Stories
The story of
the Stevenson family
In the summer of 1957, working on Cape Cod for the summer before going away to college in New York, I repeatedly tried to kill myself. The first time, I swam out into Nantucket Sound, thinking that I would swim until I drowned, but it was a beautiful sunny day with the sun sparkling on the waves and I ran into a big fish. It was so remarkable that I decided to rethink my decision.
One night, unable to sleep because of mosquitos, I walked toward the main house of Bonnie Dune and was struck by a terrifying hallucination. The street lights and trees seemed to close over a vision of me on a surgery table - an image of death. I was so frightened, I shook like a leaf for what seemed like hours.
Another time, when I was alone at Camp Bonnie Dune, I ran maybe 20 miles or so to the east and swam out onto the desolate peninsula of Monomoy that runs south from Chatham into the sea. For several days I lived in the dunes, digging a well for fresh water in the sand and eating raw shellfish. After a couple of nights I ran back to Camp Bonnie Dune where no one had been there to miss me. I later described this in the first chapter of my novel, Master of the House.
But then it turned more serious. I parked the car I was using, an old studebaker, on an abandoned drive in the middle of the cape, ran a hose from the exhaust into the car and prepared to die. Eventually I passed out from the fumes in the car, but as I did so, in primeval unconscous life-wish took over and, though I cannot remember it, I must have opened the door, crawled back to the road where I was found. This time it was a case for the police and my parents came from Missouri.
What should be done? Why had I done this?
The police wanted me committed to a mental hospital, but Dwight Rogers, for whom I was working, suggested that I go see his acquaintance George Wilbur who was a retired psychoanalyst.
Dr Wilbur lived on the other side of Bass River, so I would go there for appointments by canoe, docking the canoe and walking through his extensive landscaped gardens of heather to his old vine-covered house and his study which was so filled with piles of books that you could hardly maneuver or even see between them.
Dr Wilbur did not analyze me. I did not lie down on a couch. Instead, we simply held fascinating discussions about psychology and human nature and history based on whatever he was reading at the moment and his history with psychoanalysis. He had gone to Vienna after World War I to study with Freud but was "given" to Otto Rank, Freud's pupil instead. Later, coming back to the States, he had helped to found the Boston Psychoanalytic Association.
My experience with Dr Wilbur left a lasting impression and confirmed my self-image as that of a true intellectual. He got me back on my feet and whetted my appetite to go to the university, so when September came, I said farewell and went to Columbia to begin my studies, although I continued to exchange letters with him for several years (I still keep those letters as a treasure from my past). Over the next few years I would continue my analysis in New York, but without ever gaining any understanding of why I had been suicidal. The one clue that I recall was telling my mother just before I went to the Cape that summer that I had fallen in love with Vee, and then I broke down and wept in front of her as if I had betrayed her by falling in love with someone else.
With my mother at age 19
Almost 50 years later, looking back on it, I see that I went to the extreme of the American culture of "individualism." I came to the point that I believed that my life belonged solely to me and that I had the right to do what I wanted with it, including to destroy it. I read recently that a high proportion of adolescents in the United States try or consider trying to commit suicide. Why adolescents and why the United States? Adolescents, I suppose, because that is the point that you leave the family (in the context of which all your decisions had been made) and strike out "on your own." And United States, I suppose, because our society is at an extreme of individualism. Of course, all societies need to manage the transition from family to adulthood in some way. In prehistory this was managed with special initiation rites for young men as warriors and young women as preparation for marriage, whereas our society does not have such formal transition rites and the adolescent is left to fend for himself or herself, often under very confusing influences. Certainly that was true in my case, as I explored in my first novel, Master of the House.
And it was 40 years later, finally realizing my error, that I apologized to my brother and sister, to whom I owed my life as much as to anyone else. It was very late because they had suffered greatly as a result, especially my sister who had become suicidal in her turn. At critical turning points later in life, I would make decisions that hurt those around me, such as leaving the US to go to the Soviet Union at one point and to Paris and UNESCO, at another point. But, at least in the latter case, I believed that I acted out of higher responsibility to the people of the world, and not just responsibility to myself.
And it was 55 years later as I went for therapy with Dr Joel Allison for several years after the split and divorce from Lindsay that I came to understand more of what had happened preceding the suicide. Once again, I recalled vividly how I came home from the Science Talent Search in Washington around my 18th birthday and, sitting at the kitchen table, I told my mother I had fallen in love with Vee and then broke down in tears as if I had betrayed her by loving someone else. And then, later, perhaps even more important, I also began to recall my oedipal relationship with my father when I was 18. My father, it seemed to me, had failed as a scientist, while I, now, was succeeding at the highest level as a scientist. Unconsciously, I must have felt that I had murdered him to obtain the attentions of my mother. Hence I deserved to die!
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme