Paranoia

The wife of Heracles has an idea

The Trachiniae by Sophocles, translated by Francis Storr

It is common enough for someone who was nor before paranoid to succumb to paranoia. I know many, loosely associated with Britain’s immense, sprawling healthcare sector, who — precisely because they have higher IQs than most — are staggering susceptible to unfounded talk of conspiracy and betrayal.

I know personally, have met many people, who have been given great chances or second chances in British and American life — who are respected, who have title and office, and yet who have gone off the deep end. And quite spectacularly. In the very early days of artificial intelligence, many people convinced themselves that the AI was sentiment and talking to them directly, that the big companies were suppressing the truth.

Brute mental illness can appear as if from a calm sky. You can always listen to the sly Iago’s voice, no matter who you are.

It is not only paranoia that stings this way. Let’s call some of it ordinary fear.

There are stories about professional people — let’s say they are diplomats, or business leaders, or the kinds of people who run companies and travel much and expensively for work. They fly all over the world, all over the place, all the time. But then they arrive in their comfortable late middle age, let’s say around fifty-five. All of a sudden, they start to sweat a little in the air. They clutch the sides of their swish air-miles chairs. They cannot stop themselves thinking of going down in flames, smashing into the sea not to be rescued, dying on fire, freezing to death, drowning. They believe — wholly without evidence — that their luck has run out. They’ve done a dangerous thing too many times. And they are for the first time afraid.

We have enough evidence of soldiers, who also face great risk although not always with knowingness. Very young soldiers believe bullets and bombs don’t affect them and some armies have been run on those principles. But now a war is winding down. Soldiers who believe that a war is about to end get jumpier and insecure. Now, they think, it would be a great pity to be killed or wounded just before the thing wrapped up. Wilfred Owen’s mother got the news of his death on the day of the Armistice, as the church bells were tolling in celebration of the victory. Jumpy soldiers are bad soldiers. They’re a danger to others and themselves.

This paranoia has problems. It makes previously reliable airline pilots nervous. It makes them a risk to others. A horse can see battle any number of times, it was once rumoured; but once the horse scares once, it will scare for life. It will be useless at anything other than the most mundane tasks: never able to do what it was trained for. And it will one day scare. Of that you can be certain.

A clever man, equipped by his batman or squire, would have brought more than one horse on campaign. But in our ordinary lives we can’t make many accommodations like that.

The wife, for instance, whose existence was all flowers and contentment until the thought enters her head that her husband may stray from her. That thought — whatever its foundation — may never be removed. There is no proof positive that a deceit, a betrayal, is not happening or will not happen in the future. One suggestion of disloyalty and, for some pairs, never again will those two be in love. The old loyalty seems like nothing. It’s gone and never to be recaptured. Just the suggestion — it’s all that’s required. Just the suggestion that things may not be as they seem.

This is what seizes Deianira, the companion of Heracles. Her husband has been away some time — doing more of his great, momentous tasks. But as Deianira waits, a lacky of Heracles’s, Lichas, arrives and says that his boss will soon be around.

Lichas is not alone, however. Among a train of baggage and slaves is Iole, a particularly beautiful maid, whose life Heracles saved and with whom, Deianira comes to believe, he is now in love. Rather than surrender her husband to this usurper, Deianira recalls something from her past. The centaur Nessus had, as he was dying, given Deianira what he said was a love-charm. He urged her to use it on her husband if ever he looked like leaving. Deianira does this and too late realises that Nessus might not have had her best interests at heart, and instead, he wanted to use his final act to poison Heracles, not to aid him.

Lichas is sent with a cloak embedded with the poison, and Heracles, upon wearing it, is horrifically and fatally affected. And his son Hyllus, is there to suffer his father’s agonies. This is a Sophoclean tragedy, after all.

There is no lesson that can be given about paranoia, as all are, if they live averagely long, quite likely to be affected by it. From every walk of life. In every circumstance. But it’s a dangerous thing, paranoia. Even as great a being as Heracles can fall to its effects.