"Susto is an illness attributed to a frightening event that causes the soul to leave the body. Individuals with susto also experience significant strains in key social roles. Symptoms may appear any time from days to years after the fright is experienced. It is believed in extreme cases, susto may result in death . . . Ritual healings are focused on calling the soul back to the body and cleansing the person to restore bodily and spiritual balance."
This excerpt is taken from the grand reference known as Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) and was the launch pad (or the fall-through-floor point) for my novel Private Midnight.
I’ve always been interested in mental disorders. I think we all are in some way. Still, it surprised me that in such a weighty compendium of Western psychiatry so much credence would be given to a condition like susto.
Robert M. Pirsig, in his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and its sequel, Lila, writes poignantly from his personal experience with mental illness, and makes the case that definitions of sanity and insanity are always culturally dependent. Psychiatric conditions are not objectively presented, they are informed by language, religion and upbringing -- patterns of accepted behavior and values. It may be perfectly normal for an Australian Aboriginal to believe in the power and living presence of the Dreamtime, where for people of other histories, this is but a metaphor or a quaint misconception. Or just plain looney tunes.
Susto is one of many examples of this phenomena, in that it is typically associated with people of Hispanic origin or societal influence. But note the decided metaphysical tone of the above description -- the frank mention of the “soul” and its ability to separate from the body. This was what impressed me -- not only the acceptance of cultural factors, but the allowance for what can be fairly called the Supernatural within the foremost general Western text on mental health. I saw the conflict between conventional ideas about sanity and the possibilities of other kinds of being in a phosphorescent new light -- and I was suddenly embarked on the story that became Private Midnight.
Arguably the most famous work of fiction to explore the soft, shadowy ground between the psychological and the paranormal is Henry James’ notorious novella Turn of the Screw. In that story, an engaging but somehow unstable young governess is dispatched to a remote country estate to mind the schooling and well being of two young children. What precisely happens is a matter of continuing debate, but she encounters the ghosts of two previous household employees, a man and a woman -- and Miles, the young boy in her charge, dies. That is pretty much all that is clear and interpretations are almost as varied as the number of readers.
The key question is, are the ghosts real? Is this is a kind of ghost story -- or is it really the tale of a sexually repressed young woman who becomes obsessive and indeed psychotic under conditions of isolation? I say a “kind of ghost story,” because in a work like Stephen King’s The Shining, there’s no question that it’s a story of supernatural evil. James, on the other hand, keeps his options open and his readers guessing -- and still arguing all these many years later.
He does this so expertly in fact, the story seems to oscillate back and forth between the poles of Psychological Allegory and Ghost Story, and it’s difficult to hold more than one frame of interpretation in mind at a time. Typically, readers first discover the work as a tale of the supernatural and then on a second, more mature reading begin to see the psychological and sexual subtext. It’s a remarkable achievement, and regardless of a definitive interpretation, the book’s seductive, brooding tone of menace, its pervasive sense of hauntedness, has inspired many.Notes in James’ letters reveal that he was extremely conscious of the dark delicate line he was walking and supremely aware of how to enhance the ambiguity. Ambiguity, it could be said, was his chief artistic goal. But in doing so he also raises important, lingering questions about the nature of mental health.
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Kris Saknussemm is the author of the novel Zanesville (Villard Books) and the psychological thriller Private Midnight (Overlook Press). For more on his work process, read a 2005 interview with Saknussemm, or read his essay, "Five Tips to Avoiding Total Disaster as a Novelist."