Last year, in my autobiography class, we read “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, a pathography about a successful journalist, Jean-Dominique Baudy, with locked-in syndrome. He woke up from his stroke mentally aware of everything going on, but physically paralyzed with the only exception of some movement in his head and eyes. The entire book was written by blinking.
A lot of what Hawkins discusses in terms of pathography and myth reminds me of this memoire. She likens pathologies to “what it would be like if our ordinary life-in-the-world suddenly collapsed.” (224) Baudy’s situation it the worst I could possibly imagine—being trapped in your own body. No wonder he wrote—I mean blinked—a book. He would go insane if he didn’t flesh out his life and put meaning into it.
In my experience, writing an autobiography (granted not a pathography), gave me such a boost of satisfaction and happiness. Whenever I discovered a link or analogy between to ideas, a surge of excitement and purpose went right through me. I think that’s the ultimate point Hawkins makes here—that the process of healing though writing is a journey that usually ends in restoration, change, and transcendence through these “mythical formulations.”
In “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” the author says that locked-in syndrome is like wearing a diving bell—an old-fashioned deep-sea diving apparatus. He also likens his mind to a butterfly. Whenever the diving suit becomes too limited and oppressive, the author flies away in his mind to visit his memories. As Hawkins puts it, he “integrates different aspects of the self” into his narrative. (234)
This form of mythic formulation is what Hawkins refers to as “idiosyncratic images” (233). For some, coming to terms with your condition or illness is easier by substituting it in a metaphorical form.
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