The lunatic and the mystic

Towards the end of Dorothy Bryant's Confessions of Madame Psyche, the narrator says she has come across "a psychologist named Boisson, who has spent much time in asylums, both as a patient and as a minister.  Boisson writes of the similarity between the mystic and the lunatic ....  The revelation, the crack in the walls of the mind is the same, he thinks.  The difference between the mystic and the lunatic is pride.  The lunatic refuses to 'walk humbly with thy God.'"

I don't know if there ever really was a psychologist named Boisson who wrote these things.  I spent five minutes on Google looking fruitlessly for him, but that proves nothing.  But the line made me wonder about my own attraction to crazy people.  Now, "attraction" may be a little too strong a word most of the time, and I'm skittish enough of danger that I prefer to meet my crazy people between the covers of a book.  But I know it's true.  Recently I even tried to come up with a list of crazy people that I find interesting -- that I come back to again and again.  My list was pretty short, but I think that's because I'm forgetting somebody, not because there isn't anybody there.

• Robert Pirsig
• William Blake
• Julie Powell (see also this post here)
• Wife

You didn't think I was going to forget that last one, did you?  Honestly I think the early traces of her mental illness may well have been part of what attracted me to her in the first place.  Be careful what you wish for.

There's probably more to flesh out here, but I'm not sure where to take it at the moment, so I'll leave this as a promissory note for later ....