The mind will follow.

So subtle yet so savage was my descent into madness that my friends and neighbors, looking for a cause, thought I must have done something terribly wrong. It was 1979. I was 23. In the community where I had lived since I was a small child, many people believed God would not inflict such painful and irregular behavior on someone unless he or she deserved it. If I were not personally culpable, surely my mother had raised me improperly. Or was it my father’s fault in some psychoanalytic way? To the small college town of Sewanee, Tennessee, finding a scapegoat seemed to take on more urgency than finding a way to treat my humiliation and pain. I was born Robert King Lundin to Margaret and Robert W. Lundin. My father was a college professor of psychology and an author of several books on behaviorism. He had studied under two luminaries in the field, B. F. Skinner and J. R. Kantor. Of the two, Skinner seemed to have a more lasting influence on him, though he spoke glowingly of Kantor and his kindnesses. My mother was a beautiful woman whom my father met when she worked in the office of the dean at Hamilton College. They had two children: my older sister and me. When I was 8, in 1964, the family moved to the University of the South, in Sewanee, and we all experienced somewhat of a culture shock. We adjusted—we had to—though none in the family ever really picked up Southern mannerisms. I could never force myself to say ‘‘y’all.’’ High school and college were both successful experiences; I was always energetic and, like my sister, shared my father’s drive. I joined numerous clubs and organizations, perhaps because I had a little less talent for academics than for extracurricular activities. Kenyon College in Ohio was a lovely and challenging school, but as my college career drew to a close, I remember having a terrible timedecidingwhere to go andwhat to do. Sensible career plans just eluded me; I only wanted a powerful, glamorous, and influential job. Nothing less would suit me. As I dreamed of becoming a diplomat or famous actor, finally my sister intervened and persuaded me to go after an MBA, the ‘‘in’’ degree at the time. At the last minute I found Vanderbilt, in Nashville, and enrolled in the Owen Graduate School of Management in fall 1978. Life was difficult in those days, a portent of things to come. First, I was bedeviled with unrealistic career goals. This was a school that placed middle managers; I felt I deserved more, much more. Added to this stress was the fact that most of the courses were completely unfamiliar to me: accounting, finance, marketing. My social relationships began to deteriorate in those months, so that I could count only a few friends among all the students in the school. I began feeling unrealistically superior: I had come from a more elite college than my classmates. I belonged to a socially and intellectually exclusive group: I had higher standards of conduct and greater academic potential. (My actual performance wavered evenly between a lack of motivation in some courses and good performance in others.) But by the first semester of my second year I began to have serious grandiose delusions. On one particularly bad night I lay in my bed thinking thatGodwas communicating tome through a lightbulb in the closet. I was being told of a nuclear attack that was assailing Nashville, which, in fact, was no more than a lightning storm. I was able, by a fluke, to admit myself to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where I was hospitalized for a week and started on Navane. When I was discharged, the school counselor was eager to reintegrate me into classes, telling me I simply had an adjustment problem. She was unsuccessful. I had to go home. The stress was too great; the Navane, too deadening: My ability to concentrate was gone. At home I tumbled into a fierce depression.My parents were shaken, my sister was irritated. In those days, I was not accustomed to failure, and I knew no good way to cope with it. Leaving graduate school, even for medical reasons, was failure. As I mulled these thoughts over and over in my mind, the depression persisted. In these days neither my family nor I realized the physiological nature of my illness; instead, the most sagacious advice I received was to exercise every day and stay in good physical shape; themindwould follow. I did; these were days when I still had athletic skill, so I ‘‘worked out’’ to recovery. Over time the depression lifted. Whether my physical prowess had an effect I don’t know, but I suspect it did speed up my recovery. In some ways the depression spent itself out; in other ways I believe that in reaching recovery it is important to act in faith, to believe that a therapy or intervention will be efficacious even though Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 31 no. 3 pp. 618–622, 2005 doi:10.1093/schbul/sbi019 Advance Access publication on March 21, 2005