By Robert Kolker
I recently heard the term “microhistory” and decided I’m in love with it. The idea is that by doing an in-depth study on one thing – one person, or family, or event – you can write a history that speaks to broader society. Kolker does an excellent job of this by writing about the Galvin family, two parents in Colorado who raised twelve children, six of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. As Kolker works his way through each child’s life, he weaves in the history of mental health treatments. The first boy to be diagnosed is given the earliest schizophrenia medications, while one of the later boys avoids a diagnosis by arguing that mental illness is a tool of the man and joining a commune.
The book is framed by Mary, the youngest sibling, who has not suffered from the same mental illness as her brothers and who has stepped up to care for them since her parents’ deaths. Using her, Kolker is able to touch on bigger questions of responsibility – what is our responsibility to grown family members, be they our children or our siblings? When these family members are potentially dangerous (many of the brothers are violent at times, and one has a history of sexual assault), how much emotional and physical danger must we put ourselves in to protect them? Finally, despite a changing view among mental health professionals that has steered away from early ideas that overbearing mothers are a cause of schizophrenia, Kolker questions the Galvin mother’s decisions and their impact on all her children. Should she have done more to protect her children from each other? Should she have even had so many children in the first place?
This book tackles a very difficult subject with sensitivity and objectivity whenever possible. The author sticks to doctors’ diagnoses rather than positing his own, and he shows how tough the parents’ decisions must have been. If anything, he perhaps spends too long trying to complicate the Galvin mother, spending significant time at the end of the book dwelling on her children’s’ opinions of her and her possible motivations. In the end, this history of schizophrenia became an unexpected look at family connections and the care that we owe to each other.
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