James Joyce is Crazy: common reaction to Finnegans Wake reading.
Crazy for James Joyce. Rock music lyrics, Beatlemania / The Beatles fans. Evlis Presley fans.
http://www.jamesjoyceencyclopedia.com/data/Madness/Madness%20&%20James%20Joyce.htm
In a diagnostic, which Mr. Ellmann does not like, Jung wrote that "the relationship of father and daughter was a kind of mystical identity or participation." Jung called Lucia "her father's anima inspiratrix." "Joyce's psychological style is definitely schizophrenic, with the difference, however, that the ordinary patient cannot help himself talking and thinking in such a way, while Joyce willed it and moreover developed it with all his creative forces.Which, incidentally explains, why he himself did not go over the border. But his daughter did, because she was no genius like her father, but merely a victim of the disease. In any other time of the past Joyce's work would never have reached the printers, but in our blessed XXth century it is a message, though not yet understood."
Jean and Joseph. J & J, teacher and student, student and teacher. Two experts in Joyce. In USA New York City and Hawaii. Ameiricans, outside Irish nationalism motives of Dublin storytelling. Just as Marshall McLuhan is outside Ireland.
Lecture I.1.5 - The Vitality of Myth has "schizophrenia" topic.
Lecture I.2.2 - The Inward Journey
Date: March 4, 1970. Venue: The Cooper Union. Location: New York, NY. Archive Number: L308.
excerpt:
I had lectured there the year before on mythology, and apparently Mr. Michael Murphy, the Director, thought there was some connection. But since I didn’t know anything at all about schizophrenia, I phoned and said, “Mike, I don’t know anything about schizophrenia. How would it be if I lectured on James Joyce?” And he said, “That would be fine.” “But,” he said, “I’d like you to lecture on schizophrenia just the same. And so I’m going to arrange for you and Dr. John Perry of San Francisco to give a dual talk, the two together, on schizophrenia.” Well in my youth I had had the great good fortune to kiss the blarney stone, which is worth seven Ph.D.s, and so I thought, “Okay, why not.”
Then Dr. Perry sent me a copy of a paper that he had written on schizophrenia that had been published in 1963 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. And to my great amazement I found that the imagery of the schizophrenic paralleled almost point for point the themes that I had rendered in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, back in 1949, which was based simply on a comparative study of mythology. It had nothing to do with psychoanalysis, or psychology, but it was simply a synthesis of the materials and imageries of the mythological traditions of mankind, delineating the main constant motifs that did appear in all. These are universal archetypal themes in the mythologies of mankind, and from this paper of Dr. Perry, I discover that they are produced spontaneously from the broken-off condition of a complete schizophrenia, complete psychosis, a person who has lost touch entirely with the context of his society and is functioning out of his own base. Very briefly, the main pattern is one of cut-off, or departure, from the local social order; a retreat inward—backward in time, as it were, and inward into the psyche; an encounter—a series of terrifying experiences; and finally, if fortunate, encounters of a symbolic kind that center, harmonize, give new courage to the individual; and then, a return journey. This is the pattern of the myth. This is the pattern that came up in these images of the psyche.
TRACK 2: The Schizophrenic Journey
Now it was Dr. Perry’s thesis that in certain kinds of schizophrenia, the best thing is to let the process continue, not to abort the psychosis—not to perform any psychiatric operations such as shock treatment or anything of the kind that will abort the psychosis—but to help the person along. In order to be helpful, however, the doctor has to understand the imagery of mythology. He has to understand what these signs and signals are that this person, totally out of contact with the rationally-oriented individual, is trying to bring forth in order to establish a contact. A psychosis from this point of view is an effort to recover and restore a lost balance. And let the person go, he has tipped over, but help him through.
Well, while I was out there, I had some very exciting—for me—conversations with Dr. Perry, and our dual statement—the talk we gave together—was for me a very great experience. And it started me thinking more and more about the immediate import of this material which I had been dealing with in a more or less scholarly, academic, personally enthusiastic way, but without any sense of its possible import for people in trouble today.
Vudei if Dr. John Wier Perry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PPg4LHuMnc
Free to the World Wide Web, 1970 audio lecture, one click away:
Why is the litary world, book world, reading and teaching worlds -- so afraid of this topic? So avoidant?
People are running around on social media every single day in year 2025 calling Donald Trump crazy, calling JD Vance crazy, calling Fox News HDTV audience crazy, calling MAGA polticial movement crazy, calling each other mentally sick, insane, crazy, all the time. Minute by minute on social systems.
Yet NOBODY wants to bring this Elephant into the Room. Of Politics / Governing and religion. Insane, mentall unwell,crazy.
Every minute of every day someone is posting on social media "demntia!" "senile!" "crazy!" about Fox News audience, Newsmax audience, Elon MUsk Twitter users, Donald Trump. Yet NOBODY is discussing these James Joyce media ecology / Marshall McLuhan media ecology issues!
University of Tornto published this in year 1962. Joseph Campbell was publishing this in 1970 as recorded by WNYC radio station.
Have we abandoned this self-awareness of science fiction storytelling? Of literacy, literature? And we are now in feedback loops of mocking science fiction fandom against science fiction fandom? Repeating, iterating like The Wake ending begins:
Februarhy 1912 is LONG before Finns Hotel in year 1923! Long before creating FInnegans Wake. The self-awareness of audience reactions to Quran science fiction stories. Bible science fiction stories, Torah science fiction stories, Upanishads science fiction stories, Buddha science fiction stories... Celtic science fiction stories... Monomyth patterns all (Page 581 Finnegans Wake)... was WELL KNOWN to James Joyce. Catholic vs. Protestant in Ireland: Peopel calling EACH OTHER { insane, crazy, idiot, mentally sick} for how to read ONE SINGLE common book / storybook, The Bible scieence fiction stories! The different techniques of clergy dress-up and cosplay! Calling each other insane, crazy, morons for having mutliple interpretations of poetry words of a science fiction story! James Joyce saw this in year 1912!
"To say that a great genius is half-mad, while recognizing his artistic prowess, is worth as much as saying that he was rheumatic, or that he suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical expression to which a balanced critic should pay no more heed than he would to the accusation of heresy brought by the theologian, or to the accusation of immorality brought by the public prosecutor." "Realism and Idealism in English Literature (Daniel Defoe - William Blake)," lecture, Università Popolare, Trieste (February 27-28, 1912), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry (Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-192-83353-7), page 179