When Steinem was three years old, her mother Ruth, then aged 34, had a "nervous breakdown" that left her an invalid, trapped in delusional fantasies that occasionally turned violent. She changed "from an energetic, fun-loving, book-loving" woman into "someone who was afraid to be alone, who could not hang on to reality long enough to hold a job, and who could rarely concentrate enough to read a book."[5] Ruth spent long periods in and out of sanatoriums for the mentally disabled. Steinem was only ten years old when her parents finally separated in 1944. Her father went to California to find work, while she and her mother continued to live together in
…I see it as the brain and human mind’s limitations, an incapacity to continue to repress painful life experiences. I suffered anxiety, panic attacks and agoraphobia prior to my nervous breakdown. Most of my personality problems were rooted in experiences that were never known to my parents and which I did not understand because I was so young. As my behavior continued my peers grew more distant and I felt isolated and then sought to be with people who were more like me. This included people who used alcohol and drugs and were basically abusive to themselves. I was being swept in a direction I did not want my life to go and I was helpless for a long period of time to turn it around.
Most recently I discovered some of my inability to focus on a task, my paranoia and other similar experiences were coming from people who were writing novels claiming to be helping me. They were distorting my reality or failing to manage the fearful content from films I may have viewed. I have documented many comments and dialogue from these individuals talking to me in an attempt to collect a story, etc.
There may be an art to writing but I must tell you there is an even finer art to screwing with someone else’s mind. I found Carl Jung to be helpful and I also read a good bit of My Mother Myself.
