Comments on: "When asked my name, I struggled between 'Kenneth Reitz' vs 'I ॐ AM'."

"When asked my name, I struggled between 'Kenneth Reitz' vs 'I ॐ AM'."

Going To Maine — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 23:39:44 -0800

"The programming community has been opening up over the past few years about mental health issues, so, I want to take this opportunity to open up about my own." Kenneth Reitz, developer of the famed Python requests module (as well as tablib, records, and The Hitchhiker's Guide To Python) has written an essay about suffering a mental health crisis and discovering that he has bipolar affective disorder.

By: fullerine

fullerine — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 23:58:01 -0800

What a delightful article; right up to the point where he takes a massive steaming shit all over the page by blaming the "crazy chick"

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 00:08:43 -0800

What a delightful article; right up to the point where he takes a massive steaming shit all over the page by blaming the "crazy chick" Yeah, I can't say I was a fan of that either. However, I think that Reitz is a large enough deal in the python world that comments by him on any sort of mental disorder, regardless of weird blame, is a good step forward.

By: fullerine

fullerine — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 00:19:46 -0800

I suppose we'll just have to stick around for the python community to get round to taking a step forward on the misogyny thing. Actually, I hope Mr Reitz takes strength from his brave stance on mental illness and perhaps helps them take that step forward.

By: bleep

bleep — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 00:37:11 -0800

By: thetortoise

thetortoise — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 02:37:36 -0800

Yikes. Not only does he blame his manic episode on his ex, he also authored this, er, tome about her. Between this and his conclusion that people interested in various spiritual subjects must be mentally ill, he really doesn't come off well here. Too bad, because the bipolar stuff is interesting.

By: en forme de poire

en forme de poire — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 02:58:49 -0800

I kind of wonder if he doesn't have cause and effect backwards — like maybe his interest in New Age esoterica was in part propelled by, not the cause of, a gradually worsening manic break? (It's not the first time I've heard of a break from reality being described as a "Kundalini awakening" by the person going through it, FWIW... actually I was trying to place it and I realize it was an Ask Metafilter question!)

By: I-Write-Essays

I-Write-Essays — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 04:56:35 -0800

Keep in mind, these are the writings of a crazy person. This is what it looks like. He's not just writing about mental illness as some detached impartial observer. Blame projection is a normal defense mechanism of an injured mind, like a fever.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 06:31:30 -0800

He's only six months post-crisis; cut him some slack. Full recovery can easily take years. I know mine did.

By: vogon_poet

vogon_poet — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 06:56:46 -0800

I think if you tell most people you are hallucinating, they would want you to see a doctor. It sounds like this relationship and the spiritual communities he got involved in were pretty unhealthy in that way. Not to mention that a lot of spiritual practices (sleep deprivation, fasting, sensory isolation) are really NOT GOOD for bipolar disorder. The "crazy chick" ex is a misogynist trope but this is not the usual guy whining about a relationship he was too lazy to maintain.

By: thetortoise

thetortoise — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:27:58 -0800

Keep in mind, these are the writings of a crazy person. This is what it looks like. He's not just writing about mental illness as some detached impartial observer. Blame projection is a normal defense mechanism of an injured mind, like a fever. I apologize for the ignorance of my comment. His posts reminded me so much of the Gamergate guy's rants that it hadn't occurred to me it might have to do with his illness.

By: saulgoodman

saulgoodman — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:35:41 -0800

I think he's barking up the wrong tree blaming meditation and his ex. I think mental illness can be a job hazard of programming itself. It is, after all, extremely taxing cognitive labor.

By: saulgoodman

saulgoodman — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:37:57 -0800

I've had similar mental health issues in the past, and I definitely think the work of coding itself, especially when coupled with all the unrealistic pressures and office politics around the work, can exacerbate or otherwise contribute to mental health issues. Something like a repetitive motion disorder of the mind....

By: Potomac Avenue

Potomac Avenue — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 08:11:36 -0800

^wow. Interesting. I'd like to hear more about that theory saulgoodman. I've often thought this about writing as well, especially poetry.

By: GospelofWesleyWillis

GospelofWesleyWillis — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 09:11:21 -0800

I also didn't like the part where he seems to blame his illness on his interest in eastern philosophy/"woo-woo" while also maintaining that this can happen to anyone. I guess it's true that anyone can become mentally ill (but that these mechanisms aren't yet well understood), but he seems to imply that this was a disease he caught from being exposed to ideas about meditation and being "led off the deep end" by a "crazy chick". Absolutely. He seems to be of two minds about his illness, both saying "this could happen to anyone" and "I have a chronic illness." Psychosis doesn't just 'happen' to anyone, unless you have a disorder or are severly sleep deprived, malnourished or doing drugs. Some cult techniques related to these phenomena, but it sounds like he came to his new age practices in a very routine way- yoga, meditation. It seems obvious that his illness, and growing mania, are what made him pursue increasingly out-there activities. While there is such as thing as religious mania, and I've experienced it, I don't think meditation really counts. He cites being chronically hypomanic, and that's going to go haywire sometime, especially if you test your physical and mental limits. He has not fully accepted the nature of his illness and is blaming externals like his girl friend. And I agree that religious mania can be a slippery slope that leads you to mania if you're doing taxing things like sleep deprivation, but it can also be a symptom, especially if you're engaging in things you don't normally do while stable. I've had it, it's embarrassing; when manic I've called psychic hotlines and done just stupid stuff. That's what mania does, it makes you do stupid stuff. It takes a long time sometimes to reconcile the chronicity (is that a word??) of the illness, especially because hypomania makes you feel better than well. But his story of 'this could happen to anyone, so watch out for crazy chicks'. No, Kenneth, you had a psychotic break and it was going to happen sooner or later if you are bipolar. Also the comments on programming leading to mental health problems is interesting; I am not a programmer but when I tried to study it in college, man, that was not good to try to get my brain to work in ways that it would not.

By: biogeo

biogeo — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 09:20:01 -0800

Really fascinating essay, and kudos to him for writing so frankly about his experience. The "crazy chick" thing at the end is unfortunate, but in a weird way I think it actually helps underscore a really, really important message from his experience. Namely, with regards to mental health, culture and beliefs matter. It seems pretty clear that there is something about Reitz's physiology and mental composition that predisposes him towards bipolar mania, but his embrace of New-Agey beliefs gave him a mental framework for interpreting his experiences in a way that amplified, rather than moderated, them. And, his pursuit of New-Agey practices like fasting and sleep deprivation very likely helped push his body into a physiological state that seriously compromised his mind's ability to self-moderate; sleep deprivation itself can lead to hallucinations even in otherwise healthy people. Reitz seems to have come to the conclusion that his New-Age beliefs were indeed unhealthy for him. But, what's very interesting to me about the "crazy chick" comment at the end is that this reflects a similarly unhealthy belief about women and gender, but one that is shared much more broadly by our culture than Reitz's former, and his ex-girlfriend's presumably current, beliefs about "metaphysics." It's a belief that poisons our interpersonal interactions and our conceptions of self in ways that have real mental health consequences. Reitz's ability to recognize his unhealthy New-Age beliefs and practices was very likely due in part to the severity of his symptoms, and in part because these are beliefs that are not shared by the majority of his culture. The "crazy chick" comment at the end, though reveals unhealthy beliefs which are perhaps much more difficult to identify and recover from.

By: saulgoodman

saulgoodman — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 10:23:42 -0800

As a programmer, you do have to think very rigorously and abstractly and sustain high levels of concentration and attention, and you also have to learn to deal with the alienation of constantly thinking about and dealing with complex problems you can't necessarily explain to others, and especially not with non- programmers, who aren't even especially polite in most cases about dismissing your attempts to explain, say, a complex coding problem you're dealing with. In most lines of work, people can sort of relate, in a human, empathetic way, to the challenges of the job. That's much less the case with coding work. Plus, you have to be able to think through problems with lots of conceptual nesting and rigid hierarchies, etc. Having to think according to certain very rigid kinds of logical patterns under pressure again and again, day after day, has to have some kind of potential for deeply affecting how a person thinks. Obviously, it's complicated, and I'm not saying coding makes people crazy--in many cases, I'm sure it can probably have beneficial effects. But complex knowledge work like coding is historically pretty new territory. There must be some potential for new, previously unknown forms of workplace injury.

By: tonycpsu

tonycpsu — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 10:31:09 -0800

Eh, I don't see what's so special about software engineering in that regard as compared to other disciplines. There are a lot of jobs that have been around for a long time that require deep thinking about complex problems. The fact that some of us are doing it with software now on a large scale is new-ish, but I don't see why the nature of the discipline makes it any more psychologically demanding.

By: saulgoodman

saulgoodman — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 10:40:03 -0800

Yeah, but for most of our history, and even most of the history of computer science, the work was largely academic and buffered against direct market pressures. That's not really the case with coding as much as it has been historically. Same for other complex technical and research fields. Doing pure science/thinking about complex problems in a more voluntary, self-motivated way is vastly different than desperately trying to think through a complex problem as quickly as possible to meet an artificial, arbitrary market or politically driven deadline.

By: motty

motty — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 11:11:21 -0800

The 'er, tome' mentioned by thetortoise above reads to me to be an account of Reitz's survival of and recovery from an emotionally abusive relationship with someone suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I agree it's a shame he boiled this down to the 'crazy chick' comment in the OP - that comes off horribly without context, but in the 'er, tome' he doesn't seem - to me at least - to come off badly at all. It's a pretty good account of what NPD is, what being in a relationship with someone with NPD is like, and what to do about it; at no point does he stoop to suggesting that the fact that his abuser in this case was a woman has anything to do with it.

By: tonycpsu

tonycpsu — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 11:15:46 -0800

Yeah, but for most of our history, and even most of the history of computer science, the work was largely academic and buffered against direct market pressures. I couldn't disagree any more. The number of people doing pure academic science has always been vanishingly small compared to the number who are doing applied science and engineering connected to market forces. Simply put, there's very little money in pure pursuit of knowledge unless the people funding it (be they government agencies or private corporations) feel that there's a good prospect of a real world marketable solution to a problem to be found.

By: sibboleth

sibboleth — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 12:27:31 -0800

"Shamanic rituals" This seems like a fairly unsubtle way of saying that he went to South America to quaff ayahuasca and scramble his brain chemicals in a way unfavorable for someone who ultimately manifested a psychotic break.

By: GospelofWesleyWillis

GospelofWesleyWillis — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 15:17:17 -0800

I agree it's a shame he boiled this down to the 'crazy chick' comment in the OP - that comes off horribly without context, but in the 'er, tome' he doesn't seem - to me at least - to come off badly at all. It's a pretty good account of what NPD is, what being in a relationship with someone with NPD is like, and what to do about it; at no point does he stoop to suggesting that the fact that his abuser in this case was a woman has anything to do with it. I agree that it's likely that he was involved with an equally unstable person and that can be destabilizing, but he does seem to fall on to a convenient stereotype of 'crazy chick drove me crazy'. He can also just be taking NPD characteristics from the web and projecting them onto this woman; we know nothing about her except from him. He's wasting his time analyzing her behavior when he should be analysing his own in order to manage a severe illness; his insistence that "I must tell the world about these dangerous women" sounds pretty deluded to me in light of the severity of his break. He's only six months post-crisis; cut him some slack. Full recovery can easily take years. Here I can empathize with the denial; a bipolar diagnosis often comes after a manic psychotic episode and coming out of that, you're going to be on shaky ground to begin with and that can take at least a year to heal from. Add on to that, reconciling with a diagnosis of a major chronic illness. But the fact that he is expending so much energy analyzing the woman and not himself does not bode well. The fact that he thinks this is something that can happen to anyone also doesn't bode well for his understanding of the severity; sure, lots of people get caught up in cults and engage in self-destructive, identity-destroying activity, but that doesn't mean they're going to end up in a psych hospital impersonating the doctors. He probably was involved in some sort of insane relationship, but he doesn't grasp that insane relationships don't necessarily lead to literal insanity of the impersonating-the-doctors type. He probably does not grasp how he was drawn to an equally-delusional person because he was beginning to lose his grip himself.

By: Maias

Maias — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 15:44:10 -0800

There are many accounts of people in meditation retreats losing contact with reality and having psychotic experiences. So many that a researcher is actively studying them. Meditation can also make people with depression worse by giving them hours and hours to ruminate on how bad they are at meditating, etc. This is not to say that meditation is bad, but it's usually the case (as with drugs) that things that have real power to help also tend to have real power to harm. Unfortunately, every time we as a culture stumble upon one of these powerful tools— opiates! antidepressants! hallucinogens! meditation!— we tend to immediately declare it either the panacea that solves everything or the devil. Then, suddenly, it's a placebo. How is that possible? Because different things affect different people profoundly differently and what makes me better might make you worse. There are certainly placebos and there are certainly drugs and practices that universally do more harm than good. But there are also lots of things— and I think meditation is one of them— that can do both great good and great harm and we need to not do the swing from "it's the angel" to "it's the devil" and instead look at what works best for whom when.

By: GospelofWesleyWillis

GospelofWesleyWillis — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 15:44:55 -0800

although I agree that if he was doing 'shamanic rituals' that involved hallucinogens, well...that might explain a few things. But it's still interesting that he comes away saying watch out for the women and *not* the drugs.

By: Maias

Maias — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 15:50:14 -0800

You can do shamanic rituals without drugs and I would imagine if he *did* drugs he would have been open about it— given how many of his psychotic experiences are similar to psychedelic experiences. The misogynistic piece is terrible— but I think since we as a culture love to blame drugs for this kind of thing, he would have mentioned them explicitly if they were involved.

By: GospelofWesleyWillis

GospelofWesleyWillis — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 15:50:21 -0800

There are many accounts of people in meditation retreats losing contact with reality and having psychotic experiences. So many that a researcher is actively studying them. thanks for posting; should be interesting, especially to see if other factors do or don't come into play, like sleep deprivation or malnutrition. A retreat sounds like it can have some intensifying factors not like your usual at-home meditation that might be more brief and less intense. I can see rumination and depression being bad, but psychotic breaks; that's new to me.

By: motty

motty — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 17:42:49 -0800

I agree that it's likely that he was involved with an equally unstable person and that can be destabilizing, but he does seem to fall on to a convenient stereotype of 'crazy chick drove me crazy'. He can also just be taking NPD characteristics from the web and projecting them onto this woman; we know nothing about her except from him. Way to dismiss the claims of an abuse victim openly saying 'hi I am an abuse victim here is what happened' right there. High five, bro! Seems a majority of NPD types are men and the majority of their victims are women, but all these victims regardless of gender tend to get their stories dismissed out of hand. Because who could believe that another person would put that much energy just into deliberately fucking you up? And that's why they get away with it for so long. That and the charisma. They're mostly men, as I say. But sometimes, as in this case, women. Until you've met one and been burned, it's hard to believe that NPD types exist. But for those of us who have, there is no more debate. It's the person who fucks you up over and over but who you still love and will always love. Even if you mysteriously ended up jobless and homeless and had a nervous breakdown within a couple of years of them becoming the centre of your life. They choose their victims... carefully.

By: saulgoodman

saulgoodman — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 19:58:02 -0800

applied science and engineering connected to market forces Sure, since the 20th Century or so. That's really only a recent blip in history, and there have been accounts of people losing their minds doing difficult intellectual/cognitive work for many years. But either way. It's only a hunch. I'm pretty skeptical of meditation retreats and such in general. Meditation has long been known among practitioners to have the potential to lead to mental crises for some individuals in certain cases, and I don't mean to dismiss the possibility he really did end up the plaything of someone with NPD. I'm not sure what's driving it, but it does seem like NPD is becoming more common and within some communities (the PUA set, for example) even socially mainstreamed. But it still might be worth considering that the work of coding can contribute to these kinds of problems. It can be intensely stressful work, and just about every form of latent mental illness can be triggered or exacerbated by stress (and almost everyone is susceptible to situational mental illness--the classic nervous breakdown type scenario--under enough pressure, with or without any specific, abnormal predisposition toward mental illness).

By: GospelofWesleyWillis

GospelofWesleyWillis — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 22:56:38 -0800

Way to dismiss the claims of an abuse victim openly saying 'hi I am an abuse victim here is what happened' right there. ...Until you've met one and been burned, it's hard to believe that NPD types exist. But for those of us who have, there is no more debate. It's the person who fucks you up over and over but who you still love and will always love. No; I grew up with one...my dad is NPD for certain (my sister is a social worker and agrees), so I know what they're like. Very exploitative, uses everyone for attention and money relentlessly and shamelessly. But it did not make me bipolar, inheriting it from both sides of my family probably did. I know what it's like to live with, he's still manipulating my codependent-sucker mom who he abandoned and screwed over 30 years ago. I know they exist, I grew up with one and later dated one, but I also know that anyone can pull stuff off the web and play armchair psychologist with anybody and that it happens a lot when a disorder hits the news. And we do not know anything about her, but what we do know about him, from the author, is that he had a psychotic break preceded by a long period of hypomania. His girlfriend very well may be NPD, but it's coming from a guy who is desperately trying to make sense of his disorder after having a psychotic break. He's still rationalizing his way through trying to accept a serious illness; his perceptions are not really reliable and I don't think he deserves an automatic pass because he claims victim status. He could be right, he could be full of it- who's to say unless we really know the woman? Like I said, I really understand his denial, I really do. I was dx'd 25 years ago and I still kid myself about my limitations; mental illness is very tricky that way. Part of what I was saying is that NPD or not, it's unlikely that it caused his psychosis. Other people in my family who grew up w/ an NPD dad did not get as fucked up as I did and they spent more time with my dad than I. I'm not saying that having a manipulative person in your life doesn't have damaging effects, but he clearly states symptoms of a major mental illness and showed nascent illness before he even met her, such as hypomania, which can go on for a long time before a manic episode (bipolar 2's can have hypo with no mania at all) Part of the religious mania question becomes a chicken-or-the-egg question, such as did his spiritual pursuits cause the mania or were they symptomatic of mania? I'm going to guess they were symptomatic of mania and that he was drawn to a whackadoodle kind of lady with all the same kinds of fixations that he was becoming drawn to in the first place. I'm saying that I think he lacks insight at this particular time in his healing process and that I think he blames someone else for his illness; like I also said, she was probably destabilizing in some way, but being around even personality disordered people doesn't make you bipolar. It doesn't work like that.

By: GospelofWesleyWillis

GospelofWesleyWillis — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 23:11:05 -0800

Ok; I will temper the above-statements by saying I do agree with him on the "spiritual abuse" thing, that is a phenomena that's well-known, but I still wonder about the religious mania thing. Perhaps if he hadn't met this woman, he might not have been so religiously manic but would've had some other kind of manic episode, such as sexual or financial. By his own admission, it seems he was headed in that direction. But there does seem to be a lot of overlap with cult-ish behavior.

By: motty

motty — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 20:42:56 -0800

Well, that's me told, GospelofWesleyWillis. My apologies for the unwarranted rudeness.

By: iffthen

iffthen — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 06:46:37 -0800

Keep in mind, these are the writings of a crazy person. Thanks for adding to the stigma, rather than helping. From that comment I'm assuming you don't know anything about mental illness, so I'm going to pick apart your other remarks. This is what it looks like. And by "it," you mean an individual account that is so deeply tainted by flawed cognitive processes and observations that it has no value, and needs to be judged by an impartial observer, such as say... yourself? Blame projection is a normal defense mechanism of an injured mind, like a fever. I assume you count yourself as a possessor of a shiny, bias-free, uninjured mind? You're doing a lot of othering, and the fact you currently have 18 favorites is a disgrace to many people in this thread. But enough with you, I want to contribute something positive to this discussion. I can relate to a lot of what Reitz recounts - no bipolar or schizophrenia in my case, the DSM criteria don't match - but I know more than I want to about psychosis. After an extended period on (legitimately prescribed) amphetamines, which did indeed make up for deficits in other meds, the combined effect of those with a really fucked up series of events contributed to me starting to show a whole bunch of worrying symptoms. Not only that, but I chose to deal with said fucked up events by smoking, which is being investigated as a risk factor for psychosis. So very low odds of having a healthy outcome, partly thanks to me, partly thanks to circumstances. The set of events that followed these developments were... not fun, shall we say. But having gotten through that maelstrom I feel like I have a perspective to offer, not judgement to pass, on Reitz's experiences. I think teasing out causal factors in his case is going to be really difficult, since many things exacerbated each other. I'm a little suspect about how much blame he places on his ex - in my past relational mishaps I've usually been more than 50% responsible. But I think it's a mistake to discount his judgement about what practices and relationship dynamics and communal behaviors helped lead to a place where he had a psychotic break. Trust me, he's done more soul-searching and counterfactualizing than you have. As biogeo wisely said: It seems pretty clear that there is something about Reitz's physiology and mental composition that predisposes him towards bipolar mania, but his embrace of New-Agey beliefs gave him a mental framework for interpreting his experiences in a way that amplified, rather than moderated, them. And, his pursuit of New-Agey practices like fasting and sleep deprivation very likely helped push his body into a physiological state that seriously compromised his mind's ability to self-moderate; sleep deprivation itself can lead to hallucinations even in otherwise healthy people. As for the coding aspect, saulgoodman has made many excellent points. I'd just like to add that programmer culture glorifies the sort of extreme behavior (substance abuse, sleep deprivation) that is deleterious to mental health. All-nighters are seen as a supreme moral good, rather than a health hazard. Good on Mr. Reitz for speaking out. Many aspects of the culture surrounding programming are very unhealthy, and being honest about individual experiences is the first step toward harm reduction on a broad scale.

By: biogeo

biogeo — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 11:46:44 -0800

iffthen, I think you've got a fair criticism of the potential othering in the phrase "crazy person." But, since you quoted me positively (and I thank you for it!), I feel I should also point out that I'm one of those that favorited I-Write-Essays' comment, because I actually identified with the "crazy person," and his comment helped me relate Reitz's experience to my own. Like many people, I suffer from depression and anxiety, and one of the things I'm learning to be vigilant about is how the disease distorts my perceptions and decision-making processes. It helps me sometimes to step outside myself and recognize that my perception of things may not be veridical, essentially treating myself as the "crazy person," not in the sense of an object of scorn and derision, but as a patient to be treated. I'm fortunate not to have suffered from psychosis, but I can understand from my own experience how being within a state characterized by cognitive distortions can itself be an impediment to understanding that state. Paradoxically, it can also be essential to a full understanding of such a state. (I think this is also true about human experience more generally.)

By: thetortoise

thetortoise — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 12:40:48 -0800

I'm one of those that favorited I-Write-Essays' comment, because I actually identified with the "crazy person," and his comment helped me relate Reitz's experience to my own. Yeah, I want to second that I read I-Write-Essays' comment as describing the inside of the "crazy" thought process, not as a stigmatizing/othering use of the word. Initially I found the author (Reitz) hard to empathize with but the comments in this thread helped me understand better where he was coming from and where he probably is in processing his crisis. (Fwiw, even though we may have different opinions about the piece, I'd bet most of the commenters have significant experience with mental illness. I have a bipolar dx back somewhere on my record myself, though I think it's pretty well abandoned at this point in favor of more-likely stuff.)

By: GospelofWesleyWillis

GospelofWesleyWillis — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 22:32:05 -0800

no probs; motty. I see what your point was; you were just trying to stand up for victims of narcissists, which is cool cuz I kind of am one :) My main fixation was because a nervous breakdown where you can't get out of bed, can't function etc, is very different from manic psychosis where he was up 12 days without fatigue and saying he was Jesus and so on. He's definitely got a serious illness.