The Georgie Gust Exhibit

There is something about being loved and protected by a parent (or guardian) knowing that I can be loved for who I am, not what I can do, or might one day become. Unfortunately, it’s not usually like this in every single situation. From time to time, my parents made mistakes during my childhood. Possibly I was the mistake, or unwanted. But I don’t know. I had every material thing that I could have ever wanted, but there was still something missing as if I felt distanced from my parents, or misunderstood, in the ways that they treated me. At times, I had felt completely loved and accepted by my parents, but for one reason or another, they were unable to care for me, provide for me, in some ways that would have been very important. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to make up for the experiences in life that were absent when I was a child. I miss Dad. He is turning 70 soon. I wish I could share this with him but unfortunately, we are still estranged from one another.

Living with Psychosis: Living in Shame

Time passes so quickly these days as I come upon my 40th year. The prognosis of my schizophrenia spectrum disorder becomes clearer as my cognitive abilities decline.

Life is an intimate and somewhat private stage. By contrast, the Internet is a public and global stage that is written in ink, not pencil. There is a curtain that always remains open.

Time passes. Time goes... Where?

“I’ve always loved the night, when everyone else is asleep and the world is all mine. It’s quiet and dark—the perfect time for creativity.” —Jonathan Harnisch, Porcelain Utopia

I forget the rest. I just don’t care anymore. But the sad part is I actually do.

Love me, hate me, hurt me, or kill me. I keep fighting.

In a recent review in Foreword Reviews—known as “THE indie books magazine”—of one of my novels, perhaps my legacy, Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography, Alex Franks, in an excellent critique, writes: “Mental illness is romanticized at points in the text, as well, which may leave some familiar with the realities with an unsavory taste. That's not to say the work isn't well written—it's carefully plotted with well-rendered characters, presented in a narrative that would appropriately be deemed ‘schizophrenic.’” To romanticize, we must deal with an event in an idealized or unrealistic fashion; make something seem better or more appealing than it really is. I must have been having a good day when writing those “romanticized” parts. But, Jesus, sometimes I know of no other way to cope.

The illness sucks. Schizophrenia sucks. And right now I think I suck. I’m sick. I am very sick. I was simply taking a nap in the house, but my so-to-speak real life is fully delusional. All the negative stuff, as my psychiatrist reminds me every day, are hallucinations or delusions. I am turning into my own book in many respects, and I still do not accept my overall mental health condition, not being able to tell what is real and what is not real, while my thinking, behavior, and mood are altered. That in itself presents a large problem—most of my problems.

I will be around. I hope I will be working, not sleeping. I don't know. As the day continues, I will try my best for you because I trust you, and I think you know that I would like your thoughts on things at some point. I understand that many of the things I ask others to do are simply unrealistic or out of their jurisdiction, maybe. I just don't know how to wing it. I don't know what I'm saying. I have no clue, though life is just impossible. I have to have a plan. I can't make one. I have nothing. If you have a full hour until one o'clock, feel free to leave messages of any kind. I just have nothing to say. Blah, blah, blah...

Too many problems to discuss, and they change—with additions and deletions. For example, this morning. And then not later in the morning. And then now, which means it has changed three times already. I believe I am not real and that nothing is real, not even that thought. All I do is hurt people. I am often ashamed of myself, mostly when I am around other people in any way at all. And I think I'm brilliant, and I talk too much, and I don't talk at all. I'm a complete waste, a failure, a miserable miscreant, and then it changes back-and-forth, back-and-forth, back-and-forth. You can see I'm trying to communicate, and I just can't. Anyway I am safe. I am not suicidal. As usual, I’m sure many are concerned, though nobody is here or there. I don't care.

This has already taken me 40 minutes to write. It sounds scary, and sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. Everything is in black and white right now. I just don't care about a thing. I have no idea what is going on, if anything at all. I lie, I cheat, I steal, and I use people. I'm a goodhearted person, I am smart, I am a creative, I am successful, I am wealthy, and I have my good times. Simply, in three words: "I don't know." But someho

Early Signs of Schizophrenia:

The following list, compiled by one mental health consumer, contains some of the typical early warning signs of schizophrenia. Keep in mind that schizophrenia onset is typical between the ages of 15 and 25 (although it can affect children younger than fourteen, with a subtype known as childhood-onset schizophrenia). The disorder can come on over a period of years (called insidious onset) or be very rapid. It affects 1% of the general population. The list is subdivided into Physical Symptoms, Feelings and Mood, Behavior, Cognitive Problems, Delusions, and Hallucinations.

Please remember that only a qualified psychologist, psychiatrist (or in some areas a social worker) can accurately diagnose schizophrenia or any other brain disorder. A psychologist or psychiatrist will use the clinical history of the person, as well as the symptoms and criteria in the DSM-IV (in the United States) to make a diagnosis.

Examples of Physical Symptoms----

--A blank, vacant facial expression. An inability to smile or express emotion through the face is so characteristic of the disease that it was given the name of affective flattening or a blunt affect.

--Overly acute senses- lights are too bright, sounds are too loud.

--Staring, while in deep thought, with infrequent blinking.

--Clumsy, inexact motor skills

--Sleep disturbances- insomnia or excessive sleeping

--Involuntary movements of the tongue or mouth (facial dyskinesias). Grimacing at the corners of the mouth with the facial muscles, or odd movements with the tongue.

--Parkinsonian type symptoms- rigidity, tremor, jerking arm movements, or involuntary movements of the limbs

--An awkward gait (how you walk)

--Eye movements- difficulty focusing on slow moving objects

--Unusual gestures or postures

--Movement is speeded up- i.e. constant pacing 

--Movement is slowed down- staying in bed (in extreme cases, catatonia)

Examples of Feelings/Emotions----

--The inability to experience joy or pleasure from activities (called anhedonia)

--Sometimes feeling nothing at all 

--Appearing desireless- seeking nothing, wanting nothing

--Feeling indifferent to important events

--Feeling detached from your own body (depersonalization)

--Hypersensitivity to criticism, insults, or hurt feelings

Examples of Mood----

--Sudden irritability, anger, hostility, suspiciousness, resentment

--Depression- feeling discouraged and hopeless about the future

--Low motivation, energy, and little or no enthusiasm

--Suicidal thoughts or suicidal ideation

--Rapidly changing mood- from happy to sad to angry for no apparent reason (called labile mood)

--Severe Anxiety

Changes in Behavior associated with schizophrenia ----

--Dropping out of activities and life in general

--Inability to form or keep relationships

--Social isolation- few close friends if any. Little interaction outside of immediate family.

--Increased withdrawal, spending most of the days alone.

--Becoming lost in thoughts and not wanting to be disturbed with human contact

--Neglect in self-care- i.e. hygiene, clothing, or appearance

--Replaying or rehearsing conversations out loud- i.e. talking to yourself (very common sign)

--Finding it difficult to deal with stressful situations

--Inability to cope with minor problems

--Lack of goal-directed behavior. Not being able to engage in purposeful activity

--Functional impairment in interpersonal relationships, work, education, or self-care

--Deterioration of academic or job-related performance

--Inappropriate responses- laughing

Afflicted with schizophrenia, Tourette’s Syndrome and other mental illnesses, the prolific and gifted Jonathan Harnisch has transformed the harrowing raw material of his life into what he calls “transgressive fiction” in semi-autobiographical novels such as Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography and Living Colorful Beauty. With Second Alibi: The Banality of Life, he revisits the abrasive, triangular psychodrama of his brilliant, questing psychotic Ben Schreiber, Ben’s libertine alter-ego, Georgie Gust, and the sadistic temptress, Claudia Nesbitt, who torments them both, while also including a moving plea for understanding that stands apart from the disturbed fevers of his fiction. “This is a story, I hope, about my coming to enlightenment,” Harnisch writes, and in that vein he enlightens us, too, about the fantastic terrors of schizophrenia: “What this life is like with the ups and the downs, the confusion, the love and the hate; the black and the white.” He tells us about his moods abruptly shifting 25 times in an hour, his suicide attempts and addictions, the grim realities of sleep deprivation and the fear that his beloved wife has been reading his mind. Second Alibi toggles unpredictably between semi-coherent rage (Harnisch says he often writes when symptomatic) and cool detachment, and it deploys several forms: Harnisch’s sexually-charged fiction (Claudia is “a slow-moving serpent with a tongue of fire and the ass of a bombshell”); a 106-page screenplay featuring dialogues between Ben and his old antagonists, and with his life-saving therapist, “Dr. C”; self-lacerating entries from “Georgie Gust’s” 2005 diary, and the author’s clear explanations of his condition, apparently written at moments when his symptoms have subsided.

Don't start your day with the broken pieces of yesterday. I am a troubled man with feelings. I am not good, but I know how to be good. I burn bridges and build better ones. I can’t make my mind up because my mental landscape is full if wondrous things! I can love, and I am learning to be in love with myself. I don't know how to trust, but I trust I am alive. I make more mistakes than I should so I am continually learning. I am always sorry, and I always forgive myself. I never change and yet I feel changes. I am afraid of letting anyone else in my life too close and yet I find I'm not running away because I am curious. The door to my life is open because I am genuine and authentic and real. People will come and go, and I am blessed that I have known them. The door is too big for it to be blocked by anything that wants to flow free, and the current of life that goes through it pulls with it all its uncertainty.

Just let me vent for a sec. I am a troubled man with feelings. I am not good, but I know how to be good. I burn bridges and build better ones. I can’t make my mind up because my mental landscape is full if wondrous things! I can love, and I am learning to be in love with myself. I don't know how to trust, but I trust I am alive. I make more mistakes than I should so I am continually learning. I am always sorry, and I always forgive myself. I never change and yet I feel changes. I am afraid of letting anyone else in my life too close and yet I find I'm not running away because I am curious. The door to my life is open because I am genuine and authentic and real. People will come and go, and I am blessed that I have known them. The door is too big for it to be blocked by anything that wants to flow free, and the current of life that goes through it pulls with it all its uncertainty.

I am a troubled man with feelings. I am not good, but I know how to be good. I burn bridges and build better ones. I can’t make my mind up because my mental landscape is full if wondrous things! I can love, and I am learning to be in love with myself. I don't know how to trust, but I trust I am alive. I make more mistakes than I should so I am continually learning. I am always sorry, and I always forgive myself. I never change and yet I feel changes. I am afraid of letting anyone else in my life too close and yet I find I'm not running away because I am curious. The door to my life is open because I am genuine and authentic and real. People will come and go, and I am blessed that I have known them. The door is too big for it to be blocked by anything that wants to flow free, and the current of life that goes through it pulls with it all its uncertainty.

A young man battling extreme mental illness brings his sadomasochistic fantasies to life in Harnisch's (Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia, 2014, etc.) latest novel....The novel plunges readers into the mind of a man at war with its own urges, memories, and sexual obsessions... Despite the garishness, brutality, and squalor of many passages ... sophisticated readers will appreciate the extraordinary feat Harnisch has accomplished.... An extraordinary, harrowing odyssey into an embattled self, full of humor, compassion, and a rare understanding of mental illness. -Kirkus Reviews

At the opening of Living Colorful Beauty, the reader is presented with two protagonists. There’s Ben, the narrator of the preface, who relates the story of the awful sex education classes he sat through in middle school and of his subsequent discovery of his father’s collection of pornography; and then there’s Georgie, a sexual submissive with a foot fetish, who is obsessed with his beautiful and manipulative next-door neighbor Claudia. As the story progresses, however, it becomes clear that Georgie and Ben share a single three-dimensional body. Georgie is a character in a novel Ben is writing, and Ben maintains that Georgie is in fact no more than a literary device. However, it is clear almost immediately that this is not the case. Throughout his life, Ben has received a number of psychiatric diagnoses, ranging from Tourette’s Syndrome to borderline personality disorder to schizoaffective disorder, and he displays some traits of all of these. Yet amid all these diagnoses, the one thing that seems to have slipped under the radar thus far is his tendency towards emotional dissociation, which is closely related to post-traumatic stress syndrome. It is this dissociative tendency that has led Ben to create Georgie, a safe repository for the emotions and desires – primarily sexual – that Ben himself is unable to process. Initially, therefore, the life of Ben and Georgie is fairly well ordered. It is clear from the start that Ben has issues relating to women: his romantic life has been a string of broken relationships and missed opportunities, and though he needs love desperately he finds himself overcome by fear around women. Whenever this issue arises, Ben retreats into Georgie’s relationship with Claudia. Claudia is compelling, manipulative, emotionally abusive, and tremendously sensual. She controls Georgie completely, only allowing him sex at certain times, alternately telling him she loves him and that she couldn’t care less about him, telling him she won’t sleep with him and then inviting him to watch her sleep with other men and other women. Yet Georgie is inextricably drawn to her, accepting all of the emotional pain that comes with his relationship with her as long as he can continue to hope that she may sleep with him again. The sex they share is gritty and fetish-laden, with strong overtones of sadomasochism and violence, and their relationship itself is sustained entirely by Georgie’s obsession. Yet he is unable to let Claudia go. Similarly, Ben claims that Georgie’s relationship with Claudia is based on his own relationship with Heidi – yet as the story progresses, we learn that Heidi is a lesbian whom Ben met once some months ago when she was in town for a conference, and that after one night, she left town and Ben had never heard from her again. In Ben’s relationship with Heidi, mirrored in his imagining of Georgie’s relationship with Claudia, it is clear that his interest is not in Heidi but rather in the image of Heidi, which, in the absence of the real Heidi, Ben can mold into whatever he needs her to be. Heidi is the locus of Ben’s obsession, as Claudia is the locus of Georgie’s; however, the root of these obsessive tendencies lies somewhere else entirely.

A boarding school student with Tourette's syndrome looks for the meaning of life in this offbeat novella. This is recommended to fans of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. When We Were Invincible details the experiences of Georgie Gust at the fictional St. Michael’s Academy, a prestigious East Coast boarding school. In the vein of Catcher in the Rye, the novella focuses on Georgie’s sense of isolation and feelings of otherness as he navigates his world while suffering from Tourette’s Syndrome and early onset schizophrenia. Although the two disorders set Georgie apart from the rest of his classmates, they do not deter Claudia from pursuing a relationship with him. Seeing Georgie as more than a series of tics, Claudia recognizes him for the unconventional intellectual that he is, and together they explore a number of theological and philosophical questions that defy neat and simple answers. Nevertheless, Georgie and Claudia’s encounters, whether they take place wandering illicitly off campus at night, through letters and emails, or simply in the hallways and classrooms of their school, have the power to change them both forever.