Objectivism and my Recovery From Schizophrenia

I began recovering from my schizophrenia when I was in a mental hospital in 1973. I continued to recover, and to rebuild my life during the rest of the 1970s. I believe that there were two essential factors behind my recovery – the medications that I was given, specifically chlorpromazine, and my own free will. These two factors were probably equally essential.
The essential choice that I made was, basically, to begin thinking again about things in the external world. The first small step that I made was to begin listening many hours a day to music, instead of _only_ fantasizing. I did still fantasize as I listened to the music, but at least a part of my attention was directed towards something in the external world. I was especially obsessed with the music of the heavy metal group Blue Öyster Cult. I would listen to the three LPs that they had issued at the time, 1974, every day. I learned all their songs by heart and would hum or sing along as I played their three LPs. I think that I experienced that as a pleasurable mental exercise.
My next step was to decide to learn how to invest in stocks. My father worked for a bank at the time. Every week he would borrow the latest issue of Sweden´s leading business magazine, Affarsvarlden, from the bank´s library. He would bring it home, and he encouraged me to read it. At first I was only mildly curious, but after I had read a few issues, in the spring of 1974, I began to become fascinated by the world of business and investing. I decided that I must myself learn the art of stock investing, and invest my own savings in publicly quoted stocks of my own choice.
I only had about 3.000 dollars in savings at the time (the currency was, of course, worth a lot more then than now), but in the summer of 1974 I invested that money in five different Swedish industrial companies of my own choice. I enjoyed making my own choices in a matter that would have an impact on my own future welfare. And analyzing stocks was good mental gymnastics for my mind. As I concentrated on reading magazine articles about business conditions and stocks, a “feedback” of a kind developed. The more effort I put into concentrating on the external world, the easier it became to do so. So my ability to concentrate on the external world, instead of just wasting my time lost in my fantasies, increased successively.
My next step was to take a stand against the welfare state and the worship of helplessness. I decided that I was a supporter of freedom, and that I was opposed to the welfare state. I began voting against the Social Democrats, who of course were the primary defenders of the welfare state. In 1976 I voted for the Liberals (who actually were quite leftist). In 1979 I voted for the Conservatives, the most “right-wing” major party at the time. In 1982 I had discovered Objectivism, and I voted “none of the above” in the election of 1982 . I continued to vote “none of the above” during the elections that followed. At some point during the 1990s I began voting for the Social Democrats, since I thought that the Conservatives, when in power, only discredited capitalism, and made us Objectivists´ fight for freedom still harder.
I also made the conscious decision that I would do all I could to avoid becoming dependent on government handouts myself. So in 1975, when I began earning enough money by working, to be able to save, I made it a habit to spend as little money as possible on my own consumption, and to save as much money every month as I possibly could. During the latter half of the 1970s I saved between 40% and 65% of my after-tax wage every month. I invested the money in stocks. I felt proud, and felt that I was making progress in my life, every time I made a new investment, and my savings therefore grew. It was very pleasurable.
I also decided that I would attempt to get the highest-paying job that was open do me. I decided to try to enter the steel foundry industry, as a foundry worker. I reasoned that I could not get the kind of job that was paid well due to being intellectually difficult. I was aware that I had no education to speak of, and my ability to concentrate was severely limited. I reasoned that foundry workers, however, would be well paid, since the work was physically demanding and dirty. I managed to get jobs in iron and steel foundries twice in 1976. But I had to move out of Stockholm to get the latter one of those two jobs. And my parents managed to persuade me to return to them in the suburb of Stockholm, after a half year at the foundry, and to begin working as a machine tender in a margarine factory instead.
That job was pretty well paid. I worked as much overtime as was offered and permitted, in order to earn as much money as possible. I earned about 1.000 dollars per month, and saved about 600 dollars a month on the average. I invested the money in stocks.
In 1976 I made an important decision. I knew that I was a supporter of freedom, but I did not really know why. I was aware in some terms that freedom needed an intellectual defense. I decided that in order to fight for freedom I needed to find out what the intellectual case for freedom was. I began by asking my parents if they knew what intellectuals had written important books defending freedom. My father recommended The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek, and borrowed a copy of it for me from a library. The newspapers at the time were writing a lot about Milton Friedman, so I purchased a copy of Freedom and Capitalism. I read those two books during 1977, but they did not really satisfy me. So I decided to continue to look for a good defense of freedom.
I found that defense in 1979, when I discovered Objectivism.
The first time that I ever heard of Ayn Rand, that I can remember, was an incident that occurred when I was about 9 years old in America. I saw a copy of a humorous book titled Have You Read a Good Book Lately? It was a little book with jokes that consisted of a series of photos of well-known books in situations that were supposed to be funny, given the books´ titles. There was, for example, a photo of a man looking into an opened copy of the book The Naked Society with a _very_ embarrassed look on his face. I remember that when I found that book in our house at around the age of 9 or 10, it contained a photo of a book with a photo of the Atlas sculpture at Rockefeller center, which was montaged onto the dust jacket of Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand´s name was visible on the dust jacket. Of course, I had no inkling of the meaning or significance of Atlas Shrugged at the time. But for some reason I can still remember that incident.
The second time that I came into contact with Objectivism was in the spring of 1979. Since I wanted to promote freedom, I had attempted to write a “political” novel. It was a dystopia, inspired by 1984. I called the novel “The Democratization of Nils”. The novel took place in an imaginary future Sweden, that had become _fully_ democratic. Every decision was made by majority vote - what work the individual should do, whom the individual should marry, even what everybody would eat for dinner. My intention was to show that life in that democratic society would be sheer hell.
The novel was badly written, among other reasons because I for the most part “told” the reader my message, instead of “showing” him the message. But I sent the novel, which was written in English, to a publisher in the U.S.A anyway. The publisher sent me a reply, in which they politely declined to publish my novel, but they made the comment that my novel reminded them of the works of Ayn Rand!
I should have pricked up my ears and immediately done something to find out what Ayn Rand had to say, but unfortunately I didn´t.
In the fall of 1979 I became engaged in the organization Amnesty International. I was idealistic, and I wanted something meaningful to do on my spare time. I did not just want to spend my evenings watching television or something like that. I reasoned that the work that I did in Amnesty would promote freedom. Amnesty´s main activity was to work for the release of political prisoners in other countries, and to protect all prisoners, and especially political prisoners, against torture and execution (I am, of course, no longer opposed to capital punishment on moral grounds). I thought that if people all around the world could work to improve their countries´ politics, without having to be afraid of being imprisoned, tortured or executed, then they would have a greater opportunity to bring about freedom.
Amnesty´s most important defect is that it is anti-ideological and concrete-bound on principle. Amnesty has as a fundamental principle that it will never take a stand for or against any political ideology/philosophy. It would only work for the very narrow, concrete-bound goals in its founding charter, to oppose political imprisonment, torture and capital punishment. Many of the members of Amnesty itself were socialists, and even in many cases Communists. So Amnesty had some important attributes in common with the Libertarian movement.
So the time and money that I “invested” in Amnesty was wasted. For a period of four years, beginning in the fall of 1979 Amnesty was my main occupation on my spare time. And I spent more than half of my after tax income on Amnesty. I donated a large part of my wage every month to Amnesty, I spent money on telegrams to political leaders in other countries that appealed for the better treatment of political, and criminal, prisoners, I spent money on stationary, on postage etc. I felt at the end of 1979 that I had already accumulated such a large fortune that I did not need to save still more. I had about 30.000 dollars in savings.
The reason that I was so enthusiastic about Amnesty was partly that I was an idealist, and partly that I felt an acute need for a concrete purpose in my life, something that I could focus on. And I wanted it to be an _important_ purpose. I wanted to do something important with my life.
A few months after I became engaged in Amnesty, the second of the two most fortunate events in my life happened. I discovered Objectivism. I read an article in a newspaper about the intellectuals who were supposedly behind the “swing to the right” that was spreading throughout the world at the time. The article mentioned something like a couple of dozen intellectuals. One of them was Ayn Rand. The article stated that Ayn Rand had created a _philosophic_ case for capitalism.
I was intrigued. I went to a large bookstore in Stockholm and found several books by Ayn Rand (in English). I purchased The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal, mainly because I was intrigued by those two books´ titles. I read the Virtue of Selfishness first. Although I came to the book with a belief in the moral code of altruism, I did not recoil in horror when I read the book. Instead I was elated. I felt that I had “hit the jackpot”, because Ayn Rand explained her ideas so clearly, and those ideas were so _rational_.
So, although I was initially on the premise of altruism, I was immediately attracted to Objectivism strongly, because I valued reason. However, it was difficult for me to read the two books that I had purchased. It took me about half a year, reading on and off. The reason for that was my schizophrenia. I would read one or two paragraphs, then my mind would begin to wander, and I would become lost in my fantasies. Then after a few minutes I would focus on the book again and read another paragraph or two. And so forth.
And I was already committed to spending a large portion of my spare time on Amnesty´s activities, so I did not have so much time to spend on reading. I finished reading the second book, Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal, during my summer vacation in 1980. Then a year went by during which I did nothing to pursue Objectivism. All my energy was devoted to Amnesty. In the spring of 1981 I purchased one copy each of The Romantic Manifesto and The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution. And I got around to reading those two books in the summer of 1981.
In the early fall of 1981, I consciously decided that I just had to read all of the rest of the books that Ayn Rand had written. So I bought just about all of her fiction and non-fiction in book stores in Stockholm. I read those books during the following year. In the early winter of 1982 I decided that I wanted to try to get into touch with Ayn Rand. I did not know anything about who she was, apart from the brief information on the book covers. I did not know that there existed an Objectivist movement. I wrote a short letter, addressed to Ayn Rand, and mailed it to her book publisher in America. Unfortunately, I asked the question about whether Ayn Rand was still alive, in awkward language. Then, a couple of weeks after I put the letter in the mail, my father showed me the latest issue of Time Magazine, and in the obituary section they said that Ayn Rand had just died.
A month or so later, I received a letter from Dr. Peikoff. Ayn Rand´s book publisher (I believe it was Signet) had forwarded my letter to him. It was clear from his letter, that he was a bit disturbed by my awkwardly worded question about whether Ayn Rand was still alive. But he was not angry at me, considering the distance. Dr. Peikoff enclosed information about such things as Palo Alto Books, The Objectivist Forum and his own taped lecture courses. I was thrilled to learn that there evidently was a whole Objectivist movement based in America.
I immediately placed a big order for books from Palo Alto Books, amounting to several hundred dollars. I got myself a subscription to The Objectivist Forum. And I wrote a letter to Walter Huebscher, stating that I thought that I was not competent yet, to run Dr. Peikoff´s courses, being so new to Objectivism, and inquiring if there was any possibility that I might _purchase_ Dr. Peikoff´s taped courses.
Walter replied emphatically that the courses were not available for purchase, but could only be leased. I replied that I would in that case attempt to run one of Dr. Peikoff´s courses in Stockholm during the fall.
During the summer of 1982 I finished reading Ayn Rand´s paperbacks. In the early fall of 1982 it dawned on me that Objectivism was much more important than Amnesty. I decided that I could improve the world much more, if I devoted myself to studying and spreading Objectivism, than I would if I continued devoting myself to the Amnesty movement. And I realized that I also would become much happier personally if I did so. Since Objectivism was enormously more intellectually stimulating than Amnesty´s concrete-bound activities (I was really becoming bored by the drudgery of churning out letters in Amnesty).
So I told my friends in Amnesty that I wanted to quit, and devote myself to “ideological” activities instead. They persuaded me to stay in Amnesty another half-year, so that they would have time to find someone to replace me (I had by that time advanced to a somewhat prominent position in the Swedish Amnesty movement, since I worked hard). So in the fall of 1982 I began running Dr. Peikoff´s lecture courses in Stockholm, at the same time that I also continued to spend time in Amnesty. It was a pretty hectic time for me for several months.
In the spring of 1983 I finally left Amnesty, and I began devoting my spare time to Objectivism exclusively (apart from personal recreation of course, I did not literally spend _all_ of my spare time studying and spreading Objectivism).
I was very optimistic about my own future now. I felt that I now had just about everything important in life. I had a job that I enjoyed and that paid well (I was working in a factory that manufactured measuring instruments now), I had a small private fortune (due to the boom in the Swedish stock market I now had a stock portfolio worth about 120.000 dollars) and I had an important purpose in my life, that would give my life meaning.
I believe that from that time on Objectivism made my life much happier, and that it helped me to become more successful in life than I otherwise would have become.
Objectivism has benefited me by increasing the amount of the values of reason, purpose and self-esteem that I have in my life.
Objectivism showed me that reason is both moral and practical. By showing how identity is an inescapable axiom, it almost certainly guaranteed that I would never again become acutely schizophrenic. So Objectivism cemented the place of reason in my life, and secured my mental health.
Objectivism provided me with what has been the central, long-range, integrating purpose in my life. Back in 1982 I consciously decided that I would be one of the individuals who brought Objectivism into Sweden (Objectivism was almost unknown in Sweden at the time). Purpose was the central value that was most lacking in my life previously. So this was an invaluable service it did for me, in a sense (of course, I was myself the active agent in acquiring a purpose, Objectivism did not literally do it _for_ me).
Objectivism radically increased my level of self-esteem, or to be more precise, Objectivism made it easier for me to increase my self-esteem by my own efforts. Before I discovered Objectivism, I was plagued with feelings of guilt for my “failures” earlier in life. Before I discovered Objectivism there was a nagging suspicion in my mind that _maybe_ it was my own fault that I had become a high-school dropout and a schizophrenic when I was younger. And I felt some guilt also, because of the fact that I still accepted the moral code of altruism, and could not practice it completely consistently. I also had an element of a malevolent sense-of-life before I discovered Objectivism.
Objectivism showed me that it was not my own fault that I had “failed” earlier in life. After reading essays such as The Comprachicos I realized that in a sense it had been a healthy reaction on my part to “give up”, rather than to “give in”. And I realized for the first time that my school-teachers had actually been _working_ to bring about that destruction of my mind that occurred when I was a teen-ager. I also realized that I was not wrong to hate my parents. They were social metaphysicians who had betrayed me, their own child, in order not to raise a frown on strangers´ faces, and in order not to have to make the effort to think.
So for the first time since grade school, I became completely free from guilt a few years after I discovered Objectivism. That of course was of incalculable importance for my happiness.
Objectivism has shown me exactly where I went wrong during my childhood, and how to repair the damage, now that I am an adult.
I did choose to work hard to learn and then spread the philosophy of Objectivism, so that I earned my happiness. Some of the major things that I did were to:
Run Dr. Peikoff´s lecture courses. At first I ran the courses at least two times a year in Stockholm, starting in 1982, and continued doing so until Dr. Peikoff discontinued the leasing of the courses in the early 1990s. After I had run the courses a few years in Stockholm, I was entrusted with the responsibility of administering the leasing of Dr. Peikoff´s courses in all of Scandinavia for several years.
I tried to influence the general public by writing a copious number of letters and debate articles to Swedish newspapers and magazines during the 1980s and the 1990s. I still write debate pieces to Swedish newspapers, but not so often, because they do not get published often any more. I have gotten the impression that, especially, some of the largest, national Swedish newspapers have a deliberate policy of refusing to publish pieces that advocate Objectivist viewpoints, or that, for example, contain quotes from Ayn Rand.
During 1983 to 1986 I cooperated with a Swedish think tank called Timbro, to get a Swedish translation of Atlas Shrugged published. Timbro is and was at least partly Libertarian, but I did not at the time realize yet that Libertarianism is evil. I invested about 45.000 dollars of my own money in the project. I lost about half of that money, after tax. The translation, titled Och varlden skalvde (“And the Earth Shook”), was published in hardback in 1986 but was initially a flop. However, the book is still in print. Nowadays Timbro publishes an inexpensive paperback copy of Och varlden skalvde, which still sells steadily, and is available in many bookstores. Timbro now also sells an inexpensive paperback copy of the Swedish translation of The Fountainhead, titled Urkallan.
Starting in 1987, I published the first Objectivist periodical in Sweden, Objektivistisk skriftserie, together with Per-Olof Samuelsson (Per-Olof Samuelsson was the first Objectivist in Sweden, having discovered it way back in 1972, and to the best of my knowledge I was probably the second, we were best friends for many years). This periodical, of which four or five issues were published each year from 1987 through 1996, consisted of translations into Swedish of essays by Ayn Rand, and on occasion by other leading Objectivist philosophers, plus material written by Per-Olof and me.
Per-Olof was the chief editor and did almost all the work involved in publishing Objectivistisk skriftserie (OS), I was the owner, and I financed the project, which never became profitable. When it was at its peak, OS had about 95 subscribers. Still, it was influential.
In 1987 I began selling Objectivist literature in the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) by mail order. I purchased Objectivist books in round lots from Second Renaissance Books, and resold them at a slightly higher price to persons in the Nordic countries who were interested in Objectivism. I am still running my mail order book service, and over the years I have sold something like 2.000 books to several hundred different customers.
In 1996 I published a Swedish translation of Anthem, titled Lovsang, by my own publishing house, Forlaget Egoisten (“The Egoist Publisher”). I had 3.200 copies printed. To date I believe that roughly 1.500 of those copies have been sold to individual customers. I sold the leftover copies of the book to a half dozen Swedish Objectivists about three years ago. They will store the books for me, so that I do not have to destroy them. Hopefully, I will eventually get a chance to begin selling them again, eventually.
During most of the 1990s I ran a study organization for Objectivism in Stockholm. We had regular meetings for several years, at which a few interested individuals would listen to taped lectures on Objectivism for free, and we would discuss philosophical questions. The study organization is now defunct.
I have been a regular donor to the Ayn Rand Institute since its inception 1985.
I have attended the yearly Objectivist conferences in America four times, 1985, 1989, 1993 and 1998. I have also attended many Objectivist conferences in Europe. I would have attended more of the conferences in the U.S.A. if only I could have afforded it. But I have always had the option of purchasing most of the lectures given at the conferences afterwards anyway, on tape or dvd.
Recently I have begun publishing an Objectivist periodical on the Internet, “Radikalen”, together with my best friend Filip Bjorner, and three other Swedish Objectivists. The first issue was published at the end of September (2008)We will publish more isseues. .We are planning to publish an extra issue at soon on the theme of the finance crisis. We would like to publish Radikalen in a print version as well, but right now we do not have the requisite economic resources.
I have been “lying low” for a few years, in regard to spreading Objectivism, since the newspapers usually do not publish my debate pieces (probably because my pieces are “too good”), and since I have run low on economic resources for various reasons. However, I now feel re-energized, since I will get an opportunity to write whatever I like, and get it published, in Radikalen. And also, since now I have several other Swedish Objectivists working with me in an organized manner.
I feel a great deal of satisfaction with my life now. Looking back, I see that I have done a good job of rebuilding my life after my psychosis. I know for a fact that I have made a difference in the development of the Swedish society and culture since the beginning of the 1980s. At least something like fifty or one hundred Swedish Objectivists originally came into contact with Objectivism thanks to my efforts. My best friend Filip Bjorner discovered Objectivism back in 1982 when he read a debate article that I got published in a Swedish newspaper. And he participated many times over the years in the lecture courses that I ran back in the 1980s and early 1990s. So I will be happy when I die (I am 54 years old now, so hopefully I have many years left).
I doubt that many former psychotics have led as productive a life as I have. Objectivism has enabled me to become ambitious, and has given me the tools to achieve my high ambitions.
I am afraid that I would have become quite unhappy if I had not discovered Objectivism. I might very well have had a “career” in Amnesty International, and I might as a result have developed a malevolent sense-of-life. I might also have fallen prey to the philosophical corruption that is widespread in Amnesty. And of course, I would not have achieved much in the way of improving the world, if I had stayed in Amnesty, so my life would have been wasted.
The one important thing that I have missed out on so far in my life, is romance.
Due to my schizophrenia, I have not been very “skillful” socially. I never dated any girls when I was a teenager. I have never been married, so far. I have only been really fond of a total of four women in my life. And I have only had sex with one woman in my life, which occurred during the latest year. Up until last fall, I was a 53-year old virgin. Unfortunately, the woman that I fell in love with, Tess, and that I thought was going to marry me, turned out to be a gold-digger. She fooled me out of a lot of my money. I was naïve, since I had no experience with love before I met Tess.
However, since I have a rational philosophy, I have not become despondent as a result of my failed love affair. I am already working on rebuilding my private economy and on finding a new woman to love.
Objectivism has greatly increased my “failure tolerance”. I know that there is nothing that I can do now to undo my unsuccessful love affair, or my schizophrenia, or my dropping out of high school etc. so I do not worry about those things. They are metaphysically given, now that they have occurred and they are in the past.
I believe that all people who suffer from mental illnesses would benefit from a knowledge of Objectivism. My own experience indicates that irrational philosophy is probably the most common cause of psychosis, and rational philosophy is a major part of the cure. It would be of inestimable benefit to psychotics, if the world´s psychiatrists and psychologists were to be made aware of the role played by philosophy in mental health. In particular, the mental health professionals need to be “cured” of the fallacy that people are determined by either nature or nurture. Mental health professionals need to realize that ideas, which are _chosen_, are the key determinant of men´s respective psychologies.
I sincerely believe that a knowledge of Objectivism would enable psychiatrists and psychologists to better help their patients, including psychotics, recover from their illnesses and achieve happiness.
Objectivism should be a part of the education of all psychiatrists and psychologists.