The Irish Disorder

Author Honor Tracy calls it "double-speak, double-think"--the typically Irish form of banter that says one thing and means another. It has helped produce a race of verbally agile writers, politicians and pub crawlers. If McGill University Psychiatrist H.B.M. Murphy is correct, it is also producing a high rate of schizophrenia on the old sod.

At the second annual Conference on Schizophrenia, in Rochester, Dr. Murphy reported that the incidence of schizophrenia in the Republic of Ireland is nearly triple the rate of the disease among Irish in Canada and Northern Ireland. His conclusion: Irish doublespeak creates intolerable levels of ambiguity that help produce schizophrenia. Many researchers consider schizophrenia a genetic disorder, while others believe it is produced by cultural pressures. Dr. Murphy's view of the problem among the Irish goes down the middle: though schizophrenia probably requires a genetic predisposition, it is triggered more often where the Irish are unmixed with other races, less often when the presence of other ethnic groups eases the pressure of Irish doublespeak.

Like most analysts of Irish culture, Dr. Murphy (a Scot) assumes that Irish expression was shaped by nearly 800 years of English domination. "You get this very commonly in a defeated people where the new master never gets a straight answer," he said. "I would guess that doublespeak had something to do with the fact that the Irish family and community could not tolerate open hostility. It always had to be suppressed, and using double language enabled them to do it. For some, it is an enjoyable game. But for those with a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, there is a critical level where they get hurt."

Dr. Murphy reached his conclusion after rejecting other possible explanations: uncertain standards of diagnosis, some special genetic factor and the oft-expressed notion that the best of the Irish have emigrated, leaving the most vulnerable behind. "Having ruled out everything else," he said, "one has to look for some characteristic in Irish social life."

Still, schizophrenia is a poorly understood condition, one that has never been successfully defined. Under the circumstances, the Irish may require a bit more proof that their rich oral tradition is a breeder of madness.

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