Virginia Woolf's Illnesses, by Douglass W

Clemson University TigerPrints Monographs Clemson University Digital Press 2004 Virginia Woolf 's Illnesses Douglas W. Orr, M.D. Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cudp_mono Recommended Citation Virginia Woolf's Illnesses, by Douglass W. Orr, M.D., edited by Wayne K. Chapman (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Digital Press, 2004), xiv+182 pp. Paper. ISBN 0-9741516-8-8 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Clemson University Digital Press at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in Monographs by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Virginia Woolf’s Illnesses i VIRGINIA WOOLF’S ILLNESSES ii Virginia Woolf’s Illnesses Douglass W. Orr, M.D. ! Edited by Wayne K. Chapman iii VIRGINIA WOOLF’S ILLNESSES A full-text digital version of this book is available on the Internet, in addition to other works of the press and the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, including The South Carolina Review and The Upstart Crow: A Shakespeare Journal. See our Web site at www.clemson.edu/caah/cedp, or call the director at 864-656-5399 for information. Copyright 2004 by Clemson University ISBN 0-9741516-8-8 Published by Clemson University Digital Press at the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. Produced in the MATRF Laboratory at Clemson University using Adobe Photoshop 5.5 , Adobe Pagemaker 6.5, Microsoft Word 2000. This book is set in Garamond and was printed by University Printing Services, Office of Publications and Promotional Services, Clemson University. Copy editing and layout at the press by Wayne K. Chapman (Executive Editor), assisted by Charis Chapman, Angela Price, and Kevin Manus. To order copies, contact the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, Strode Tower, Box 340522, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0522. An order form is available at the digital press Web site (see above) under “Publications” and linked to the on-line edition of the book. iv Contents Preface viii Acknowledgments xiv ! Chapter One: The Stephen Family 1 Leslie Stephen 3 Hereditary Madness 4 Julia Stephen 5 The Marriage 6 Virginia’s Views of Her Early Family Life 8 Chapter Two: Virginia’s Childhood 11 The Setting When Virginia Was Born 12 Virginia’s Early Years 13 Separations and Losses 16 Some Especially Crucial Years 17 “A State of Anxious Growth” 22 Chapter Three: Traumatic Early Adolescence 25 Early Medical History 26 1895: After Julia’s Death 27 1896 29 1897 30 Adolescence 33 Summary 35 Chapter Four: The Second Major Breakdown 38 Relations with George Duckworth 39 Leslie Stephen’s Death 41 Virginia’s View of Her 1904 Breakdown 43 The Second Madness 44 The Rest Cure 47 A New Life 49 v VIRGINIA WOOLF’S ILLNESSES Chapter Five: The 1910 Illness 53 Why This Illness? 55 Chapter Six: Engagement and Marriage 57 Preliminary 58 Leonard Woolf Returns 59 Reasons for Doubts 62 Chapter Seven: Madness Again: 1913 65 The Decision Not To Have Children 67 Virginia’s Letters: First Half of 1913 70 Another Rest Cure 73 Curious and Fateful Mistakes 75 Chapter Eigth: Madness Once More: 1915 79 The Wise Virgins 81 Notes on Psychopathology 84 Conclusion 85 Chapter Nine: Books and Illnesses: I 87 General Observations 88 Night and Day 90 Jacob’s Room 93 Chapter Ten: Books and Illnesses: II 97 Mrs. Dalloway 98 To the Lighthouse 100 Orlando 103 The Waves 104 Chapter Eleven: Books and Illnesses: III 109 Flush 110 The Years 111 The Menopause 118 Winding Up The Years 119 Chapter Twelve: Books and Illnesses: IV 123 Three Guineas 124 vi Roger Fry: A Biography 126 Chapter Thirteen: Virginia’s Account of Her Final Year 131 Invasion Expected 132 The Battle of Britain 134 The Final Month 141 Chapter Fourteen: Virgina’s Suicide and the Aftermath 149 Quiet Suffocation 151 The Suicide and Its Aftermath 152 Why Did Virginia Commit Suicide? 154 Chapter Fifteen: Notes on Diagnosis 159 Hereditary Illness? 160 Manic-Depressive? 161 Reactive Psychosis? 162 Narcissistic Personality? 163 Sexuality 167 Summary 168 Notes (by Chapter) 173 ! A Note on the Author 182 vii VIRGINIA WOOLF’S ILLNESSES Preface he opportunity to edit and publish this book began with a lucky coincidence. In June 2002, I presented a paper at the Twelfth Annual Confer- T ence on Virginia Woolf at Sonoma State University. The paper had enough of a Julian Bell connection to have been placed in a panel generally about Julian and Quentin Bell. The coincidence was that a fellow presenter, Nancy Orr Adams, who might not have attended the conference had it been anywhere but in Califor- nia that year, gave a rousing account of the unfortunate history of her father’s work in the hands of conventional publishing houses, both commercial and aca- demic. A marriage, family, and child counselor from Ukiah, she had collaborated with him on his last published book, Life Cycle Counseling (1987; see the biographi- cal note on p. 182, below). Naturally, she tried to steer Virginia Woolf’s Illnesses toward an appropriate press after his death in 1990. Overall, the way proved daunting but more so after cancer surgery and strokes had sidelined his pursuit of a publisher, leaving “the ms. to a much younger writer” who was to “revise it,” he said, “becoming my co-author” (unpublished letter, D. W. Orr to Quentin Bell, 4 June 1988). The more the pity the book missed that moment to make the “real and valuable contribution to our understanding of Virginia as a person” that the late Professor Bell predicted in a letter he gave to the manuscript as an Introduc- tion. I have kept the letter in its place but have attached it to the Acknowledg- ments on p. xiv. The audience at Sonoma State suggested that discussions generally known to be taking place in the International Virginia Woolf Society’s business sessions—on an emerging consortium for publishing scholarship on Virginia Woolf online and on-demand—might offer this book to interested readers without un- due delay and expense. And this is precisely what has come to pass in the work you have before you.1 Nancy Adams’s paper was, as its subtitle declared, “a story about the author [Douglass W. Orr], his wife and Professor Quentin Bell.” Her approach suggested my own interest in writing couples. For she said, “My story is not specifi- cally concerned with Virginia Woolf herself, but with a married couple named Jean and Douglass Orr. Professionally, Jean was a social worker and Douglass a pioneer and prominent West Coast psychoanalyst.” As she drew on her father’s unpublished Preface at that point, it seems best here to quote Dr. Orr himself on the origin of the study and his affinity for Woolf as a subject. It all began when he and his wife made a trip abroad in 1969. In 1984, he wrote: About fifteen years ago a fellow tourist in London gave me a newspaper clipping about Bloomsbury the district and the Group. The article included the episode of Virginia and Leonard Woolf buying a hand-operated printing press in 1917, and it dawned on me that this was the beginning of the viii Hogarth Press. As a psychoanalyst I already knew that the Press had published the Standard Edition of Freud in English, and a good many other psychoanalytic writings, as well. I began reading about those in, or on the fringes of, the Bloomsbury Group who were involved with psychoanalysis: the Woolfs as publishers, James and Alix Strachey as translators, Adrian and Karin Stephen as practi- tioners, and Lytton Strachey, whose works James sent to Freud, who in turn complimented Lytton on his psychological understanding of Elizabeth and Essex. There was also Roger Fry who disagreed with Freud about the sources of artistic creativity in a pamphlet published by the Hogarth Press. As a physician and psychiatrist, as well as a psychoanalyst, I was caught up in the problem of Virginia Woolf’s “madness.” This book is my attempt to shed additional light on the origins and symptoms of her various illnesses, both mental and physical. I shall suggest different perspectives from those in other writings about her mental breakdowns. In those days, Quentin Bell’s famous biography was but a work in progress. The Orrs had begun to immerse themselves in the works of Virginia Woolf, her family, friends, and critics. Dr. Orr wrote a 52-page paper entitled “Psychoanalysis and The Bloomsbury Group,” which was read at a meeting of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Society on 21 April 1978. Adams recalls that, although never published in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, for which it was intended, this “contribution to the history of psychoanalysis . whetted [her father’s] appetite to delve further into the world of Virginia Woolf, her family, and various Bloomsbury Group members.”2 In time, the book he wrote needed to be defined and qualified professionally in terms of everything that ought, or might, be said: This is not a psychobiography. I am not telling everything I know or, as a psychoanalyst, can surmise about Virginia’s psychic development and func- tioning. I cannot, for example, analyze the somatic delusions of two of her illnesses or the episodes that suggest anorexia nervosa. I shall mention a number of diagnostic possibilities, granting that I have not examined my “patient.” I venture to do so because diagnoses in psychiatry particu- larly are based upon careful history-taking, and, except for infancy, we have a good deal of Virginia’s life history both in her own words and in the reminiscences of others.

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