The Harrowed Path: A Journey Through Schizophrenia

By John DW MacDonald

The Harrowed Path describes the experience in 1972 of a 21 year old man struggling to come to terms with experiences diagnosed as Schizophrenia. It is a vivid and compelling account of events both within and out-with his fractured consciousness. The story describes the breakdown of all his normal ability and perception and their replacement with a terrifying, debilitating and self-destructive inner world. It depicts his extraordinary struggle and many lost battles. It describes the various types of help offered, both medical and non-medical. Finally it outlines the experience of his healing. All this takes place within the vivid landscapes of London, Gloucestershire and Hampshire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491823491

John DW MacDonald

John was born within a seafaring family in the cradle of the Hampshire Downs. First published in Hampshire Poets in 1969, he formed The Famous Five poetry group, publishing his poetry pamphlet ‘Turning’ in 1972. In 1975 he read to over 10,000 at the Windsor Free Festival. John’s unique 1985 translations of poems by Pushkin and Lermontov were published by ‘Chapman’. His narrative cycle “Change is my Name - A Poem in five Acts” - was performed at Edinburgh Folk Festival in 1989. “Two Brothers” was published in 2012 in Anglo Chilean News and on The Wounded Warrior website. John grew up experiencing trauma and mental illness at the heart of his family and was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early twenties. He devoted much of his subsequent life to supporting marginalised people as campaigner, advocate and policy specialist. He shaped policy and education for Scottish Government and local authorities on mental health, as well as playing a pivotal role in the development of minority ethnic carers’ services in Scotland. John and his wife Karen live in Dunfermline, Fife. He is the founder leader of ATCOR, a ground breaking community interest company engaging with key issues for marginalised people. In 2012 he launched the Alan Macdonald and Roderick Macdonald endowments in support of artists in Chile and the United Kingdom.

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2014 John DW Macdonald. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/17/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2351-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2350-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2349-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013917984

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Prelude

Vision Obscured

Part 1 – City

Part 2 – Country

Part 3 – Depths

Part 4 – Sea

Part 5 – Land

Epilogue

Conclusion

John DW Macdonald

Harrow:

(Oxford English Dictionary)

A heavy frame with iron teeth dragged over ploughed land, to break up clods, remove weeds, cover seeds etc.

Harrowing:

Distress greatly

This work is dedicated to the following people, whose help was crucial to my journey:

Rachad Field

Caroline Mann, Clare McKenna

The people in the van by the Reading slip road

Dr Cross

Hugh Tollemache

I would also like to express a special dedication to:

David Sheen

Mike Fitzgerald

Sian Winstanley

My mother, Joan Macdonald,

who knew how to cross into my world, walk beside me, and thus create the fragile bridge over which I could eventually return to the world of everyday life

Thanks are also due to:

Reverend Bill Hill, for contributing the foreword

Rhoda MacDonald, for recreating this text for electronic transfer

Margaret Nicholas, for her invaluable improvements in title and format

Anne Macdonald, who helped me believe in my poetry once again

Anne-Marie Child, for helping me make a crucial decision about narrative style

Mike Brown and Christina Naismith, for giving me, among many things, the Beowulf

Shirley Harkness

Who improved key phrases

and enabled me to finalise the publication

And my wife Karen Macdonald, for her constant love, support, and playful joy

"Come, Come, Whoever You Are

Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

It doesn’t matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, even if you have broken your vow

A thousand times

Come, yet again, come, come."

Jalaludin Rumi

1207-1273

Balkh—Afghanistan

Poem displayed in the dining room

at Beshara—Swyre Farm

Summer 1972

Foreword

In The Harrowed Path, John Macdonald, through his narrative and perceptive poetry, takes us along a journey, the impact and consequences of which he narrates with courage, insight, and intelligence.

Some have described our pathway through life in terms of a journey or pilgrimage—that the obstacles we encounter along the way can test us to the extreme, often forming what appears to be an impenetrable roadblock. To negotiate those shadows and to emerge on the far side into light, we must often endure a dislocation and sense of lost-ness, which appears to separate us from all familiar reference points.

At such times, it often becomes apparent that, in order to survive, the encouragement and understanding of others is both beneficial and sustaining. It is one of the marking posts along life’s way that circumstance, accidental encounter, or, as some would believe, an other-ness places in our way a healing that is the human touch. Humanity is a community that can heal as well as destroy. Only it must recognise the ability and dare to use it.

In this book John Macdonald traces his personal journey from which he draws conclusions about the mysterious world of the mind and its well-being and from which we can expand our understanding.

Reverend William Hill, Edinburgh

Introduction

Forty-two years have elapsed since the extraordinary, life-shattering events described within these pages. Twenty-seven years ago I began to write the description of these events before participating on an individual, professional, political, and educational basis in the world of mental health, human rights, service provision, community development, and staff training.

However, it was not the literature of the world of mental health, with its diverse attitudes and imperatives, but the world of literature itself that was the catalyst for me to draw together the description of events which occurred in 1972 with the poetry I had written at that time. Eighteen years ago I received, as a present from close friends, a copy of the late Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. As a result I began to look with a new light on the many poems I had written, virtually without knowing it, during a period in which I had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

I began to see that a quite separate set of events, mythic and dynamic, was emerging through this poetry, a world more akin to the landscape of Beowulf than the desperate and psychotic nightmare world of my conscious mind. Within this mythic world, a human journey was unfolding with a landscape more ancient than any literature, which, I felt, touched on many fundamental questions as to the meaning of our lives—issues which have been for many years unfashionable to name explicitly within poetry—consigning them to indirect reference through the disguise of imagery.

However, it is very much the meaning of Life, Death, Love, Work, and Hell which can dominate the minds of people diagnosed with schizophrenia, whereby they may seek, in ways which seem incomprehensible, to offer a common heritage to other people who are usually scared, unwilling, and unable to enter into dialogue. Someone with this diagnosis has habitually been depicted in well-used manuals as being incapable of communication.

Indeed, it was the contention of