Nominally, I was chair of Donald Kennedy's 1980 inauguration as Stanford's eighth president. I say "nominally" because I was breaking down, descending into what became a psychiatric crisis. Distracted, distraught, without energy or inspiration, I had my hands full as the University's head fund-raiser, never mind adding something like the inauguration. Others filled in for me seamlessly, and the events were remarkably successful. This created a feeling of coming together -- a welcome contrast to the strain of the 1970s, which unfolded in the shadow of campus upheavals and were marked by contentious disagreement over the emergence of cultural studies. The goodwill surrounding the inauguration was evanescent, of course; but it was sweet, so sweet, while it lasted.
I surprised myself by going to the inaugural ball. Unmarried then, I wandered alone over to -- Roble, wasn't it? Person after person congratulated me on the events. Please don't, I invisibly winced; I didn't do it. I danced twice, first with a good friend. We'd danced to rock music before. This festive evening our gyrations cleared the floor, as others clapped and cheered. But even in that moment, I was severely critical of myself for being an exhibitionist, triggering the self-contempt that, for me, is one of depression's worst curses.
I didn't know the other lady I danced with, but I wanted to. She was elegant: tall, with long brown hair that contrasted beautifully with her pale yellow gown. She danced intimately, not to say improperly. I felt a rush of unrehearsed love. It was idyllic. Then I began to cry. She noticed and held me tighter. That somehow felt like permission to cry harder, which I did. Then, quaveringly, I excused myself. Embarrassed, my first thought was that I needed to get control of myself. What, I wondered, was I crying about? Was I sad about being alone, odd man out on this special evening, a spectator among those who were enjoying themselves? A few minutes later, still crying, I walked home to Lake House, a University-owned residence on the shore of Lagunita -- one of the perquisites of my position. I had lived there with my two teenage daughters since my divorce two years before. At the time, they were both away at college.
That night I asked myself: was I in serious trouble? Or was this just another bad patch, like so many others I'd made it through? What should I make of my history of depression? Did it show I could bounce back? Or did it indicate, as doctors had warned me, a maturing condition that would have to be reckoned with? My family history greatly compounded the concern. Both my father and his had taken their own lives by age 50. I was 48. These were heavy considerations, to be sure. Still, as I pondered what to do, there was something else at least as weighty.
For me, Stanford was the prize at the end of the rainbow. This had little to do with the factors that are attractive to so many: climate, proximity to the ocean, the multifarious pleasures of San Francisco. For me, it was the people and, most important, their regard for me. I'd had an unusually successful career as a student -- valedictorian of my class at Beloit College, two years at Oxford as a Marshall scholar followed by law school at the University of Wisconsin, once again first in my class. Still, I had always wondered, deep down, whether I had it intellectually. This doubt was compounded by the fact that, though rapid, my professional advances came in administrative rather than scholarly positions. I became dean of students at Stanford in 1967 at the age of 34 and two years later was named president of Denison, a small college in Ohio.
In 1976, I returned to Stanford as vice president for development. While in that post, it became clear that at Stanford there was considerable regard for me on the merits, especially from some of the more discriminating faculty leaders. This was precious to me -- so precious that the thought of losing it was more than painful. It aroused thoughts of suicide.
Yet I simply didn't believe it was possible to step aside, deal with my depression, and return later. For if I admitted my condition was that serious, I felt I'd be opening myself up to the curse that destroyed my father and grandfather. This was a complex fear, not about me alone. If I, too, took my own life, thus extending the curse for my children and grandchildren, would my life have any meaning at all other than making the curse indelible? This is what haunted me, and I could not find reassurance. My confidence in psychiatry was very limited. Antidepressant medications were just being introduced. None had been tried on me. The psychiatrists I'd seen relied on talk, which didn't work for me then.
Under circumstances such as these, fear will usually outplay reason. It did that night. I resolved to carry on and hope for the best. If I said it with a quiver, and I did, I meant it with all my might.
In the months that followed, I felt better, then worse. I'd be up, only to lose it, again and again. This roller coaster was familiar to me. Even as a boy, I had frequent bouts of depression. The episodes continued through college but did not threaten to take me down until my first year of graduate school in England in 1955. After the many friends and all the fun of college, I was now alone, determined to learn whether I was a scholar's scholar, and doing so in the country that had made melancholy famous. My trouble was sufficiently conspicuous that the master of my college, in what may have been an unprecedented intrusion into the life of a student, asked me if I needed help. I demurred.
In my mind, the only alternative to struggling with depression was to succumb to it, as my father and grandfather had. To tell an awful truth, when I was younger, my strongest feeling toward my father was contempt. I blamed his failures and early death on his weak character. Stronger than he, I was determined to avoid his fate. Much later, when I was older and relied less on that sort of absolute judgment, I saw that strength was irrelevant. My father and his father died because they were ill, not because they were weak -- a realization that frightened me to the core. There was no way I could protect myself with resolve, which I had always felt was my ace in the hole.
My years as president of Denison -- 1969 to 1976 -- were especially difficult. Since my undergraduate days at Beloit, I had been a passionate advocate of liberal education. Denison was a fine liberal arts college, which I hoped to lead to even greater distinction. It was a hope that proved unattainable given the tumult and distractions facing colleges in the 1960s and early '70s. This disappointment contributed to my depression, but there was also another factor: isolation. A college president races through a surfeit of meetings, ceremonies and social events -- people everywhere, but people to whom there are professional obligations that cancel the possibility of close friendships. I felt bereft, but I struggled on -- or, perhaps more accurately, I stumbled forward.
After seven years at Denison, I was pretty much burnt out. I didn't hesitate for a second over the opportunity to return to Stanford. And it was, as events demonstrated, a good decision. The first several years were among the best of my life. Confident about my work, pleased with my colleagues, proud to be at Stanford, I had two primary goals. The first was to try to make fund raising, which had been highly intuitive, more rational. The other was to claim greater respect for fund raising at Stanford, especially among the faculty. Each of these objectives was a process that continued long after I left; however, I remain proud of what we accomplished on each front while I was there.
During those years, depression lingered, but it was not disabling. Perhaps I was like an athlete "playing hurt." I haven't a clue why, but I had more confidence and energy than at any time I could remember. Those who knew me then remember my humor. It was a signature characteristic of mine. I also had an active and exceptionally enjoyable social life.
The loss of this confidence, energy and appetite for life was gradual. There were still good days and good times, but fewer and fewer as, sometime in 1979, the slide gained momentum and then became inexorable. I reached bottom the night of the inauguration.
For a year or so afterward, I continued to work, but the optimism I had about toughing it out was fading. The depression this time was more severe, deeper, more systemic. I couldn't keep up with work, and worse -- much worse -- I increasingly avoided social gatherings, thereby isolating myself, which is an almost automatic response of depressed people and, beyond doubt, one of the worst things we do.
Inevitably, I made more and more excuses, which grew to deceptions and falsehoods. This troubled me, as well it should have. The only absolute rule of a university is, don't fiddle with the truth. Of course, this pertains mostly to scholarship, and my deceits were about my private life. Still, it was the need to fiddle with the truth that ultimately caused me to admit that I was so ill I could not continue.
Actually, there was a precipitating incident. A gentleman in Chicago, the proud grandfather of three Stanford students, arranged a luncheon for me to meet several of his friends. For him this was to have been a major event. I deliberately missed the last plane to Chicago, then claimed it was canceled. When I called to say I wasn't coming, he couldn't disguise his hurt. Nor could I forgive myself. Excuses were one thing; this was a calculated lie. I was at least as afraid as I was ashamed. It was time to blow the whistle.
I called President Kennedy that night. He offered to come to my house. Late the next morning, he arrived with Peter Bing, a leader on the Board of Trustees and a special friend of mine. It was a pleasant day in September 1981. We sat on the patio. I was mechanical, rather than emotional, as if on autopilot, while I told them the depth of my trouble. At one point Don became tearful. Then we turned quickly to the question of what to do. They suggested I take a leave. I must have signaled my agreement, but I'm not sure how. That afternoon, Don sent out a press release and a letter to the 60 people on the development office staff, explaining the situation. I remember feeling that the letter was too light, that it lacked gravitas. That feeling is a common reaction among depressed people: can't anyone grasp how desperately we need relief from the pain and anguish consuming us?
At the time I went on leave, the development office was preparing for a major campaign. It would not do for the vice presidency to be vacant for long. The exact timing eludes me, but after I had been hospitalized for three months and failed to respond to several medications, it was clear that a near-term recovery was highly unlikely. The University needed to search for a vice president for development.
When Don suggested I move to the newly created position of secretary of the Board of Trustees, I did not feel shunted aside. In fact, I was pleased, for I despaired that I could ever again generate the energy required to lead a development program as ambitious as Stanford's, and the new position seemed to call upon my remaining strengths, such as analysis and writing. And being secretary of the board would secure my position on the president's staff, which is where I had done some of my best work.
It was a splendid opportunity, but in the end I couldn't convert it. I was simply too ill. Many days I was anesthetized by depression, incapable of sustaining attention to anyone or anything. I would lie on my long green couch and stare at a pile of books next to the fireplace. Often I would try to read, give up, and resort to changing the order of the volumes as many as a dozen times. Yet, even on the days I could think and write, I had an awful time trying to work with others. I seemed to be controlled by an edgy superiority that made me hugely impatient. Driven by my own ambitions and anxieties, I gracelessly intruded on my colleagues' responsibilities, all the while knowing the damage I was doing. I wished for a different conclusion, and so did many others; but in the six months or so that it was mine, I never established myself in the position.
Undoubtedly, Stanford gave me every imaginable opportunity -- and more -- to work my way back. It would be dishonest, however, not to report that, first at Stanford and then throughout this enduring illness, I have experienced, almost daily, the shame and scorn that mentally ill people are routinely subjected to. Nor does it come from strangers only. For example, a Stanford luminary who was a close friend responded to my second note of distress by saying, "I put your first note on the corner of my desk wondering whatever I might say." I felt like screaming, "Help me as I so often have helped you." And one of Stanford's most accomplished gossips, with whom I enjoyed a monthly lunch, was discombobulated when I called to schedule the next event. It was as if I had asked him to go skydiving. Finally, there was a colleague of many years whom I called to ask to lunch. I told him, "Don't come, please, if it would trouble you. That's worse than saying no." He replied, "You underestimate me." Yet halfway through lunch he was so uncomfortable that he pretended to recall another obligation and abruptly left.
Mentally ill people must try to get used to this. Being scorned and shamed over and over again feels cruel, but, really, would others be deliberately malicious? There has to be another explanation. Many psychiatrists say it's fear -- that at the center of our beings most of us worry about how firm our own grip is. And to be with a mentally ill person at least excites, even exacerbates, that fear. It seems an intractable problem. The solution, if there is one, I must leave to others. My contribution is limited to admitting, whenever it may be helpful, that I am mentally ill.
Don Kennedy and I first worked together while he was provost. We became unusually close partners, which is curious because our temperaments are so different. Don, as I knew him, was unbelievably quick and optimistic. He lived for challenges, and he was unfailingly persuasive. One might expect a vice president for development to be a champion of growth and change, but, in fact, I was more cautious than most, often suggesting we take a second look at proposals. Perhaps I served as a counterweight to Don's speed and optimism in the many discussions around his conference table. On a personal level, Don and I were linked by deep affection and regard.
He must have dreaded having to tell me that my days at Stanford were over. This came in February 1983. I don't remember other details of the encounter -- where we were, whether anyone else was present or what Don actually said -- except that, for what might have been good reason, he used the phrase "damaged goods." I turned on him ferociously, my rage colored with righteousness. And I'm afraid that both then and in subsequent correspondence, I demonstrated that it's easier to blame a specific person for one's pain than to see the mixture of causes that in fact have done the damage. In my case, the mixture was complex and certainly did not feature Don.
So there it was. I'd lost it, the prize I wanted most -- the opportunity to earn the regard of the people who are Stanford.
It was another decade before I began to get better, a decade I scarcely remember. As it turned out, I have "recalcitrant" depression, a severe form that resists treatment even in this era when so many new medications are available. Actually, for the individual patient, the proliferation of new medicines is an emotionally charged tradeoff. My hope is renewed each time I try a new medication: this is the one that will lift me from this dungeon of despair. When it doesn't, or, worse by far, when it helps for a while but then fades -- it is an excruciating disappointment. There are people, including me, who have run this course more than 20 times. What saves us, I believe, is that after so many times, we quit being so hopeful and view the next attempt neutrally.
The other remedy for recalcitrant depression is electroshock therapy -- more accurately, electroconvulsive therapy or ECT. It is administered in sets of treatments -- six, 12, 18 -- almost always in a hospital under full anesthetic. ECT often works, although no one knows why. The massive shock causes a convulsion that has a mysterious salutary effect. But there is a downside that the advocates of ECT don't admit candidly enough. The benefits have a short life -- only three, four, five weeks for me. This means that when the fade begins, the patient knows that the return to the dungeon is inevitable. Over the years, I had six or eight sets of ECT. I'd have to be in exceedingly rough shape before I would consent to it again.
The 10 years after I left Stanford -- 1983 to 1993 -- were filled with more than failed remedies, however. There were other kinds of failures. I was married and divorced twice. How appalling it is not to remember even names and faces, much less the persons, with whom one tried to make a family. But deep depression does that. So does ECT. Then there was my determination to be employed again, which was grounded in my utterly unrealistic wish not just to get back to work, but somehow, someday to regain the challenges and respect I'd once had.
This was a self-defeating quest. It's not that I couldn't get a job. With Stanford so prominent on my resume, I always managed to find work. I took on at least a dozen consulting jobs, spent part of a year as an acting vice president at the University of Virginia and put in six months as president of a group dedicated to preserving Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio. In one position after another, however, I had trouble working with others, who often felt I was imposed on them. I was arrogant. Usually I felt the program I was working in needed major repair, perhaps even reconceptualization. When my colleagues resisted, I would become archly insistent, with the predictable result that I would be fired unless I left on my own. Why would anyone subject himself to this rejection again and again? The answer is: I am ill. When provoked, for example, by a visit from a much-admired friend, ambition screams at me. Like a recovering addict, I am learning to resist. As with the addict, the stakes can be life or death.
In the last four years, a new medication has helped me a lot. I am better, but not cured. It might be more prudent to anticipate that this medicine, like the others, will wear out. But as the months go by, I am less cautious, more hopeful that this time we have a winner, that this time it will last.
When I began to get better, one of the faces I made out in the misty haze was Don Kennedy's. I knew I had been wrong, and I felt the wish to reach for him. So I chose a favorite from my collection of note cards -- an exceptionally fine reproduction of a Josef Albers painting -- and sat down to write. But what would I say? Mental illness, like all illness, is involuntary; an apology would not make sense. So in writing to Don I made the distinction between apology and regret. I regretted what I had done. He replied immediately. He had taken my point. Since then I've visited Stanford twice, not counting a long stay at the hospital in 1995. The visits, like most feasts, were wonderful but too much. I was emotionally overloaded both times. I am more comfortable staying in touch with old friends by note.
'She's a small college, but there are those of us who love her," Daniel Webster famously said of Dartmouth. For a rationalist like me, it has always seemed squishy to profess love for an institution. With universities, I'm interested in the intellectual balance sheet. That said, I overflow with sentiment about Stanford. My years there were more demanding, exciting and satisfying than any other time in my life. It struck me each day as remarkable that so many exceptionally able people, challenged by such high standards, so often found ways to work collaboratively for the benefit of the University, and also to touch one another deeply. It was all I ever hoped for. The question is not whether I remember Stanford fondly, but rather, whether I shall ever get over having been there. Perhaps not. I haven't yet.
My aspirations are humbler now -- or, it would be better to say, gentler, more appropriate to the life I have. It is a life marked by many limitations. I am not, however, without pride. That pride assures that there are two autobiographical points which, for very different reasons, I assert at every appropriate opportunity: yes, I am mentally ill; and, yes, I was a vice president of Stanford.
Joel Smith is a writer living in Madison, Wis.
