PHYLLIS ROSE
449
describes many o f us will have experi enced. Madness is to Laing an
exaggera ti on, a chaoti c and imprisoning caricature, of an aliena tion
no t limited to the mad . T h e person ality h e call s schizoid does no t
experience itself as a unifi ed whole but is split in two fundamental
ways, in its rela ti on to the world, from whi ch it feels separa te, and in its
rela ti on to itself, for it is divided into two or more selves, a real self,
whi ch mu st rema in hidden , and a false self, whi ch must interact with
the world the rea l self does not trust. T he threshold of security is so low
for such a perso n , tha t everything outside seems a threat. The false self
goes through the motions of compli ance to the demands of that
threa tening world-fa ther, mother, husband, or wha tever-but eventu–
all y accumul ated h a tred against the person who has come to be seen as
a tyrant pours out. Love threatens loss of self, so that such people are
reluctant to love. T heir essential defense against the loss of self they so
much fear is to pretend tha t no self exi sts, to be anonymou s or
incognito , or to p retend to have no body. A schi zoid organiza ti on need
not degenera te into chaos; it is capable of creativity. Indeed , since love
is so diffi cult for such a person, life threatens to be meaningl ess
without some crea ti ve work. But of course, once the creative work is
fini shed, the hidden self is embodied and terribl y threatened by
exposure to the hostil e gaze of the world outside.
Woo lf noticed much of this in herself but expl ained it in her own
way. Sh e thought her insanity was inherited, and so,
to
some extent it
may h ave been , a geneti c predi sposition aggravated by the circum–
stances of earl y childhood. She al so thought she' d inherited a fear of
men which modul a ted into a di sgust with sex, and tha t seems highl y
unlikely. But if she ignored th e potenti al importance of her earli est
years in expl aining her inner makeup, she didn ' t ignore the effects on
her self-es teem of social conditi oning, of the trea tment accorded
women , whil e she was grow ing up. The "onto logical insecurity"
La in g evo kes is no t a probl em onl y of women , but in Woolf's mind the
peril s of identity were intima tely connected with her fema leness. She
saw how the self-confidence of men was systematicall y nurtured by
Briti sh society whereas women 's was almos t as sys tema ticall y a ttacked .
She became sen sitive to the minuets of ego in a group, quick
to
noti ce
coercion and manipul a ti on in any form. Much of wha t was hostil e in
the outside wo rld she identifi ed as pa tri archal. Many of h er personal
experi ences-her social and sexual bull ying by George Duckwo rth–
made sense to her as exp ress ions of patri archal hi gh -handedness.
Femini sm was her onl y accepta bl e way of sta ting publicl y the sense of
opp ress ion and persecuti on she suffered from. Since some of the
oppress ion she noted was rea l, femini sm became the po int a t whi ch her
