Introduction and Commentary by Richard Wesley, B.A.(Hons.)
The ideas of the late British psychiatrist R.D Laing concerning the etiology of "mental illness" (he preferred to use the term "madness") can be considered controvertial by modern conventional perspectives on the subject. Laing contributed richly to the understanding and "humanizing" of a taboo subject. His ideas of madness as a "journey" and his ascription meaningful qualities to what would otherwise be deemed symptoms of psychosis made mental illness a condition of humanity and inferred its relation to the nature of all "sane" people's thinking (this list is underscored the ideas that were the basis of my own undergraduate research study at the University of Winnipeg that attributions about others are created by our own state of ontological security or insecurity). The lynchpin to Laing's ideas on how madness manifests in an individual is the way in which communication and confusions of communication effect the deeper metacommunication of ourselves to the rest of the world. The communications which affect us first in life and are of the most impactful significance are naturally those within the family, in particular those between parent and child. In these days when mental illness is considered largely in terms of biogenetic influences the phenomenon comes to be treated in the same way as mental retardation or autism is.The intention of this being to "remove the stigma", to make the individual and family not responsible for something they seemingly can't change anyway. Though there may be a good humane argument for retaining such a perspective it yields us little in ultimately coming to an understanding of what madness is, how it may originate, and what is the nature of psychotic ideation, if we are prepared to accept the basic proposal of Laing that that madness is a rich phenomenon and not merely a form of living coma. Also it detracts from what I feel to be great insights into the way normal think by way of people who can speak from beyond the realm of well-honed social scripts. Psychiatrists like Laing have argued that the diagnostic category of schizophrenia is a largely baseless designation, that clear symptoms for this 'illness' not apparent. This being the case, perhaps we can think of schizophrenia as a furthest extention of our alienation from the world of others, and being so akin to transient states which 'normals' can also can experience by way of hallucinogenic drug use, dream states, 'freudian slips', or illnesses like epilepsy (which Dostoyevsky cited as a modus of 'vision').
I was working in my last weeks of a year contract as an English teacher in Pusan, South Korea when I met Han. As I walked in the underpass near the Chagalchi market a wirey young Korean man began walking beside me. His first words were,"I've been following you". Expecting the normal accosting the nature of "hello, my name is...where do you come from...how do you think about Korea" I was naturally shocked from own normal rountine of "Richard...Canada....it's nice". He told me that he needed to talk to me, but he didn't want to talk in front of all these "Koreans". He had something important to show me, his biography. I was quite fascinated and so agreed to meet him in two days. It was at this time that he gave me the writings herein and he let me make copies of them. We were to meet four more times before I left Korea and talked. Through these conversations I got a lot of insight into the world of this young man who asked me to call him 'Han', a shortened anglisized version of his Korean name. Our last meeting I let him stay at my apartment for the night, it was a show of trust that he truly took to heart. That night I taught him how to play western card games, a thing which was truly moving for one so anxious to escape the Korean cultural fabric in some way.
Over the course of our meetings I developed my own ideas about Han. If he were analyzed by a western psychiatrist he would probably bear out a diagnosis like "paranoid schizophrenic". In my own mind I consider him to be a young man who in some way found himself outside of his immediate family nexus, social nexus, and to some extent, though not at all entirely, his cultural nexus, his "being a Korean". He is extremely intelligent and sensitive and due to whatever actual experiential, "dialogical" reasons these qualities came to be used solely in the service of defending his being on its most basis levels. His every thought seems to be bent on the urgency of protecting himself against others and affirming his basic truths about the nature of the reality between him and them. The situation of normal dialogue just with great difficulty enters the world between me and Han, though never when we are in a social forum.
It shouldn't be considered that I think of Han merely as a psychological curiosity, made especially fascinating given his own insights about the cultural backdrop of his life. I have now an active interest in Han as a person and plan to meet him again at the McDonalds in downtown Pusan soon upon my return to Korea. I consider him a friend and intent to begin understanding his world better and getting him to appreciate mine. I certainly do not think of him as a person with a "disorder" or "defect" but rather as one whose ultimate stuggles in life are the same as my own. Life is a dialogue (as theologian Martin Buber would put it) and we are all on a journey whose path is walked through are relations with others, our society, and the world.
The content of Han's writings are immediately fascinating given the inexhorably dark feel of them and the intense alienation which he seemed to experience. There are certain themes that run through them about feces and the horrors of the body, the ubiquitousness of his own persecution, senseless violence, the rigidness of Korean cultural norms and hypocrisy in the face of them. At this point I won't go into any greater personal analysis of Han's writings. I'll let the reader discover for him or herself what they can from his writings. He gave them to me with the intention that I show them to as many people as possible, though his intention can't be said to be immediately the same as my own. I think it should be kept in mind that this disclosure should not be taken as a testament condemning those around Han who he grew up with, as the "facts" of his life are largely colored by his appreciation of them and his subsequent ontological needs in portraying them. Nor should this be seen as an indictment of Korean society, though it does give some real insights into how cultural norms can frustrate the intentions of individuals, especially in childhood.