turn pathological when the writer
becomes too self-absorbed or attached to his or her writing. It is like a cop who is unable to let go of
his ego persona of being a cop and adjust to his family as a father; such
ego-delusions may destroy a writer.
Hypergraphia may become a big problem when a writer is unable separate
himself from his art, his magnum opus,
and believe that their work is of great importance and give it permanence by
claiming it as truth. Such a boastful
attitude of approach relates to ego-ambition and identification – glorification
of little self and not the big Self.
Perhaps for this reason, people end-up in mental institutions claiming
to be Christ. Ego inflation, as the
feeling of walking over rainbows next to the gods, is a dangerous undertaking
for humans are meant to walk underneath.
Icarus with his waxed wings is another example, and wasn’t it a long way
down.
Perhaps the gnostic had the best cure for pathological
hypergraphia -- and graphomania (the desire to be published). Attitude of approach will decide the
outcome. In Gnosticism, Benjamin
Walker writes:
Within the broad outlines of the
Christian gospel each person, if he so desired could speculate and give
expression to his view in any literary or artistic form which he chooses. But no great importance was placed on the
outcome, no claim was made that it was true, complete or final, and no attempts
was made to give it permanence.
The essay is a commentary about Alice Flaherty's book about hypergraphia, The Midnight Disease.
Janos Sandor
E-mail Janos Sandor
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