An Unpalatable Suggestion

A long time ago, when I was still in high-school, I wrote a poem called “A Night Out” for the school poetry competition. It is not the world’s best poem – I include it though because the ideas the motivated me to write it are ones that still occupy me today. It follows below.

            A Night Out

            Impotent accountants with ulcers

            Slip glistening oysters down rippling throats

            In acrylic restaurants; their wives raise toasts

            And roll back their eyes. Outside traffic pulses

            An unsteady rhythm; the swimming night

            Intoxicates the burning crowd that flood

            The pavement; passions dissolve in blood

            And breath that breaths “I love” but shies from light.

            Alone in bright swarming dark, think of those

            In silent homes; fevered dreams like dew dry;

            Trembling reach for hollow pills, clench cold eyes,

            To extinguish pain felt in unknown bones.

            Night-club beat echoes pound a sound through nerves;

            The pavement stirs like ocean waters;

            Unheard by all, the faint rustling mutter

            Of earnest prayers rising from cancer wards.

            The accountant and wife find some satisfaction;

            The revelling crowd unravels at dawn;           

            The pavement seems solid, substantial and calm;

            The vivid mind contrives a worldly remission.

            The psychic from the next room bends a fork.

            The audience claps then chats as before.

            The thoughts crystallize and drop to the floor.

            My body billows and wavers like smoke.

This is a poem, at heart, about the Placebo effect. When I was young I was hyper-rational, rejecting all notions that evoked the supernatural, such as the idea of ghosts or God – consequently, when I learned about the Placebo effect, I found it profoundly disturbing. How could the mind have influence over the body, how could a disease be arrested or cured by belief alone? It seemed bizarre and frightening and so strongly affected me that I have worried about it ever since. Despite my youthful faith in science, I now have a grudging acceptance of the power of magic. The Placebo effect is real, and I understand furthermore that it is increasingly being recognized by the medical world as an integral part of any treatment. According to Supernatural Selection, an anthropological work about the origins of religion that I am currently reading, it has even been suggested that the term ‘placebo effect’ should be replaced by another term, ‘contextual healing’ – the author Matt Rossano offers evidence that people who attend church regularly live around seven years longer than non-attendees and have significantly lower rates of mental illness. If religion can bring about health benefits, it can only be as a result of the Placebo effect (unless one wants to entertain the alternative hypothesis that God exists and actually answers prayers).

Realistically, the mechanism through which the placebo effect operates must be suggestion. If I consult with a physician, I put my trust in her and am inclined to accept the diagnosis that she makes. Much of the therapeutic value of medicine, as it was in the middle ages, is still based on the power of subconscious suggestion. (Consider homeopathy or acupuncture, therapies that are, when exposed to rational scrutiny, totally risible – and yet often successful.) Naturally, the general public don’t want to know that their doctors are more shamans than scientists, and the doctors themselves certainly don’t want the public to know this. Nevertheless, it is true.

It is at this point in the post that I want to propose my unpalatable hypothesis. Regular readers of my blog will know that, although I usually focus on literary theory, I occasionally touch on other topics, such as schizophrenia and my own stories. I have also on occasion alluded to issues of sexuality, such as in the post on David Foster Wallace and, more humorously, in the short story 69.  My unpalatable hypothesis is this: that homosexuality might be caused by subconscious suggestion. Homosexuals are made, not born. The unconscious suggestions that produces it may occur over many years, starting in childhood or adolescence, or may occur infrequently but at times when a person is under stress and highly suggestible. This hypothesis, that homosexuality is caused by subconscious suggestion, I imagine will seem ridiculous to most ordinary heterosexuals, heterosexuals who, if they think about it all, attribute the cause of homosexuality to ‘a gay gene’ or to some aspect of the mother-child relationship in infancy. The inconvenient truth, though, is that a person’s sexuality can change. It is possible, although I admit this seems incredible, for a person’s sexual identity to be destabilized by something amounting to hypnosis. The hypothesis is disagreeable, yes, I admit, because it amounts to an attack on the idea of an inviolate Self, but this does not make if false.

Consider the following scenario. An eighteen year old male presents in the psychiatrist’s office with psychosis. He believes that God is talking to him though television advertisements and the newspaper. Perhaps there is a sexual component to his psychosis. The psychiatrist, out of malice perhaps, decides to diagnose the patient as a repressed homosexual and advises him to “stop avoiding”. The young man, who is in a highly vulnerable and suggestible state, understands the implication but is unable to fight back. Because it is oblique rather than direct, the patient cannot challenge his psychiatrist’s opinion. The ‘suggestion’ (and this is what it effectively is) does not have immediate effect, though.  Rather it worms its way into the young psychotic’s subconscious mind and lies dormant for a long time, perhaps for years, before erupting into a full blown sexual crisis at some later stage. By the time the crisis occurs, the original suggestion may well have been forgotten.

The Placebo effect can create illness as well as cure it.

This unpalatable hypothesis seems to be bourn out by the world. If you talk to Gay men, you often find out that they don’t know themselves why they are Gay – I think this supports my hypothesis. These men have forgotten the original suggestions that destabilized their identities; furthermore they reshape their memories to fit their current identity. Interestingly, I believe it is more intelligent people who are most susceptible to suggestion. Stephen Frye is no mental slouch and neither was David Foster Wallace. You may believe me an idiot for making the claim that something so apparently essential as sexual identity can be altered by subconscious suggestion, but the evidence is all around us – and is often found in popular music. I would adduce, for example, the song “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” by Faith No More and the song “Knives Out” by Radiohead – or, to pick a song from the Gay perspective instead, “Bang and Blame” by REM.  The unconscious mind is not separate from the situations in which its possessor finds himself and is collective rather than individual. Jung had a point.

You may wonder why I am interested in this topic. I feel I should confess that I have experienced psychosis myself – but the scenario I invented above is not autobiographical. For one thing, significantly, I was twenty-seven (not eighteen) when I first became ‘unwell’ and came to the attention of the psychiatrists. At the time, I had formed the delusional belief that the world was ruled by a massive conspiracy of closet homosexuals. I didn't tell anyone what I believed at this time. This was the Bush era. Perhaps my belief was credible. (I jest of course.) It is true, though, that my psychiatrist told me, at the first consultation, to ‘stop avoiding’ and I have hated him ever since.

I hope that disclosing this rather stupid episode in my history does not impugn my credibility as a scholar of film and literature. It was a long time ago now.