The Birth of Tragedy: Family, Social and Spiritual Sciences

Hidden Valley Road: The Despair and Hope of a Schizophrenic Family

Robert Cork / by Huang Qi / Translation

CITIC Publishing Group, Synopsys Culture October 2021

The family is not only a hotbed of disease, but also a sanatorium for the soul. In Hidden Valley Road: The Despair and Hope of a Schizophrenic Family, Robert Cork describes the lamentable Calvin family in a remarkable stroke, many of the 14 children born of decent parents Dorne and Mimi suffering from schizophrenia, and the children's broken hearts are like a hammer, shattering the beautiful mirror image of this middle-class home.

Colk writes the multidimensional characteristics of "home" with a delicate and moving narrative, showing the struggle and tearing between "heart" and "family". In addition, "social thought" and "spiritual science" are also important dimensions of Cork's exploration of the causes of tragedy, the former reflecting the impact of social trends on the individual, and the latter characterizing the position and image of "people" in science. Under the reflection of these three dimensions, the "family tragedy" of the Calvin family has the breadth of "social tragedy" and the depth of "human tragedy", and has become an important case of social analysis, and "the broken heart and the clutch of the family" are the most important factors. It can be said that Cork uses a family tragedy to project the attention of the eye and the brushstroke of discourse into the vast field between the mind and society, presenting the reader with a work that integrates literary narrative, social documentary and spiritual scientific inquiry.

There is no doubt that Kolk is facing a human tragedy: a child of a family of parents with a decent social identity who has schizophrenia is quite likely to fall ill. For anyone, this is an unacceptable blow to life. The reason behind this human tragedy is both confusing and makes people feel passionate about it. As a writer with investigative journalist experience, Robert Colk confronted events with a calm attitude, revealing the "birth of tragedy" in three dimensions: family, society and spiritual science.

The family is the main cause of this tragedy, and Colk starts with the children's parents, Dorn and Mimi, to describe and show their character traits.

Born into a wealthy family with an enviable childhood, Mother Mimi was a typical white male who had fought in the war, had a proud heart and an almost innate desire for control, and earned a doctorate in political science on her own abilities and interests. But behind these glamorous social identities, there is a little-known life cripple — Mimi's biological father suddenly disappeared at an early age, which made her so eager for a stable and beautiful life that when she became an adult, the golden childhood shone repeatedly in the darkest moments of her life. But what she provided was not the confidence to continue living and the courage to face the suffering, but the reason to escape, "whenever she was not satisfied, Mimi would think back to the dreamy childhood of New York and the glorious family history of Houston to cover up the sad clouds in front of her."

This almost anxious anticipation of the future good and the unknowable, or even self-aware escapism, directly affected her attitude towards her children: she was almost fanatical about having children, but she was unable to fulfill her mother's responsibilities to the best of her ability. Mimi and Dorne have a total of 14 children, which is beyond the average family composition in either country. For Mimi, the fundamental purpose of choosing to have so many children is not out of love for life, but to cover up her own crippled life experience, "she always feels abandoned, and now she can personally create someone to accompany her.".

Mimi ignores an important fact, that is, the huge gap between "birth", "raising" and "teaching", "having a lot of children, and being a mother with ease, are two different things". It is also in this "huge gap" that Mimi, as a mother, is busy and makes mistakes. In the face of sick children and bullied children in the family, she did not do a good job of soothing the children's hearts, "she has never been on the side of healthy children before, and now she will not." This directly caused damage to the children's hearts, and Margaret did not want to go home to face these "families" for the rest of her life. Fundamentally, this is still Mimi's escapist psychology, before "childhood" was her refuge to deal with real problems, and now "illness" is her excuse to calm down conflicts, but this excuse is like a spike, deeply rooted in the hearts of children.

In the dimension of society, Cork relates the tragedy of the Calvin family to the social trends of the time that were "countercultural", and discovers the little-noticed impact of the "countercultural" movement on the "family" and the daily lives of ordinary individuals. The "countercultural" movement that erupted in the 1960s and 1970s was an important part of the modern cultural and social history of the West, and most people paid attention to the freedom demand and liberation potential in it, but paid little attention to the nihilistic undercurrents that surged in them and the negative impact on the spirit of young people. In the case of "psychodigarchy" alone, many theorists have put a halo of "struggle" over it, but instead regard "family" as a "metaphor for authoritarianism"; they ignore the more important fact that "schizophrenia" is essentially a disease, a disease that brings endless sorrow and suffering to patients and their families. It is in this cognitive imbalance that "families in dire need of treatment, such as the Calvins, are abandoned as collateral victims of the culture wars."

In the dimension of spiritual science, Colk shows the repression of "science" against "patients," as exemplified by Peter's encounter. He lived a regular life in a nursing home, receiving intensive treatment, one of which was "electric shock shock"; when recalling life in the nursing home, Peter mentioned that "they would make me dizzy and cold me with oxygen"; the endless medication aggravated his mental tension, so that the sad ending of "treatment exhausted Peter's energy" appeared.

Under the comprehensive perspective of the three dimensions, the causes of this tragedy can surface, and the personality of the parents, the influence of society, the dislocation treatment of spiritual science and other factors have pressed the acceleration button for the mental collapse of the patient and the internal crisis of the family. In Colk's account, the three are not parallel, but intersect and merge with each other.

Each chapter of Hidden Valley Road is like telling a fascinating story, and the "opening" is particularly exciting. For example, the opening chapter 40, "The day before my mother's funeral, the July class day is inflammatory." This reminds me of the opening chapter of Camus's The Outsider, in which "Mother", "Funeral", "The Day Before", "July", "Scorching Sun", each group of words is a narrative factor, tempting the reader into a different narrative world. In a soothing narrative tone, Colk writes about Peter, who lives in a nursing home, about his sister Lindsay picking him up for his mother's funeral, describing peter's "patient" characteristics and the effectiveness of the "treatment" he received, and the unforgettable mantra "I fully cooperate." Cork uses this detail to place the image of a cautious, trembling, obedient patient in front of the reader's eyes; then, when he gets what he wants, he is happy like a child who does not know the world. Such a contrast makes people feel tight, full of bitterness and helplessness. At his mother's funeral, the eldest brother, Donald, has been completely taken prisoner of disease and lives in his own world like a drowning man. He could no longer comprehend the "death" of his mother, who in his mind was still a five-month-old baby who lived in the sea with an octopus.

Colk used an empirical attitude of "documentary" and "scientific" to describe the people and events of the Calvin family. Whether it is the personal experiences of father Dorn and mother Mimi, or the life experiences and life states of the 14 children, or the history of spiritual science interspersed with them, Cork selects materials and lays out narratives in an empirical way. In His Acknowledgments, he expressed his gratitude to the Calvin family and the doctors, especially as Lindsay provided him with a wealth of first-hand material and family secrets for his writing. It is because of such meticulous material that Colk's narrative has such real and powerful emotional power. This power injects a super-plucked charm into his writing, which not only allows him not to immerse himself in the tragic reality of the world, but to feel the return of his family and the blessing of humanity in the struggle between the heart and the family.

Lindsay, the youngest child of the Calvin family, whose original name was Mary, chose to change her name in order to heal her inner wounds, hoping to start a new life. Her sister Margaret is also a "victim" of her family, being fostered by her parents in other families at an early age, and the trauma of childhood is an eternal hidden pain in her heart. They had the same regrettable childhood, but the sisters took very different attitudes towards their original family. Lindsay chose to return to the family, take care of her sick brother, and provide information about her family to the society, hoping that her modest efforts would contribute to the progress of spiritual science and the improvement of the patient's life; Margaret chose to run her own family and maintain distance contact with her brothers and sisters.

Cork takes a "either-or" approach to the sisters' choices, never taking sides or criticizing them in the narrative. In his writing, the sisters are both victims of childhood trauma and survivors of childhood trauma; they heal their broken and throbbing hearts in their own way, and they all deserve respect and care. However, we can still feel that Colk has a deeper respect for Lindsay, as Lindsay herself said, "Everyone should respect each other's choices." We survived, and everyone's lives are different, but there is nothing wrong with that."