Thursday, August 6, 2009

Waste Not: OCD & MOMA



Waste Not: Projects 90 MOMA /©2009 Am Ang Zhang

In psychiatry, sometimes patients do not want any help. Often they positively refuse help and family members collude. At other times the “help” may not be all that good.


As a result many children grow up in very “unusual” environments. Yet we sometimes get very “unusual” outcomes as some individuals can turn such an experience into something ……well, something quite extraordinary.


Obsessional Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is one such condition that many families prefer to cope with secretly and often for many many years.


In a chapter in The Cockroach Catcher called: Who Is The Real Patient?
Wayne is a teenage boy I had been seeing because he could not face school:

“……After nine months, Wayne finally opened up to me.
Mother never threw away anything. Nothing at all!
Except wet waste, which was a relief.
This was a serious case of OCD (Obsessional Compulsive Disorder). It was still a great shock to have the full extent of the things that were kept detailed to you. Even a five bedroom house soon ran out of space.
Wayne told me that as far as he knew, mother had always been reluctant to throw away anything but it seemed to get out of control about five years ago when she discovered that father kept a woman in a port in the Far East. She moved out of the master bed-room and the rubbish moved in. Everything was neatly put in big rubbish bags and properly tied up. Some were in apple or other supermarket boxes. Even vacuum cleaner bags were kept.
Mother did a good job of it so that there was no bad smell at all, Wayne would reassure me. Just no space.
All these months, I had been thinking that the bullying was the cause of Wayne’s problem. Did I get it wrong? All the time I spent trying to improve his self esteem, was it time wasted? Was there something I could have done earlier? Why did he take nine months?
Perhaps he needed that time to find out if I was going to send his mother to an asylum. Perhaps he needed all that time to trust me enough to talk about the sickest person in the family. Perhaps he never had any plan but the secret just came out.
Perhaps these were all valid explanations, but what could we as a clinic do?”





Waste Not: Projects 90 MOMA /©2009 Am Ang Zhang
Recently, I visited The Museum Of Modern Art ( MOMA) in New York and saw something that reminded me of my patient’s mother.
Mr. Song Dong is the artist and his mother is called Ms. Zhao.
Here is a write up in The New York Times:
“Mr. Song was born in Beijing in 1966, on the very eve of the Cultural Revolution, a period of ideological danger and economic want. His mother came from a wealthy family that lost everything after one of its members was jailed as an anti-Communist spy. His father, trained as an engineer, spent seven years in forced labor after being accused of counterrevolutionary activity.
“When Mr. Song’s father died, in 2002, his mother was inconsolable. She continued to live in the jammed Beijing house, throwing nothing away and obsessively bringing more stuff into it, as if continuing to feather a nest for a now-absent family. And despite the threatened destruction of the surrounding area, she would make no move that entailed parting with her possessions.
“Finally, in 2005, Mr. Song proposed that they turn the accumulated junk into an art project. In this way, he argued, nothing would be discarded and lost; everything would be meaningfully recycled and preserved. His mother agreed to this and together, with the help of Ms. Yin and Mr. Song’s sister, Song Hui, they emptied the premises.

Waste Not: Projects 90 MOMA /©2009 Am Ang Zhang
“Seen in the museum’s immaculate surroundings…….it is disturbing to imagine anyone growing up, as Mr. Song did, in so smothering a physical environment. Finally, it is deeply moving to see the span of one person’s life — his mother’s — summed up, monument style, in a work of art that is every bit as much about loss as it is about muchness.
“And five years after the piece was conceived……..mother agreed to collaborate with her son, empty her home and effectively let go of her past, she moved into the more manageable setting of a Beijing apartment near a park, where she died last winter after falling from a step ladder while trying to rescue a wounded bird in a tree.”
Life could be cruel.
Waste Not: Projects 90: Song Dong
June 24, 2009–September 7, 2009
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5 comments:

Amelia said...

This is cool. I went up to my loft and tried to find all my empty boxes. I think I have collected more than hundred empties over the years. Wonder if I can make the most of them.
I like what you said that as a result of many children growing up in unusual environment and yet they still can produce unusual outcomes. We, human beings, are so adaptive and flexible. Surely, we have all had some dark forces behind us, just make the most of it.

Cockroach Catcher said...

He was offered millions but he refused to sell: his family history.

Thanks for visiting

Amelia said...

He is a fool then. With the new millions, he could have installed another big master piece. Perhaps, buy a shark, like Damien Hirst.

Toni Brayer, MD said...

Fascinating! There is a fine line between collectors and OCD hoarders, I think!, Is it a continuium and at some point it becomes extreme? What about people who rescue animals compared to the "crazy cat lady".

Cockroach Catcher said...

What is interesting is that in the Mao era, there is in fact so little that it was physically possible. Also often it is the people around (family) that suffers.

I agree that the rich ones collect things that are the treasures of many museums. Many are just toys like at the Forbes Galleries in NY. Thank goodness for that too.

What this MOMA exhibit chronicled is the poverty the people suffered in that era.