PKD & Bipolar Disorder

Larry Bigman

I want to throw my two cents in about PKD's various "mystical" experiences. I base these conclusions on two things, the first being that I am a physician and psychiatrist, and the second being that I spent an afternoon visiting with Phil in 1980. Also, I've been reading and collecting his books and references for almost twenty years; as a result, I have a complete collection of his fiction and the majority of the reference works.

To get to the nitty-gritty, I believe that the most probable and parsimonious explanation for Phil's experiences/actions is that he had Bipolar Disorder (otherwise known as Manic-Depressive Illness) with secondary panic attacks. At the '85 Westercon Tessa Dick confirmed that Phil had been diagnosed as such but had not responded to Lithium Carbonate. Her conclusion was that therefore he could not have Bipolar Disorder; this is an incorrect conclusion.

Individuals who have Bipolar Disorder when they are in a manic phase of the illness that is not adequately treated will routinely experience auditory hallucinations as well as grandiose delusions, stereotypically with a religious or sexual content. When I met with Phil, I knew nothing about the "pink light" experience, but psychiatrically speaking, he presented himself with a relatively normal mental status, except for some mild depressed moods.

The claims re: temporal lobe epilepsy and strokes are predicated on ignorance of the practical clinical presentation of these illnesses. Neither can encompass all of Phil's symptomatology.

Beyond the matter of Bipolar Disorder, we must factor in the emotional/psychological events in Phil's life, the primary ones being the death of his twin sister, the divorce of his parents and subsequent estrangement from his father for years, and the apparent emotional distance between him and his mother. If you combine the usual sequelae of these events with the Bipolar symptomatology, you can easily and readily explain the events in Phil's life.

I, too, have wondered about Tessa Dick's confirmation of the mystical hernia story. I asked Paul Williams about this a couple of years ago, and, without going into detail, he minimized her ability to corroborate the story. For whatever it's worth, we must remember she was only 18 or 19 at the time.

As far as Gregg Rickman's assertion of childhood sexual abuse, he demonstrates how the old adage of "a little knowledge" is true. Rickman has pulled together small details without the adequate training and knowledge to assess them comprehensively. One example: he talks in the third interview book about Phil's difficulty with swallowing. He defines this (in a vacuum) as globus hystericus, and thus a symptom of abuse, i.e. that Phil was forced as a child to fellate someone, most likely (according to Rickman) his maternal grandfather. It is possible, but not the most likely explanation. Much more likely is that Phil had the onset of panic attacks in his early adolescence with the usual subsequent development of agoraphobia.

I could go on and on, but you all probably get my drift. I know this sort of prosaic explanation is not as enticing as some of the others. As far as I am concerned, though, these other discussions divert us from the reality (if you'll pardon the expression) of who Philip K. Dick was: a man with a frequently troubling disease who wrote some of the most entertaining, fascinating and illuminating fiction in the twentieth century. When one ponders Phil's questions of "What is human? What is real?" it behooves us to remember that he answered these questions. His answer was "love/caritas/agape". Simple, yes, but you know, he was right.