Memory plays a major role in the books by the Groningen writer and psychologist Douwe Draaisma. Well-known works are ‘Why life speeds up when you get older’, ‘The homesick factory’ and ‘The dream weaver’. But what if your memory is radically failing you? The Man Who Lost His Head is Draaisma’s latest book and is about people who lose themselves in delusions and illusions.
Where is the germ of The Man Who Lost His Head?
,,I was working on a book about things that exist and do not exist at the same time, for example children’s imaginary friends. While these are all too real to children, in a way they don’t exist either. The same goes for phantom experiences.
You open the book with a watchmaker who believes he lost his head and got another head in its place.
“That watchmaker illustrates beautifully that someone who goes into psychosis does not lose his mind, on the contrary: he needs his mind more than ever to understand his own delusion. The watchmaker does not recognize his own head when he looks in the mirror, he has no feeling for it and he does not understand it. Because he lives in the time of the guillotine, a logical explanation for him is that his real head has been separated from his torso. It shows that in delusions you don’t lose your mind, the watchmaker tries to make chocolate happens to him. The same thing happens with kids who try to hold on to something that isn’t true.”
“When you try to break through that, you come up against a wall, because the child’s conviction has a protective function for him. If what he thinks is wrong, then what is?”
As with the three men who believe themselves to be Christ and who are placed in the same institution by way of experiment.
,,Right. Often someone comes from within and says: that delusion has to go. But that’s not how delusions work. If you try that from the outside, it is doomed to fail.
Have you ever experienced a delusion, perhaps in a mild form?
,,No. But when I’m cooking and the hood is on, I hear bells ringing or sirens in the distance in that roar. It is impossible to stop those auditory hallucinations. Here too, your brain tries to turn that noise into something that it could also be.”
Why do you think it is important to write about delusions and illusions?
“I wanted to show that delusions are not always as megalomaniac as those of the three Christs. There are also illusionary experiences that can happen to anyone, for example when you lose an arm or leg. But also when you mourn. It is little talked about and yet more than half of people who lose a loved one experience grief hallucinations. They still experience their loved one while it is no longer there. Delusions are therefore not always related to psychiatric illnesses, hallucinations can also occur in a healthy brain.”
Returning to the guillotine for a moment, you write: ‘Delusions are windows on their time. Many delusions were spinning around the guillotine.’ Are there delusions that typify our time?
“It varies depending on the country you live in. But take secret services. They are a fixture in the delusions of this time. The feeling of being watched. In certain countries in Africa the delusions are completely different and you have to look more for magical ideas. With us, it makes much more sense to think of listening devices and chips that have been installed secretly. Delusions are timeless, but the interpretation that the delusion is given is time-bound.”
On 14 November (8 pm) Douwe Draaisma will be interviewed by Mathijs Deen at Studium Generale about ‘The man who lost his head’ in the auditorium of the Academy Building.