A Letter from Oliver Sacks after Visiting Windhorse

Dear Michael,

More thanks than I can say, and to all of you, for letting us visit you, talk to some of your clients, and get a good idea of what an extraordinary venture WINDHORSE is—I could not have got this sense adequately without actually visiting it …

I have been transcribing some of my scribbled notes, and thinking about the five people I saw … J., A., G., C., and D., and how utterly different and (in their so-different ways) intriguing they all were. Seeing people in their ‘homes’ on Saturday was quite as crucial (perhaps more so) than seeing them in the office—I have always felt that ‘house-calls’ were the most valuable. (And I have viewed the tape—and read all the papers you were kind enough to put together for me). I think it was very important that, after my years in the depressing (and often horrible) wards of a State Hospital, I was able to see a deeply hopeful, deeply different, enterprise like Windhorse—where there is no sense of an inexorably advancing organic disease (tho’ the organic is no more denied than the precipitants and contexts of illness), but of a condition which, while it may be lifelong (in terms of an underlying vulnerability or propensity) is one which can be understood, fought, worked with, controlled, essentially by humans means (tho a little drug-assistance may be needed sometimes), and in a way which will allow a full and happy life —

J. put it very well when he said (I asked him whether he had wholly ‘recovered,’ whether he felt it was now ‘all over’): “Having a schizophrenic break and ‘recovered’ you have to spend the rest of your life ‘managing’ it, learning to recognize its intimations and ruses, the dark and cunning—powers still in the mind … It is my belief that they are still there. 40% of my mind is schizophrenic, but there is 60% which watches and fights back” … D. too spoke of ‘perpetual vigilance’ … a life, in some ways, spent on ‘the edge’ … The business of motives is very complex—for although, clearly, most of your people want to ‘function,’ life fully in the world, have relationships, work, be imaginatively free and creative … yet they have also seen (and, to varying degrees, explored) very deep and dangerous, but also rich and extraordinary on the whole) a tormentedly limited life, and is angry and resentful … I cannot help wondering how different this might have been if he had the advantage of a WINDHORSE fifty-five years ago …).

Again, all my thanks for your openness and generosity—I very much hope that I can visit WINDHORSE again (I see it, in part, as Ed’s legacy to the world), perhaps in the Spring. And do talk with Kate about the thought of a talk, or something, which might assist the place, help draw attention and funds to it,

with best wishes,

Oliver