“Do not want to always nod yes like her and be self-effacing.” Her mother, who was unhappy in her marriage, reminded her of a “slave.” “New insight,” she wrote in her diary. She’d wanted to be a historian, but her father, domineering and cold, had pressured her to be a doctor. “I am confronted almost daily with the consequences of my childhood,” she wrote to her mother. She continually dissected the source of her distress. With each new doctor, she embraced the therapeutic process anew, adopting her doctor’s philosophy and rewriting her life story so that it fit his theory of the mind. Godelieva, who taught anatomy to nurses, had been in therapy since she was nineteen. At these moments, she wrote, she tried to remind herself of all the things she could do to feel happy: “demand respect from others” “be physically attractive” “take a reserved stance” “live in harmony with nature.” She imagined a life in which she was intellectually appreciated, socially engaged, fluent in English (she was taking a class), and had a “cleaning lady with whom I get along very well.” She felt “light gray” when she went to the hairdresser or rode her bicycle through the woods in Hasselt, a small city in the Flemish region of Belgium, where she lived. Belgian law allows euthanasia for patients who suffer from severe and incurable distress, including psychological disorders.
0 kommentar(er)
