This is a summary of Chapter 5: Peter covers his sexual diversity, social constructs of reality, and his psychotic experience and suicide attempt.

1. Peter Chadwick: ‘Schizophrenia: The Positive Perspective’
Chapter 5: ‘Getting in to psychosis’
Peter led a nomadic life and had affairs with women and men (for a
short period). People who lived as Peter did were often not
psychologists, but were writers. He had a hard upbringing from his
mother, who told him life was hard and no-one will help you. He was
aware of popular attitudes against ‘queers’. He was apolitical like
Kandinsky. The ways open to him were the Army, fit for brewery,
building site, pubs, football terraces. His mother was a hater of
Chadwicks and the family she had to bring up. The mantra was ‘do
these ideas make money?’ So, if everyone else’s bonds are strong
with each other, it follows that bonds with you will be weak and you
will be isolated. ***(This is a social construct). Peter was looking
for himself via psychosis, but madness can kill you, it almost killed
Peter. His rating for the impact of his psychotic beliefs was low,
however he threw himself under a bus in the Kings Road, Fulham in
1979. This was a price for a decadent life of sex and success at
school – win, win, had to be paid for. His mother called him a
Chadwick Rotter, a rat, hence he grew up knowing he could do well,
but underneath was the feeling of being rotten. His mother said she
tried to knock weakness out of him. In her age, asylums meant
‘mental’ and were to be feared. When he was under the bus with
blood coming from his damaged hand, he thought of his mother
saying ‘job done’. She had to get married to his father in 1918, this
was deep shame. He was bullied at one time at school (1963-64)
because he had a ‘queer’ haircut and because he did so well at exams
– big head and a poof. Later he wondered if he could go
schizophrenic, but concluded his mind was too strong for that. In
1974 he was outed as a transvestite and this reinforced his feelings
of low self-worth. In 1979 he wrote to teaching colleagues about

2. being persecuted in the West Country, and soon heard echoes of
these letters on the radio from DJ’s. He assumed the letters had
been passed on to the media. He was a ‘known pervert’ to be
ridiculed and shunned. He felt it was a reflection of his decadence
and that people could have sympathised with his position. His suicide
attempt was the result of confirmatory bias from things overheard,
in the street and from DJ’s and newsreaders, headlines and snatches
of conversation at work. He thought he was being pursued by ‘The
Organisation’. At this time he was jobless, no secure home, no love
life – so the delusion was his only meaning in his life. He had
Christian tendencies, and thought that the ‘new king’ was Jesus at
the New Kings Road. These were marginal beliefs that took him over
and led him to jump under a bus. This situation had been set up by
The Organisation. His blood dripped on the road’s tar – opposite of
‘rat’ from his mother. (cf My words backwards.) Things had been
fired at him for months. He was taken to Charing Cross hospital (the
charring cross of Jesus) and all these coincidences convinced him of
his delusion. In our postmodern world even physical scientists cannot
decide on what reality is. He felt like a channel for spiritual forces,
a shamanistic character. He had to pay, as a ‘no-good Chadwick’, with
personal shame.