A Literary Investigation of Mental Illness, Memory, and Reality
Drawing from journals, artwork, hospital records, academic records, and personal memory, Laughing Inappropriately reconstructs a life interrupted by more than a decade of recurrent psychiatric crises.
Part memoir and part investigation, the project examines what happens when personal recollection and the historical record do not always agree.
At the time, I had no way of knowing that this psychiatric hold form would become the first document in an archive that would eventually fill multiple three-ring binders. Over the next decade, hospital records, evaluations, involuntary commitment orders, and discharge summaries would accumulate with remarkable efficiency, yet lacking any explanation.
The facts themselves are not especially mysterious. What remains difficult to understand is why these events occurred, why certain explanations became official while others were ignored, and why institutions are so often trusted to define reality on behalf of the people they confine.
Table of contents
Get a look at all of the content covered in the book.
PARTS
1
Laughing Innapropriately
2
Sectioned while Studying Legal Theory in London
3
Ph. D. in Champaign
4
One Night Naked in a Solitary Confinement Jail Cell
5
Home Again
6
Epilogue
About the author
Holland Stockton
I have lived and been involuntarily institutionalized in North Carolina, California, London, and Illinois. I spent a year studying for an MA in Legal and Political Theory in London and later pursued a Ph.D in Political Science. This project is my attempt to reconstruct more than a decade of mental illness, memory loss, and conflicting narratives with journals, drawings, hospital and police records, and what memories remain.
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Holland Stockton 