Virginia Woolf's Psychological Condition and its Reflection in Professional Activity - Research Paper Example

Psychology Research Proposal 2007 Introduction: Is it a mere coincidence that so many of famous feminist suffered from mental diseases E.g., researching the history of illness of a British modernist and one of the first prominent feminist writers Virginia Woolf and analyzing her biography and evidence from her relatives and friends in detail, Malcolm Ingram reaches a conclusion that the symptoms revealing themselves in her state clearly show she suffered from cyclothymia (affective insanity or manic-depressive psychosis). (Ingram 2001) Elke Bruens pinpoints the fact that a German novelist Marlen Haushoffer described the manslaughter from the murderer's position in her novel "The Wall", and her emotional state (as it can be derived from the emotional state of her character) at the point of the death of victim can be characterised as inspiration and happiness. (Bruens 1998, 25) Charlotte Perkins Gilman is also believed to have described herself and her own psychopathic state in her story The yellow wallpaper. Such examples are many, and the researchers have long ago established a connection obviously existing between creativity and 'madness': Many eminently creative individuals have been retrospectively diagnosed with mood disorders, suggesting relationships between creativity and affective disorders. Jamison (1989) described several research paradigms used to study relationships between mood disorders and creativity. A common approach uses historical and biographical studies to provide anecdotal evidence for high rates of affective illness in eminently creative individuals, suggesting artists and writers may have a 2-3-fold more psychosis, mood disorders and suicide compared to people in less creative professions. (Simeonova et. al 2005) Basing on the research conducted by Andreasen who studied for over fifteen years the members of the writing workshop at the Iowa University, K. Jamison who studied 47 British writers and artists, A. M. Ludwig who had done a biographical survey of 1,005 important 20th-century writers, artists and other creative people, etc. M. Ingram states that '[t]he writers had a substantially higher rate of mental illness, predominantly affective, with a tendency towards bipolar attacks'. (Ingram 2001) The study of Guastello et. al showed that cyclothymia is extremely highly represented among creative people. (2004) Different studies have demonstrated "relationships between creativity and bipolar disorder (BD) in individuals, and suggested familial transmission of both creativity and BD". (Simeonova et. al 2005) Hershman and Lieb researched "the often turbulent lives and careers" of talented people, linking their psychological state and manic depression they suffered from to their creativity, and demonstrating "how manic-depressive disorder often becomes the essential difference between talent and genius and offers insights into the obstacles and problems this illness posed for highly creative people in all fields". (Hershman & Lieb 1998) As it can be clearly seen, there are two basic approaches to investigating the psychic states of writers establishing the connection between their creativity and mood disorders, one being based predominantly upon their biographies and other records of their lives, and another - on assessing living creative people. Yet, we presume that one more approach might prove effective as far as researching the link between bipolar disorder and creativity is concerned, and namely - textual analysis of the works of writers. In our research we are planning to concentrate on the works of Virginia Woolf. Modern science being anthropocentric, literary text should be studied taking into account social and psychological peculiarities of its author. Thus, we presume that the evidence for the writer's state can be collected from her texts, above all novels and essays. Manic-depressive disorder is a disease that usually reveals itself in periodic changes of manic and depressive phases separated from each other by intermissions - "stable" periods of life when a patient does not experience any symptoms of the bipolar mood illness. In the manic phase, people seem to be happy, and are constantly in the state of 'blissful carelessness', during which they can do different kinds of jobs easily, everything seems interesting for them, and they are never tired. In a depressive stage, people normally have problems with comprehension and mental work, they are in a low mood and often even in despair, with nothing evoking their interest. (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 2004) The depressive stage of the disorder is normally characterizes by the lack of energy; and as evidence from V. Woolf's friends and relatives show, during these periods she lost all her vigour and liveliness, and was likely to sit or lay still for hours on end, unable to do or write anything. It has also been noticed that people suffering from manic depression are much more prone to suicide than the rest of individuals (Simon et. al 2007), and that is how the writer's life ended - she drowned herself in the river. Though it is a known fact that Virginia Woolf wrote only in the periods of the relative stability, when she did not suffer from depression, her texts clearly reflect the experiences she had during the attacks of her illness, i.e. thoughts of death and suicide that penetrate her novels (especially Mrs Dalloway, The Waves and To the Lighthouse) that are characteristic of bipolar disorder. Art and creativity were for V. Woolf the only way to escape from her illness, and this also reflected in the imagery and content of her texts. "Woolf dissolved the distinctions between sanity and insanity, expressing this through the theme of insanity versus visionary capabilities, which is particularly well developed in Mrs Dalloway". (Johnson 1994) In her novels, V. Woolf is believed to have described many of her own hallucinations (like, for example, the hallucinations of Septimus Warren-Smith from Mrs Dalloway reflect her own state as described in her autobiographic sketches). "Woolf refers to consciousness as a web, and yet evokes the three functions of personality - thinking, feeling, and willing - in separate contexts in the characterization of her early works and she attends closely to her characters' states of consciousness". (Johnson 1994) Our research proposal is based upon textual analysis of V. Woolf's novels and essays, and above all, on the presumption that her choice of colour lexemes reflects the individuality of the writer and her psychological state. Having rooted in the XIX century (when Goethe wrote his works about colours (Storm's Nest; Goethe 1987)), the studies of colour have now developed into a e science that researches colours as well as their influence upon the human mind and state. Though the meanings of colours are sometimes different in various cultures, the majority of them have archetypical meanings (K.-G. Jung). Max Lscher created his famous colour test that allows to make conclusions about psychological state of people on the basis of their colour preferences. Basing on the presumption that the core element of the process of each colour acquiring a certain meaning is a deeply rooted connection between the psychic processes happening in human mind and the length of the light wave, Max Lscher synthesized all the data about psychological influence of colours and created for each of them a list of effects they produce upon the human organism. The researcher proved that the psychological code of each colour is objective, and his famous test is based upon the fact that the choice of colours reflects mood, state, and stable personality traits of people. (Lscher). hPinpointingment and explaining ation ofcertain relation connection existing between V. Woolf's frame of mind and her colour preferences is a point of considerable interest; therefore we proceed from the assumption that it is possible and reasoned to make certain conclusions as for her personality grounding on the frequency of colour lexemes used in her texts. Methods Participants The study will be conducted on the basis of textual research of V. Woolf's novels - The Voyage Out (1915), Night and Day (1919), Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), The Years (1937) and Between the Acts (1941). All these refer to different periods of the writer's creative work, yet she is proved to suffer from the bipolar disorder ever since she was very young, so we presume that in each of these novels we will find traces of her illness. Measures Quantitative research - calculation of the number of colour lexemes belonging to each group of basic colours included into Max Lscher's short colour test. Max Lscher's Short Colour Test - Max Lscher's short colour test is a psychological test designed on the basis of meanings of colors and widely used in the spheres of psychology and psychiatry for determining both unconscious and conscious characteristics of people. Design and Procedure We find it possible to study the personality of Virginia Woolf of the basis of analysis of her colour preferences. Doing this, we will analyse the frequency of colour lexemes in V. Woolf's novels and essays using the codes and meanings of colours introduced by M. Lscher: 0 grey, 1 blue, 2 green, 3 red, 4 yellow, 5 violet/purple, 6 brown, 7 black, + preferred colours, positively accepted colours, = neutral colours, - rejected colours. (Lscher) As it is seen from this scheme, M. Lscher's table only includes certain shades of each basic group of colours. We will group the colour lexemes found in Virginia Woolf's text in accordance with these seven basic groups. E.g., the 'grey' group will contain such lexemes as grey, dove-grey, dun-coloured, grey-haired, steel, shadow, shade, shaded, ashen pale, pale grey, silver-grey, etc. The lexemes that have a low frequency in the text and whose belonging to a certain group of colours can hardly be estimated (oyster-coloured, topaz, bruised), as well as those created by the author (yellow-blue) will not be taken into consideration, and only those lexemes will be counted that can be included into the groups of colours proposed by M. Lscher. The frequency of colour lexemes will be presented in the form of a table and analyzed using quantitative method. Results Basing on the frequency if colour lexemes used by Virginia Woolf in her novels and essays, we will try to study some individual traits and personal characteristics of the prominent modernist writer, as well as her psychological state in the periods when these works were written. All in all, we expect quite stable colour preferences with the domination of grey and black. The preference of grey means, according to M. Lscher, the rejection of social contacts and fatigue. We also expect low frequency of the brown colour since neglect of this colour symbolizes rejection of the importance of sexual relations, their lack in real life and striving to the ideal (characteristic of V. Woolf). Judging from the biographic evidence about the writer, her state was generally characterized by increased impulsiveness, sensitivity, anxiety, striving to escape from problems, being unsure of herself, tension, hyper-excitability, intellectual and aesthetic sensitivity, rejection pf social contacts, and stubbornness. These are mostly characteristic of a depressive stage of bipolar disorder, and since the writer often got ideas for her novels during the attacks of her illness, this could influence the choice of colour lexemes she used. Discussion The possible limitations to our study is the fact that studying colour lexemes in the structure of a literary text inevitably evokes the question whether the perception of one and the same colour is the same for the writer and every of readers, as well as the question whether the colours created by author with the help of lexical means of the language are identical to the colours of the real world. In her novel Orlando, V. Woolf herself states that it is hardly possible for the writer to recreate the colours of nature in a textual form: 'Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.' (Woolf 2003, 7) However, we presume that the associations that lexical denotations of colours evoke in human mind are close to those evoked by the colours themselves, since the psychic process of reflecting colour in language is bidirectional - reading the text, a person decodes the colour lexemes. Moreover, since the archetypical meanings of colours are identical, the influence of these colours upon both reader and writer is similar. Apart from this, possible limitations to the research are caused by the fact that in the 'small' Lscher's test, meticulously selected shades of colours are used, not 'clear' primary tones. Also, V. Woolf's choice of colours can be conditioned not only by her own preferences and/or state, but also by literary tradition of the epoch, as well as demands to create particular imagery. All in all, notwithstanding the mentioned limitations that can affect the precision of the research, we consider the study of V. Woolf's colour preferences on the basis of textual analysis of her novels and essays utilizing the method of Lscher to be important for understanding the psychic state of the writer. As far as the possibilities for future research are concerned, further investigation of colour lexemes in Virginia Woolf's texts can be conducted so that to study the way the writer's frame of mind (and her illness in particular), as well as her social position (she was one of the first to openly state that women should be given the opportunities for self-actualization), and her personal preferences (homosexuality) influenced her colour preferences. References 1. Bruens, E. (1998), Aussenstehend, ungelenk, kopfber weiblich: psychosexuelle Autorpositionen bei Marlen Haushofer, Marieluise Fleier und Ingeborg Bachmann, Weimar & Metzler, Stuttgart. 2. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (1994) 4th Ed. Available online: 3. Goethe, J.W. von. Zur Farbenlehre. In: Werke, Kommentare und Register, Band 13, Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften I, Hamburg: Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bnden, 1987. - p. 315-322. 4. Guastello, S. J., Guastello, D. D., Hanson, C. A. (2004) "Creativity, mood disorders, and emotional intelligence", Journal of creative behaviour, 38(4), 260-281 5. Hershman, D. J., Lieb, J. (1998), Manic depression and creativity, Prometheus Books, New York. 6. Hillard, E. B., (1992), Manic-Depressive Illness. Royal Columbian Hospital, New Westminster, B.C. Available online: 7. Ingram, Malcolm. "Virginia Woolf: Psychiatric History." 2001. 10 Feb. 2006 8. Johnson, G. M. (1994), "'The Spirit of the Age': Virginia Woolf's response to second wave psychology", Twentieth Century Literature, 40 (2), 139 - 152. 9. Lscher, . (2000), Colour personality test, Harvest, London. 10. Simeonova, D. I., Chang, K. D., Strong, C. & Ketter, T.A., (2005, November), "Creativity in familial bipolar disorder", Journal of Psychiatric Research, 39 (6), 623-631. 11. Simon, N. M, Zaltaa, A.K., Ottob, M.W., Ostacher, M.J., Fischmann, D., Chow, C.W., Thompson, E. H., Stevens, J.C., Demopulos, C.M., Nierenberg, A.A & Pollack, M. H. (2007, April-June) "The association of comorbid anxiety disorders with suicide attempts and suicidal ideation in outpatients with bipolar disorder", Journal of Psychiatric Research, 41 (3 - 4), 255-264. 12. Storm's Nest: Goethe on Newton's Theory of Colours, 2000. Available online: 13. Woolf, V. Orlando. - Chatham: Wordsworth Classics, 2003. - 166 p. Read More