Author Norah Vincent disguised herself and lived as a man for 18 months for her New York Times best-selling first novel, “Self-Made Man.” For her newest novel, “Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin,” she played the part of a patient at mental institutions, which she will be discussing at the UCLA BookZone next Thursday from 2 to 3 p.m. In this latest novel, Vincent, who suffered a severe depression after finishing the emotionally draining “Self-Made Man,” shares her personal experiences with institutions, medication and therapy. As a preview of her UCLA visit, the immersion journalist spoke with the Daily Bruin’s Paige Parker about being informed before taking medication, the trials of college years and her desire to make people think.
Daily Bruin: As you say in “Voluntary Madness” right off the bat, writing these books is very difficult for you emotionally. Why do you do what you do?
Norah Vincent: I think probably every job you do has its downside, and I feel incredibly lucky that I get to do what I do for a living. Yes, there is a downside, but also for me the most interesting stuff is the stuff that makes me uncomfortable. Usually if I’m too complacent I feel like I’m missing something.
Not that you have to torture yourself to get material, but I think that part of the reason people are interested in what I do is because it’s the through-the-keyhole aspect. In order to get through secret places where people really don’t go very often, usually you have to put yourself in either some kind of danger or you have to deceive people a little bit, disguise yourself, that kind of thing.
I’m a very conflicted person, and in part it’s like public therapy for me. I’m thankful that I get to do that for a living because I get a lot out of it, but it is a very arduous process.
DB: When you finish writing, do you feel that you have grown as a person?
NV: Definitely. With both of them I’m a different person really by the end. … It really does feel to me like I’m working through things for myself as well as, I hope, shining some light around me on some interesting questions.
DB: You say the novel is a private struggle instead of a record of your surroundings. When writing, is it difficult to step away from that objective lens and to write more subjectively?
NV: No, in the sense that part of what happens in immersion journalism is that you always end up getting personally involved. I was trying to write about immersion and therapy in real time to show what it’s like while it unfolds, and that’s hard because it’s a little bit like swimming upstream when you’re feeling depressed ““ you’re feeling like you don’t have anything interesting to say, and you’re trying to write about that in a way that seems interesting.
DB: You studied philosophy in college. Does what you learned come to mind when writing?
NV: I think I was drawn to philosophy originally because I wanted to ask big questions and I like broad strokes. … I’d much rather talk about bigger ideas and ideals and the greatest passions of my life. And I really think that that’s what philosophy is about. It’s about indulging ideas and following where they meet.
DB: What you do you hope readers get out of “Voluntary Madness”?
NV: One thing for me is that people get something personal out of it. … Maybe personally it will be a comfort to them, or maybe it’ll be a smaller inspiration, or maybe it’ll just make them think and raise a certain question. That’s really the most that I can hope to do.
DB: How do you hope your visit to UCLA will reach students, specifically those who might suffer from depression?
NV: I think that college students are at a very vulnerable age, and I certainly know that when I was a college student, that was probably when my strongest depressive sentiments really began. And it’s a time of life when that’s natural and normal and you’re struggling with your identity.
And so I hope that what I’m offering is not (advice) that I hope people never take medication and don’t consult a psychiatrist or psychologist, but do so in informed ways.
Do your homework, and before you start taking meds make sure you get all the information because your doctor may not give it to you. And also just consider other avenues as well.
And before someone tells you there’s something wrong with you, try to figure out, “Is that really true, or maybe I’m just going through something that’s difficult and should be difficult.”
Vincent hopes her Web site, www.norahvincent.net, can provide a collection of firsthand testimonies of people’s experiences with medications, institutions and psychiatrists.