Today I’m going to tell you a story, or I’m going to tell you at least a part of it. I have to say that it’s not easy writing or talking about this because it is a story that has to do with shame, and especially my shame, shame for things that I did, believing that they were the so-called right thing.
But what matters is that it’s a story. And I believe that in stories is where we find meaning. Truth emerges where knowledge is amiss, as Lacan would have put it. So, I will try to tell you a part of my story. And at the end, no surprise, as you may see from the title, it brings me to Mad Camp but also further on to why I wanted to bring Mad Camp to Europe.
Working on the Ward
I grew up in Austria. My parents are psych survivors. And yet I choose to become a mental health nurse. My childhood, my upbringing, that’s part of another story. But you can expect it to be turbulent, full of ups and downs like many people who identify with the mad movement. I got two diagnoses, borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder with ultra-rapid cycling, a fact that I hid throughout my whole time of service for the hospital. The fear of possible repercussions was too great.
I became a mental health nurse at a psychiatric clinic for children and young adults. Shortly after I started working there, the COVID pandemic happened. And when the COVID pandemic happened, things just exploded on the ward. There was a huge amount of violence because everybody was so desperate.
We were restraining multiple young adults, up to eight times a day, every day. It was a warlike situation; we couldn’t leave the ward, we couldn’t leave the hospital, and we were all stuck inside there. I hurt people; I got attacked with sharp tools, chairs, spit on, and threatened. I worked a lot. I worked for five weeks straight. I worked for 75 hours a week. So, I basically lived there, which on the other hand was nice because everyone else was locked at home and I could at least go to work, telling myself I was fighting on the frontlines against this new pandemic.
It was a time of extreme violence and extreme emotions; we were desperate and helpless, and our young adults suffered the same fate just on the weaker side of the system. I was in a position of power, which I was not able to reflect on back then. My colleagues and I tried to change the system from within, but the overall situation and the strict hierarchical structures of the hospital were too powerful. In the end we paid a high price for challenging the system. At the same time, we were walking through hell with our young adults that we loved deeply, but we were stuck in a vicious circle of violence together.
When I left that psychiatric clinic, I left because I could no longer work in a place that treated people the way it did, coworkers and patients. I moved on to work at the adult psychiatric ward for some time, but I quickly saw that the system was the same there, just in different colors and with different people. I was offered a contract with reduced hours, and I made the decision to go full time again, because I was like, “What am I supposed to do with my life?” I just came from this extreme time, this extreme combat-like situation that I experienced daily. And I didn’t feel like there was a place for me in society anymore. So, I thought, “Why don’t you just do the second tour?”
It was also a time when my colleagues and I, after what we experienced, were in deep disarray and despair, trying to figure out who we were aside from the team that had worked together, that had bled together.
The things that I experienced didn’t leave me the moment I walked away; everything started to come back, and I was struggling with hate, with anger, I was angry at myself, angry at the system. I woke up at night screaming, remembering in my dreams all the insanity that I had experienced before, the things I did. All this found a peak moment when I tried to kill myself with an overdose of benzodiazepines and drugs after a three-day party.
It was only later that I realized that it was because of feelings of guilt and shame. Back then I couldn’t tell, but those feelings were what kept me up at night: the things we did, participated in, and the desire and longing to go back into this adrenaline rush. Into this… Easy world of black and white, right and wrong.
Meeting Will and Coming to Mad Camp California
We started trying to make a change, make it better, with a project we called “EMPOWERMENTE.” But I was still struggling in Vienna until the day I met Will Hall when he was giving a talk to organizations in Austria advocating for a change in psychiatry. I remember Will talking; at first, I was suspicious. I thought, “Who is this? Is this really someone who is going to tell us a different story, or is it just going to be the same mental health, biomedical bullshit again?”
And then I heard Will talking, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I felt like, finally, “Are you listening, Vienna? Someone is telling us something that we’ve been trying to tell you guys here in Austria for a long time.” Our projects roots are deeply intertwined with intersubjectivity and relational psychoanalysis, but modern psychiatry had moved away from this. Will was also advocating that we go back to the human aspect of relationships, the interpersonal, the intersubjectivity. And Will talked to us about Mad Camp, And I remember after he spoke, me and my friends, we didn’t want to leave him. We talked with him for a long time after the talk was over, and we felt understood. And he said, “Philip, why don’t you come to Mad Camp California?”
So, I thought, well, now this must be the moment, I’ll just go. If I don’t fly now, I won’t fly ever again. And so, I think it was two months before Mad Camp, I signed up, booked my flight, was accepted and flew to Mad Camp California. When I was traveling there, I never would have imagined in any possible way how Mad Camp would change my life forever.
Experience at Mad Camp California
The first day I felt a huge conflict brewing inside of me. I realized I’m standing amid all these mad people and although I considered myself mad as well, I was thinking, “How can I stand here without telling the full part of my story?” I was surrounded by people who had these incredible violent experiences in the psych wards, and I was one of the people who had participated in this kind of violence.
I decided to open up to the group and I told everyone that, because of my respect for the event I want to share with them openly that I’m a mental health nurse and that I did a lot of terrible things, and participated in a lot of violence, that I worked in one of the most violent units in Austria during the COVID pandemic, and that the only thing I can offer is that people can talk to me about their experiences. I wanted to give all of it a human side, not in the sense of legitimizing the violence in any way but saying “I want to listen, and I want to look you in the eye and I want to hear your story, I want to be moved by it. I want to offer you a chance of at least partial healing by talking to me and by offering you this space.” It was one hell of a gamble, but it paid off so incredibly beautifully. So Mad Camp California began.
I met an 80-year-old Vietnam war veteran with whom I deeply connected, and we both suddenly found language for a deep feeling of betrayal that was enwritten inside of us, having fought for something we believed was different than what it actually was, having sworn to a cause that turned out to be horrible.
I met another war veteran, a beautiful, amazing person who not only knew my favorite Oi! music but also shared with me the intensity of combat and trauma, and I was able to connect again with this part of myself, this adrenaline-pumped warrior-like state I experienced in all these extreme situations.
One of the organizers offered me space for ancestral healing in ways I never thought possible, coming from the country that gave birth to national socialism and all its horrors.
I met so many beautiful people, opening to me, welcoming me with open arms and deep respect and love. And this brings me to the huge important lesson I understood through Mad Camp.
If we really want to advocate for a better mental health system, to move away from the biomedical model, you can only change your own paradigm if you’re able to integrate shame. And that is what happened to me at Mad Camp. I got there, I told my story, and the community, the people, they all held my shame with me, and accepted me into the community, making me a part of it.
One of the most touching moments I had was with someone I will call “A.” A is a wonderful person whom I had heard before on Madness Radio; it was the first time that I heard someone who was hearing voices talk about their experience at the ward. I remember I was going through the streets of Vienna, and I just broke down. I was crying because of the shame inside of me, because of the shame of what I participated in. And A said to me, “But Philipp, you also survived the system.” They gave me the identity of being a psych survivor. Having survived, so to say, on the other side of the system, together we understood that the mechanisms that split the so-called patients and the so-called nurses and professionals were dehumanized on both sides. And this was a moment for me in which so much healing was possible, but also so much pain was there.
Because, of course, it forced me to take a critical look at my EMPOWERMENTE project in Vienna. What were we doing there? Were we really advocating for change, or were we just trying to play professionals again?
Why Mad Camp Europe?
I remember sitting on the plane flying back to Europe and I couldn’t believe this just had happened. And I remember coming back was one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced. Because, suddenly, for the first time, all the dreams I had, all these fantasies about revolution and a community, a place where we can really accept each other and have a place where we belong, had become real. For so many years I had always been disappointed. I found, in a lot of structures, the same oppressive ideas were being repeated, and we just played at inclusion, and we just played at community, but not in Mad Camp.
What I really respected about the whole event was that I just could do my thing. It was not forced. You were not pushed into anything; people were extremely mindful and respectful of each other, but not in an awkward, fake way of using certain kinds of phrases. No, it was in the non-visible world, and this is where our psyche is right? It’s in the non-visible world, not in the chemical imbalances, not in the false biological structures, it is in the non-visible world where psyche lives, where emotions are, where love is felt, and where the soul is born.
I came back and I looked at the world and looked at Vienna, Austria which is so much behind, where we really are in the dark ages looking at the psychiatric wards. I said to myself, “We need Mad Camp in Europe,” because after having experienced all that, the only logical consequence is to try, in a way, to open up space for these healing possibilities.
And, of course, humans are always humans. Of course, there will be conflict and dynamics, but it is okay. Because we can handle it with deep respect towards each other. And because we are coming out of a system that is inherently violent and is splitting us into conflict, into groups, we need a place to heal and grow together again as a community, as humans. And my great hope is that the healing, this experience I had of being held in my shame, that this is something that we can offer again and again. Because I think this is what we need as a global movement.
We need to be able to help people integrate their shame. Because only if people integrate their shame can they come to us and move towards themselves. And integrating shame takes time; looking at what one participated in can be painful, it can be disturbing, please trust me when I say that! But I swear to all the gods and the universe, it is worth it!
I just want to say thank you again to all the beautiful, amazing people I met in Mad Camp California 2024! If you’re reading this, I hope you can feel just how deep my gratitude is towards all of you. I am looking forward to seeing you again this year!!
And thank you, Dina and Will, for pushing the stone into the right direction, putting all this work into the community, making so much healing possible for so many people. Never forget, once you save a single soul, you save the whole world. You are the true heroes!
And if you want to come to Mad Camp Europe in Austria this year, please know that you are more than welcome!
To nonlinear change and the power of healing through community and love!
